'Bring Back the Great Highway' Campaign Tries to Trick Voters

First, let’s clarify something on Proposition G, an upcoming re-vote of the 2024 decision to turn ‘Great Highway’ into Sunset Dunes Park: a “No” vote protects the park. It means “No” to destroying Sunset Dunes and turning it back into a highway.

That might be slightly confusing, since “No” means, in effect, “Yes” to keeping the park.

Unfortunately, people who want to bring back cars to the area formerly known as the “Upper Great Highway” are leaning into that potential confusion to deceive voters.

Their claim, at least in the past, was that Sunset Dunes and the loss of four north-south traffic lanes is causing undue driver delay across the west side of San Francisco, despite all evidence to the contrary. So rather than producing posters, flyers, and lawn signs that show, say, free-moving traffic on the Great Highway before the park was created, they’ve put out this malarkey:

This is the poster for a campaign that wants to reconstitute the Great Highway for cars?

A pedestrian crossing symbol and “Safe Streets & Great Parks”? Again, Prop. G, if it passes, will destroy a park. And adding more traffic lanes doesn’t make safer streets. Why doesn’t it say “Bring back the Great Highway,” since that’s what a “Yes” vote would actually do?

For reference, here’s the poster they produced in 2024 when they were the ones trying to preserve the status quo:

Of course, the closure of the Great Highway did result in a park and “San Franciscans love the park, so Yes on G’s branding is intentionally very misleading. They’re trying to confuse voters so they don’t know which side is in favor of saving the park,” said Catie Stewart with Friends of Sunset Dunes.

By contrast, here is the “No on G” campaign’s sign:

One might disagree with the goal, but it’s absolutely straightforward, simple, and factual. When Prop. K passed in 2024, a park was legally created in the space that was once occupied by Great Highway. It was renamed “Sunset Dunes Park”. Prop. G is attempting to reverse that. So a “No” on G is about saving Sunset Dunes Park, as the poster says. About the only thing dishonest about the “No” campaign’s poster is that plovers don’t ride skateboards.

As to the “Yes on G/Bring Back the Highway and Destroy the Park” campaign, their “…sign and logo is designed to trick people into closing Sunset Dunes and reopening a failed, crumbling road. The truth is, traffic crashes in the Sunset have gone down since the park opened, and now families all over the city have a safe place to bike and walk and enjoy our coast,” added Stewart.

If you support Sunset Dunes (or even if you just hate deceptive campaigns and want to help clear up the confusion), here is a list of upcoming campaign events:

Wednesday, September 2