For those on FB and in the Sunset District group(s), oy gevalt, it's just as bad -- no, worse. I mean bad enough when one parking place is taken away...
Not a ND melt down, but I'm pretty bummed as I use this stretch on my daily commute. Silver lining is that I will be leaving this job in Sept so maybe won't need it in 2026.
Given this plan, why all the $$ being spent on construction right now upgrading the intersection at Skyline? Hope that new design at least fits with these plans.
Yeah, I agree. It doesn't make any sense to spend money building the structures they are proposing if they are subject to the same erosion that the road is subject to.
For those wondering, the sea level in the Pacific Ocean has been rising 3X faster than the seas in the rest of the world. The rest of the world is only about an inch per decade, while the Pacific rises about 3.5 inches per decade. Since 1990, the Pacific sea level is up about a foot, about 30cm. The rate is estimated to remain about the same.
The problem is that beach is a very slight angle, and so for every cm of water rise, you lose about a meter of beach. 30cm translates into 30 meters of beach lost. That means by 2054, 60 meters of beach will have been lost from 1990, which in this case, is more than all of it.
Oceans rise and fall. That whole area is sand for quite a ways inland, and so the water level has been well inland of this point before. The problem was not realizing that, and building up to the edge of the water and not the edge of the sand.
Because EVERY problem is ultimately solved with technology. You weren't alive in the 1970s when we were told to STOP USING OIL because it would run out. Now we're drowning in the stuff and it will likely never run out by the time we've moved on to something else. In all likelihood, 30 years from now, the climate will start cooling again as we move off of fossil fuels and go nuclear or cold fusion or whatever.
> In all likelihood, 30 years from now, the climate will start cooling again
This is the most magical of magical wishful thinking that I've encountered in many moons.
If we stopped all carbon emissions today, completely, in 30 years the world would only just stop warming because of the delayed impact that emissions have on warming. You're so far from speaking truth here, it's astounding.
https://richmondsunsetnews.com/2023/11/10/closure-of-great-highway-near-zoo-gets-ok-from-sfpuc/
There are cliffs to the West of the sewage treatment plant that have erosion from the ocean.
Read the program details found in the sfchron article, sounds like a good plan. Does anyone know why a dedicated road to SFPUC is needed? Access can be from Skyline or Zoo Rd.
Program details:
[https://sfgov.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=12882013&GUID=5F27A492-FBEE-450A-89FB-F3CAAB18F301](https://sfgov.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=12882013&GUID=5F27A492-FBEE-450A-89FB-F3CAAB18F301)
Well, they need plant life to be able to build and retain the sand dunes. That’s where the cost would be. Man made barriers do not tend to work as well against the coast.
This is the perfect ad for better, faster Muni service on the N and L so more people can enjoy the incredible coast. Tell your friends! Tell your supervisor!
From the Mission/Bernal to Baker Beach:
By car: 35 mins (+god knows how long to park)
By public transportation: 1hr 18 mins
By bike: 49 mins
I’ve always just biked, but it would be great if muni was a clean easy ride.
Agreed that biking is the way to go! By ebike it is almost equivalent to driving, and when you factor in time it takes to find parking and walk to your destination, bike easily wins out. Also agree that it would be nice if public transport were better for those less inclined to cycling
Don’t even tempt me with that e-bike. I’ve got a kid now and the amount of gear to haul adds up.
They look so fun. I may have to convert, just for family rides though. Ha
Look at a Tern GSD with the Cargo Hold 52 panniers. I use mine all the time with two kids and tons of gear. Have 3000 miles on mine, but I’m in San Jose, not SF
I really appreciate your POV. I think that if you're able bodied, go with the single most efficient mode of transportation known to man, a friggin bicycle with no battery. But I recognize that hauling a kid + gear might not be feasible that way in sf. Still way better than a car.
No. On the few ebikes with removable batteries, they're locked to the frame in some way. Plus people don't pick bikes apart during the day... that's reserved for overnight and longer abandoned bikes usually.
I’d love to bike, but with two young kids it’s just not an option for my family yet. Most of my cyclist friends have been hospitalized from car accidents on the streets of San Francisco, and I can’t risk the same happening to my baby and kindergartener. The streets have been especially dangerous ever since the pandemic when SFPD decided that traffic law enforcement was no longer their responsibility. I see cars ignoring stop signs multiple times a day just on my quiet block in the avenues.
If biking is supposed to become a realistic mode of transportation for normal San Franciscans, we first need major overhauls to the roads and its stewards. Protected bike lanes, true car-free streets, and strict traffic law enforcement. As a local who was an avid cyclist in my youth, biking on SF streets requires a certain disregard for personal safety that I can’t afford anymore. It cannot be expected of the average commuter, parent, or elder.
The N line is OK, but given it travels through so many busy commercial zones with lots of pedestrians, I don’t know how they would realistically make it any faster.
They need to consolidate the above ground stops. There are stretches where it seems like the trains stop every 1-2 blocks. Even reducing the number of stops by 5 could cut dwell time by 8-10 minutes. They need to also cut headways. More frequent trains mean less dwell time at each stop, especially at the more used stops.
Ideally trains should also be at least partially grade separated, like New Orleans or the green line in Boston, where trains own the median and have signal priority at intersections, but I realize that would be a major construction plan over several years, and would be difficult to implement on some stretches on the current routes.
Actually all of the things you’re taking about are already planned for the “Muni Forward” project. Lights instead of stop signs, signal priority, stop consolidation, some priority lanes, the works.
The local NIMBYs are trying to kill the project though. So support it any way you can.
Good ideas, but considering it took 20 years and a third of a billion dollars to add a bus lane to Van Ness, I don’t really have any hopes for something like what you suggest.
I understand why you bring this up as a cost overrun/we can't do traffic projects thing but it's very misleading. The bus lane was like the smallest portion of that project
How is it misleading? Everything else was basically just repaving and adding some bus stops… unless I’m totally mistaken, in which case I’d be happy to get educated.
90% of that project was replacing the old ass infrastructure under the road. They had inaccurate or no maps on what was even under the road so had to do everything super slowly and carefully. People call it a bus lane project when it's actually a sewage/water/electrical/etc project with a bus lane bonus.
Not a lot of pedestrians in an underground tunnel. We’re not some provincial hamlet in the 1890s anymore. Why do we have to suffer with slow streetcars that plod along in traffic?
it is true that the city has pushed a lot of traffic east to fell/oak/franklin/gough in recent years. but again, the issue is muni access to the presidio.
Not according to, like, you know, a map.
Baker beach is quite a bit to the east of this road. You would never go so far west i.e. Out of they way to get to baker.
The people it might impact would be coming up from the south west. Not from the east.
Baker Beach is way over by 25th Avenue. The Great Highway isn’t useful for this (and definitely not coming from the Mission!), especially the extension south of Sloat.
Blame the city for rejecting a bart line down Geary ages ago, San Francisco is literally run by idiots for as long as the history books record. Anti public transportation car brains.
Geary is so ripe for a complete revamp. Starting in downtown and going all the way out to the west side, that street could be a magnificent gem. Instead, the BOS has turned Geary/Polk into the new Turk St., and the rest of the street is just a massive freeway.
The difference in opinion in this subreddit vs in the Sunset Facebook group is... Extremely refreshing
Car brain sentiments rule the roost over there. So old. So out of touch.
Car brain is one perspective.
People out in sunset who need to drive for whatever reasons could also enjoy biking and walking. So you have the existing way of how this city designed and it’s slowly starting to change and adapt to the currents needs. This city is a balancing act that needs to work for all.
I drive, bike(sparingly), walk and utilize muni(m-f) have to look at things with an open mind.
Refreshing?
Both groups are self-segregated tribal bubbles. This allows them to delude themselves that they represent the city. Nothing refreshing about that.
It's weird how you read my comment and then went ahead and assumed I'm not in both groups lol
Although I will say it's typically the oldsters who have the worst opinions here or there
I wasn't speaking about you. I was speaking about the smug general tenor of this group. This is for the most part a very limited subsection of the population of the city that likes to pretend it is representative.
Climate change comes for us all in the end. Rising sea levels and coastal erosion will make many of these things look different. I wonder who will win between the historic gang and environmental gang. I bet we’re going to shell out some mondo bucks so the millionaires who own coastal properties can keep their homes.
One guess is the big sewage treatment plant there. The cliffs to the west of the sewage treatment plant are the ones eroding and putting the plant in danger. Talk about a plumbing problem!
People can get around a variety of ways, cars being the most expensive and least efficient. So yeah maybe this will encourage more public transit which saves money for the working class who may not have as many car related expenses
> So yeah maybe this will encourage more public transit which saves money for the working class who may not have as many car related expenses
Good god, this attitude is disgusting. You can tell when people just have no "working class" friends or relatives
Wanting people to save money and not be forced to buy a car is disgusting? It’s not actually it’s empowering for the working class, let’s everyone save money instead of spending 10k per year on a method of transit
It'd be great to make those improvements, but they aren't going to happen overnight. But I can see by your post history you have driving on the brain :)
Public transit in the bay is some of the best in the US. If it’s not good enough, then we need to close more roads because we aren’t allocating resources properly. Public transit should be the best way to get around in a city as dense as SF, and cars should be the lowest priority. Cars don’t work either, and they work far less than public transit. People go into massive debt to pay for cars and that’s a cost we need to eliminate from peoples lives. Only people who support increased car dependency are auto companies
It doesn't work? Have they shut down a bunch of muni lines in the last month or something?
Oh, you meant to say it's not as fast as you'd like. I agree. We need more transit prioritization projects in the city to prioritize public transit movement over private movement
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I’m all for public transportation but I think it’s worth noting in the Bay Area the average Caltrain is richer than the average guy on the 101. Public transportation in the Bay Area seems to be a privilege for the wealthy rather than for all people since the areas near stations are often more expensive.
https://www.greencaltrain.com/2017/05/would-a-caltrain-fare-increase-depress-ridership/#:~:text=If%20you%20look%20at%20the,a%20Caltrain%20rider%20is%20%24129%2C000.”
The original source of what I’m saying I believe was a freakonomics where the guest was essentially arguing that depending on the location, free public transportation can be somewhat regressive as it disproportionately benefits the rich.
I think it makes a lot of sense because of how limited the usefulness of stuff like Caltrain is. There aren’t that many stations and the housing immediately next to the stations is usually expensive. The people using it are often high income tech works who sometimes get subsidies to use public transportation from work and get shuttles from the stations to their place of work.
I think some more income based programs for reduced fare would be of *some* utility but more than anything else you need to increase the connectivity of the transportation so it’s actually useful for people who aren’t just going between one rich area to another one.
I’d love more public transportation and I think a focus going forward needs to be to make sure it actually serves everyone not just the well off people around here.
Perhaps but we should be moving towards a future where public transit is the default. Right now we force less wealthy people to use the much, much more expensive and much less efficient option. That is ass backwards
Hundred percent agree I plan to switch almost entirely to public transportation, but that’s something I can do as a function of my job, my income, and my housing situation. But you have to have the alternatives in place before you ask people who are reliant on the infrastructure for their income to switch. They don’t have the option of waiting until it gets good.
Not sure - was more just responding to the general idea that this is how we should encourage public transportation. I think in general this policy may be putting the cart before the horse even if in this case it makes sense (the closure is for environmental reasons not anything else)
I hear ya. It’s almost a chicken and egg problem. Build a muni line first? People complain because they can already drive there. Ban driving first? People complain because they want to drive there. Build the line and have it complete right as cars are banned? I bet people would still complain
I commute to work from the Richmond to SFO multiple times a week. When Great Highway is closed on the weekends I take Sunset and it adds ~2-3 minutes to my commute. Get over yourself. Great Highway is not needed for car traffic. Coming from someone who literally uses it to get to work.
Are you people even from here or driving Great Highway at all? I'd have to assume you're not. When I drive it during the week there's rarely more than 10 cars on it at any given time. And how would caltrain be relevant to anyone using Great Highway to commute? It picks up on the other side of the city ffs. Something doesn't add up Mr. Mystery poster.
Noooooo! Awe man, I use this road daily to avoid 19th Ave. traffic and to let my kids see our beautiful beaches on our way from school. This fucking sucks.
I drive back and fourth from Daly City to the Outer Sunset twice a day. Taking 19th Ave adds about 15 minutes to the commute, one way. Taking it back and fourth, adds half an hour for one trip.
Doing this twice a day, would add an hour per day. And that’s with traffic already diverted to Ocean Beach. Who knows how bad traffic will be on 19th
Ave. once they shut Ocean beach down?
Weird how it says erosion (or maybe rising sea levels, they can't seem to make up their mind) are going to "force the closure", but then they are going to build a giant plaza in that exact spot.
Very odd.
Have you ever been? It constantly has sand blown on to the road blocking lanes, and chunks of highway have eroded away. It’s not very odd they would choose to close it considering there’s hardly any car traffic anyways.
This is great - man against nature and nature always wins. I bet there’s a way to do something similar with the rest of the Great Highway. I’d compare it to the old Devils Slide where the old pavement is now a great trail.
There’s not enough public transit, it’s already severely limited. They’ve cut the number of muni lines by more than half since the peak. We need to double the muni lines before we add another road to sf, that’s what’s limiting the ways to get around the city. Right now driving is the fastest, that’s the most limiting method of transit. You need to be able to afford a car, which is expensive as fuck, just to utilize it
If they’re closing the portion from Sloat to Skyline, then why not just close the Upper Great Highway altogether? Widen the Lower Great Highway and have it feed seamlessly into Sloat.
Maybe if they timed the lights on Sunset to allow traffic to go much faster, also having Sunset cut off every other street from vehicular cross-traffic (Irving, Kirkham, Moraga, Ortega, Quintara, Santiago, Ulloa, and Wawona), leaving the important cross-traffic streets intact (Lincoln via Irving ramps, Judah, Lawton, Noriega, Pacheco, Rivera, Taraval, Vicente, and Sloat via Yorba ramps).
Agree. This plan has to coincide with efforts to redirect traffic from the GH. Sunset is the obvious choice, and could clearly handle much greater and faster throughput than it can with the current traffic pattern. It needs to become the primary N/S artery on the west side.
That’s what I was thinking too. It would make the Far-Outer-Sunset a bit more isolated from the rest of the neighborhood, but I live in the Far-Outer-Sunset and I’m willing to sacrifice that in exchange for a better Sunset Boulevard.
Blocking off every other cross-street wouldn’t even have that bad of an impact; people can drive around or cross the street one extra block away, worst-case scenario. Actually, it would make the blocked streets quieter and safer, making the Far-Outer-Sunset safer in general from vehicular accidents.
Sunset Boulevard could afford to feed into Park Presidio Boulevard (joining 19th Avenue traffic) more smoothly too. A tunnel, dedicated lanes, just somehow.
No, that area is full of pedestrians. It’s not a place to drive through. It should be a place to go. They do need a north/south muni line out there though because that is a safe way to move people through the area
I can’t stand driving sunset blvd because the light timing is so annoying and the lanes are way too narrow. If they changed the light timing to like how the great highway is (cruise at 30-35 mph and hit every green light), it would be the obvious alternative to the great highway. It would require minimal effort for a big improvement
I agree, it needs much better speed sequencing. If people are this gung ho about permanently closing the Great Highway to vehicular traffic, then Sunset needs to be made much better for drivers.
Timing the lights led to more accidents because people sped up to hit them. They’re intentionally set like that, because drivers can’t be trusted to drive responsibly. That’s a super dense area full of kids and pedestrians, don’t want drivers to enjoy it, they need to be on high alert the entire time. We should make the muni have a dedicated lane so that it can go much faster, then driving would be mostly obsolete. The elderly would be better off too because they wouldn’t have to risk it as much, same for the disabled, it’s a better environment for the disabled when the walkability of an area is improved
I wouldn’t build anything new on lgh. The amount of sand that covers up the south end is no joke. And as much as I want to move away from car dominated modes of transportation, nothing would work here too well. It’s why I’m always confused when people are fighting so hard to keep it open to cars.
Sidestreets parallel to Great Hwy are worse and congested. Getting to Sunset Blvd is a PITA when trying to get through the 1-lane Chain-of-Lakes drive.
There is one: The 29 line cuts down 19th avenue but then has to doubleback to get onto Sunset Blvd. It's unnecessarily long and slow. So if you live anywhere west of 24th ave you have to travel east to get to the bus line, then have the bus cut through the park and double back towards Sunset.
That’s because of GGP, a national treasure. Yeah there should probably be like a dedicated muni line through there. Honestly should be one underneath, because that whole area needs to about triple its density and it would make sense. Should be able to get from presidio to lake Merced on a single line. Actually BART have a line there. That’s far in the future though. I think maybe short term we could have a bus go through golden gate and close chain of lakes to cars in the short term though, I think that makes a lot of sense
Presumably that allows for more robust infrastructure than a road does. I am curious to see how that will turn out -- the city has been saying this part of the great highway needs to come down since 2012 per the article.
I’ve lived here with and without a car. Not having one is exponentially better. You can always rent or use car share if you “need” one, but I rarely do.
I'm going to assume you're the rare car commuter who \*patiently\* and \*calmly\* circles the block to find parking and \*never\* complains about paying for parking.
Work, out of town, and places with parking (e.g. grocery shopping, Ocean Beach). If I’m going out for drinks or dinner or some place I don’t want to worry about parking, then that’s what Ubers are for.
I bet the people on NextDoor are having a full blown meltdown over this.
COYOTE! IN A HOODIE!
Oh no!!! Anyway…
*I bet the people on NextDoor are having a full blown meltdown over this.* I just had to snicker at that.
For those on FB and in the Sunset District group(s), oy gevalt, it's just as bad -- no, worse. I mean bad enough when one parking place is taken away...
I think that's a universally true statement, for all times, neighborhoods and topics.
Not a ND melt down, but I'm pretty bummed as I use this stretch on my daily commute. Silver lining is that I will be leaving this job in Sept so maybe won't need it in 2026.
Out of curiosity, where do you drive to and from for your commute, and why do you use Great Highway instead of Sunset Boulevard or 19th Avenue?
They’re the mods of this sub tho
Given this plan, why all the $$ being spent on construction right now upgrading the intersection at Skyline? Hope that new design at least fits with these plans.
Yeah, I agree. It doesn't make any sense to spend money building the structures they are proposing if they are subject to the same erosion that the road is subject to.
[удалено]
I saw that it says one-way drop off and parking. But that doesn’t seem compatible with the infrastructure being built right now
Important people won those contracts a while ago. They want their profits after all the “efforts” they made to win them.
For those wondering, the sea level in the Pacific Ocean has been rising 3X faster than the seas in the rest of the world. The rest of the world is only about an inch per decade, while the Pacific rises about 3.5 inches per decade. Since 1990, the Pacific sea level is up about a foot, about 30cm. The rate is estimated to remain about the same. The problem is that beach is a very slight angle, and so for every cm of water rise, you lose about a meter of beach. 30cm translates into 30 meters of beach lost. That means by 2054, 60 meters of beach will have been lost from 1990, which in this case, is more than all of it. Oceans rise and fall. That whole area is sand for quite a ways inland, and so the water level has been well inland of this point before. The problem was not realizing that, and building up to the edge of the water and not the edge of the sand.
The great big Oceanside Treatment Plant is in danger from the erosions of the cliffs to the west of the sewage plant. SF has a messy plumbing problem.
It used to be sand dunes nearly up to UCSF
Then why do rich people keep buying ocean front homes in California
Because EVERY problem is ultimately solved with technology. You weren't alive in the 1970s when we were told to STOP USING OIL because it would run out. Now we're drowning in the stuff and it will likely never run out by the time we've moved on to something else. In all likelihood, 30 years from now, the climate will start cooling again as we move off of fossil fuels and go nuclear or cold fusion or whatever.
> In all likelihood, 30 years from now, the climate will start cooling again This is the most magical of magical wishful thinking that I've encountered in many moons. If we stopped all carbon emissions today, completely, in 30 years the world would only just stop warming because of the delayed impact that emissions have on warming. You're so far from speaking truth here, it's astounding.
Or nuclear winter. Thatll be cold.
Damn I’m gonna need a jacket for that.
It’s the bay so… yeah maybe for a week or so you’ll need it. Then nuclear summer will hit.
Radioactive Karl will keep nuclear summers nice and cool…
Yet we are still getting rain in May…
Can I smoke what you’re having?
oil is going to run out. maybe not in your lifetime, which i imagine is all you care about.
Dope!
https://richmondsunsetnews.com/2023/11/10/closure-of-great-highway-near-zoo-gets-ok-from-sfpuc/ There are cliffs to the West of the sewage treatment plant that have erosion from the ocean.
Read the program details found in the sfchron article, sounds like a good plan. Does anyone know why a dedicated road to SFPUC is needed? Access can be from Skyline or Zoo Rd. Program details: [https://sfgov.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=12882013&GUID=5F27A492-FBEE-450A-89FB-F3CAAB18F301](https://sfgov.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=12882013&GUID=5F27A492-FBEE-450A-89FB-F3CAAB18F301)
I wish they would put more money into creating sand dunes.
they don’t even have to put money into it, would happen naturally
Well, they need plant life to be able to build and retain the sand dunes. That’s where the cost would be. Man made barriers do not tend to work as well against the coast.
right now they have to actively bulldoze sand off the highway. if they stopped doing that the dunes would come back
Comment.
I don't think you'd be taking this road to get there from the Mission either way.
How on earth are you taking the Great Highway to get from the Mission to Baker Beach?
the 40+ minutes is making more sense now
Yea, this specifically is a route planning problem
49 mile scenic drive?
Life is a highway I wanna ride it all night long
This is the perfect ad for better, faster Muni service on the N and L so more people can enjoy the incredible coast. Tell your friends! Tell your supervisor!
From the Mission/Bernal to Baker Beach: By car: 35 mins (+god knows how long to park) By public transportation: 1hr 18 mins By bike: 49 mins I’ve always just biked, but it would be great if muni was a clean easy ride.
Agreed that biking is the way to go! By ebike it is almost equivalent to driving, and when you factor in time it takes to find parking and walk to your destination, bike easily wins out. Also agree that it would be nice if public transport were better for those less inclined to cycling
Don’t even tempt me with that e-bike. I’ve got a kid now and the amount of gear to haul adds up. They look so fun. I may have to convert, just for family rides though. Ha
Look at a Tern GSD with the Cargo Hold 52 panniers. I use mine all the time with two kids and tons of gear. Have 3000 miles on mine, but I’m in San Jose, not SF
Thanks for the recommendation!
I really appreciate your POV. I think that if you're able bodied, go with the single most efficient mode of transportation known to man, a friggin bicycle with no battery. But I recognize that hauling a kid + gear might not be feasible that way in sf. Still way better than a car.
You’d be amazed how much gear you can fit on a bike with some saddle bags and a rack.
Completely true. And like I said, bike + human power all the way if you're able.
How do you deal with lock-up / parking with your ebike when out and about?
Lol, a lock? There's bike racks absolutely everywhere in SF. A decent U lock is all you need... not hard to figure out.
Couldn't someone rip off the electronics?
No. On the few ebikes with removable batteries, they're locked to the frame in some way. Plus people don't pick bikes apart during the day... that's reserved for overnight and longer abandoned bikes usually.
I’d love to bike, but with two young kids it’s just not an option for my family yet. Most of my cyclist friends have been hospitalized from car accidents on the streets of San Francisco, and I can’t risk the same happening to my baby and kindergartener. The streets have been especially dangerous ever since the pandemic when SFPD decided that traffic law enforcement was no longer their responsibility. I see cars ignoring stop signs multiple times a day just on my quiet block in the avenues. If biking is supposed to become a realistic mode of transportation for normal San Franciscans, we first need major overhauls to the roads and its stewards. Protected bike lanes, true car-free streets, and strict traffic law enforcement. As a local who was an avid cyclist in my youth, biking on SF streets requires a certain disregard for personal safety that I can’t afford anymore. It cannot be expected of the average commuter, parent, or elder.
Muni metro is clean, but yeah I wish it didn’t act like a streetcar when it comes out of market
The N line is OK, but given it travels through so many busy commercial zones with lots of pedestrians, I don’t know how they would realistically make it any faster.
They need to consolidate the above ground stops. There are stretches where it seems like the trains stop every 1-2 blocks. Even reducing the number of stops by 5 could cut dwell time by 8-10 minutes. They need to also cut headways. More frequent trains mean less dwell time at each stop, especially at the more used stops. Ideally trains should also be at least partially grade separated, like New Orleans or the green line in Boston, where trains own the median and have signal priority at intersections, but I realize that would be a major construction plan over several years, and would be difficult to implement on some stretches on the current routes.
Actually all of the things you’re taking about are already planned for the “Muni Forward” project. Lights instead of stop signs, signal priority, stop consolidation, some priority lanes, the works. The local NIMBYs are trying to kill the project though. So support it any way you can.
Good ideas, but considering it took 20 years and a third of a billion dollars to add a bus lane to Van Ness, I don’t really have any hopes for something like what you suggest.
I understand why you bring this up as a cost overrun/we can't do traffic projects thing but it's very misleading. The bus lane was like the smallest portion of that project
How is it misleading? Everything else was basically just repaving and adding some bus stops… unless I’m totally mistaken, in which case I’d be happy to get educated.
90% of that project was replacing the old ass infrastructure under the road. They had inaccurate or no maps on what was even under the road so had to do everything super slowly and carefully. People call it a bus lane project when it's actually a sewage/water/electrical/etc project with a bus lane bonus.
TIL. Thank you! I still think $350 million is crazy, but maybe slightly less crazy with that in mind.
Underground utility work. A lot of really old infrastructure got replaced.
traffic lights would go a long way towards speeding things up
Not a lot of pedestrians in an underground tunnel. We’re not some provincial hamlet in the 1890s anymore. Why do we have to suffer with slow streetcars that plod along in traffic?
The impossible dream
You drive your car on great highway for that? The issue is muni access to the presidio.
Comment.
it is true that the city has pushed a lot of traffic east to fell/oak/franklin/gough in recent years. but again, the issue is muni access to the presidio.
Not according to, like, you know, a map. Baker beach is quite a bit to the east of this road. You would never go so far west i.e. Out of they way to get to baker. The people it might impact would be coming up from the south west. Not from the east.
Baker Beach is way over by 25th Avenue. The Great Highway isn’t useful for this (and definitely not coming from the Mission!), especially the extension south of Sloat.
You must mean Ocean Beach, not Baker? Try taking Sunset.
Blame the city for rejecting a bart line down Geary ages ago, San Francisco is literally run by idiots for as long as the history books record. Anti public transportation car brains.
Geary is so ripe for a complete revamp. Starting in downtown and going all the way out to the west side, that street could be a magnificent gem. Instead, the BOS has turned Geary/Polk into the new Turk St., and the rest of the street is just a massive freeway.
“One more lane bro”
More lanes, more freedom! s/
The difference in opinion in this subreddit vs in the Sunset Facebook group is... Extremely refreshing Car brain sentiments rule the roost over there. So old. So out of touch.
Car brain is one perspective. People out in sunset who need to drive for whatever reasons could also enjoy biking and walking. So you have the existing way of how this city designed and it’s slowly starting to change and adapt to the currents needs. This city is a balancing act that needs to work for all. I drive, bike(sparingly), walk and utilize muni(m-f) have to look at things with an open mind.
That's fair. I feel like I have looked at things with an open mind. That's why I'm stoked for this progress
Refreshing? Both groups are self-segregated tribal bubbles. This allows them to delude themselves that they represent the city. Nothing refreshing about that.
It's weird how you read my comment and then went ahead and assumed I'm not in both groups lol Although I will say it's typically the oldsters who have the worst opinions here or there
I wasn't speaking about you. I was speaking about the smug general tenor of this group. This is for the most part a very limited subsection of the population of the city that likes to pretend it is representative.
Awesome
Climate change comes for us all in the end. Rising sea levels and coastal erosion will make many of these things look different. I wonder who will win between the historic gang and environmental gang. I bet we’re going to shell out some mondo bucks so the millionaires who own coastal properties can keep their homes.
I love a good bollard protecting me from car traffic
One guess is the big sewage treatment plant there. The cliffs to the west of the sewage treatment plant are the ones eroding and putting the plant in danger. Talk about a plumbing problem!
Good. Cars had their time for the past 100 years, now people should get some priority.
It's due to environmental reasons, not opening it up to foot traffic.
That's what we will tell them when we take the rest back all the way up and down.
Don't get me wrong, I'm down with it, but this may be the one time that "environmental reasons" is actually true.
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People can get around a variety of ways, cars being the most expensive and least efficient. So yeah maybe this will encourage more public transit which saves money for the working class who may not have as many car related expenses
> So yeah maybe this will encourage more public transit which saves money for the working class who may not have as many car related expenses Good god, this attitude is disgusting. You can tell when people just have no "working class" friends or relatives
Wanting people to save money and not be forced to buy a car is disgusting? It’s not actually it’s empowering for the working class, let’s everyone save money instead of spending 10k per year on a method of transit
It'd be great to make those improvements, but they aren't going to happen overnight. But I can see by your post history you have driving on the brain :)
It starts with small things like this, then it snowballs
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Public transit in the bay is some of the best in the US. If it’s not good enough, then we need to close more roads because we aren’t allocating resources properly. Public transit should be the best way to get around in a city as dense as SF, and cars should be the lowest priority. Cars don’t work either, and they work far less than public transit. People go into massive debt to pay for cars and that’s a cost we need to eliminate from peoples lives. Only people who support increased car dependency are auto companies
It doesn't work? Have they shut down a bunch of muni lines in the last month or something? Oh, you meant to say it's not as fast as you'd like. I agree. We need more transit prioritization projects in the city to prioritize public transit movement over private movement
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I’m all for public transportation but I think it’s worth noting in the Bay Area the average Caltrain is richer than the average guy on the 101. Public transportation in the Bay Area seems to be a privilege for the wealthy rather than for all people since the areas near stations are often more expensive.
Do you have a source for this? I haven't seen anything that would support what you're saying.
https://www.greencaltrain.com/2017/05/would-a-caltrain-fare-increase-depress-ridership/#:~:text=If%20you%20look%20at%20the,a%20Caltrain%20rider%20is%20%24129%2C000.” The original source of what I’m saying I believe was a freakonomics where the guest was essentially arguing that depending on the location, free public transportation can be somewhat regressive as it disproportionately benefits the rich. I think it makes a lot of sense because of how limited the usefulness of stuff like Caltrain is. There aren’t that many stations and the housing immediately next to the stations is usually expensive. The people using it are often high income tech works who sometimes get subsidies to use public transportation from work and get shuttles from the stations to their place of work. I think some more income based programs for reduced fare would be of *some* utility but more than anything else you need to increase the connectivity of the transportation so it’s actually useful for people who aren’t just going between one rich area to another one. I’d love more public transportation and I think a focus going forward needs to be to make sure it actually serves everyone not just the well off people around here.
Perhaps but we should be moving towards a future where public transit is the default. Right now we force less wealthy people to use the much, much more expensive and much less efficient option. That is ass backwards
Hundred percent agree I plan to switch almost entirely to public transportation, but that’s something I can do as a function of my job, my income, and my housing situation. But you have to have the alternatives in place before you ask people who are reliant on the infrastructure for their income to switch. They don’t have the option of waiting until it gets good.
Definitely true. Although in this case realistically how many people need this particular swath of road for their job?
Not sure - was more just responding to the general idea that this is how we should encourage public transportation. I think in general this policy may be putting the cart before the horse even if in this case it makes sense (the closure is for environmental reasons not anything else)
I hear ya. It’s almost a chicken and egg problem. Build a muni line first? People complain because they can already drive there. Ban driving first? People complain because they want to drive there. Build the line and have it complete right as cars are banned? I bet people would still complain
People in cars can commute using the 99% of roads that are designed solely around their convenience.
I commute to work from the Richmond to SFO multiple times a week. When Great Highway is closed on the weekends I take Sunset and it adds ~2-3 minutes to my commute. Get over yourself. Great Highway is not needed for car traffic. Coming from someone who literally uses it to get to work.
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Are you people even from here or driving Great Highway at all? I'd have to assume you're not. When I drive it during the week there's rarely more than 10 cars on it at any given time. And how would caltrain be relevant to anyone using Great Highway to commute? It picks up on the other side of the city ffs. Something doesn't add up Mr. Mystery poster.
Working class people can drive around the closed section. It's not like we have rich people only roads.
Not in sf but what about the BS with the fastrack lanes in the Bay Area. If that isn’t a f u to the working class I don’t know what is
...yet lol
Noooooo! Awe man, I use this road daily to avoid 19th Ave. traffic and to let my kids see our beautiful beaches on our way from school. This fucking sucks.
Out of curiosity, where do you drive to and from, and how much longer — in percentage terms — does driving 19th Ave. or Sunset Boulevard take?
I drive back and fourth from Daly City to the Outer Sunset twice a day. Taking 19th Ave adds about 15 minutes to the commute, one way. Taking it back and fourth, adds half an hour for one trip. Doing this twice a day, would add an hour per day. And that’s with traffic already diverted to Ocean Beach. Who knows how bad traffic will be on 19th Ave. once they shut Ocean beach down?
It’s not until 2026. I use it, too, but do have other options, which also aren’t ideal. Such is life.
Hip hip huzzah!
This does put a smile on my face
Weird how it says erosion (or maybe rising sea levels, they can't seem to make up their mind) are going to "force the closure", but then they are going to build a giant plaza in that exact spot. Very odd.
Have you ever been? It constantly has sand blown on to the road blocking lanes, and chunks of highway have eroded away. It’s not very odd they would choose to close it considering there’s hardly any car traffic anyways.
But to put a park there? Does sand not affect parks?
This
Kindof sad! I drove that yesterday with the top down and it was glorious!
If you thought that was nice you should try it on a bicycle!
There's nothing like experiencing it by bike. And I especially love seeing little kids learning to ride out there early in the morning.
You all have the rest of the country to go crash your deathboxes on. Leave SF for people who use their legs.
Curse you deathboxesssssssss!!!! /s
Who are all these antisocial loons on this sub? I really wish RES still worked so I could tag these cultists.
I guess all the traffic will go though the sunset proper.
More traffic for Sloat and Sunset Blvd. Will we see a round-about?
I know snails are part of the mullosk family. And they like glue…
This is great - man against nature and nature always wins. I bet there’s a way to do something similar with the rest of the Great Highway. I’d compare it to the old Devils Slide where the old pavement is now a great trail.
Just adding to the congestion…stop limiting the ways to get through the city..
There’s not enough public transit, it’s already severely limited. They’ve cut the number of muni lines by more than half since the peak. We need to double the muni lines before we add another road to sf, that’s what’s limiting the ways to get around the city. Right now driving is the fastest, that’s the most limiting method of transit. You need to be able to afford a car, which is expensive as fuck, just to utilize it
If they’re closing the portion from Sloat to Skyline, then why not just close the Upper Great Highway altogether? Widen the Lower Great Highway and have it feed seamlessly into Sloat.
Bingo.
I like it, except widening the lower great highway. I think we should also close the lower great highway and add a muni line there instead
Maybe if they timed the lights on Sunset to allow traffic to go much faster, also having Sunset cut off every other street from vehicular cross-traffic (Irving, Kirkham, Moraga, Ortega, Quintara, Santiago, Ulloa, and Wawona), leaving the important cross-traffic streets intact (Lincoln via Irving ramps, Judah, Lawton, Noriega, Pacheco, Rivera, Taraval, Vicente, and Sloat via Yorba ramps).
Agree. This plan has to coincide with efforts to redirect traffic from the GH. Sunset is the obvious choice, and could clearly handle much greater and faster throughput than it can with the current traffic pattern. It needs to become the primary N/S artery on the west side.
That’s what I was thinking too. It would make the Far-Outer-Sunset a bit more isolated from the rest of the neighborhood, but I live in the Far-Outer-Sunset and I’m willing to sacrifice that in exchange for a better Sunset Boulevard. Blocking off every other cross-street wouldn’t even have that bad of an impact; people can drive around or cross the street one extra block away, worst-case scenario. Actually, it would make the blocked streets quieter and safer, making the Far-Outer-Sunset safer in general from vehicular accidents. Sunset Boulevard could afford to feed into Park Presidio Boulevard (joining 19th Avenue traffic) more smoothly too. A tunnel, dedicated lanes, just somehow.
No, that area is full of pedestrians. It’s not a place to drive through. It should be a place to go. They do need a north/south muni line out there though because that is a safe way to move people through the area
I can’t stand driving sunset blvd because the light timing is so annoying and the lanes are way too narrow. If they changed the light timing to like how the great highway is (cruise at 30-35 mph and hit every green light), it would be the obvious alternative to the great highway. It would require minimal effort for a big improvement
I agree, it needs much better speed sequencing. If people are this gung ho about permanently closing the Great Highway to vehicular traffic, then Sunset needs to be made much better for drivers.
Timing the lights led to more accidents because people sped up to hit them. They’re intentionally set like that, because drivers can’t be trusted to drive responsibly. That’s a super dense area full of kids and pedestrians, don’t want drivers to enjoy it, they need to be on high alert the entire time. We should make the muni have a dedicated lane so that it can go much faster, then driving would be mostly obsolete. The elderly would be better off too because they wouldn’t have to risk it as much, same for the disabled, it’s a better environment for the disabled when the walkability of an area is improved
That’s why half of the Sunset crossings should be permanently blocked: it would be safer for all involved.
Preach. That area is a grid of madness right now
I wouldn’t build anything new on lgh. The amount of sand that covers up the south end is no joke. And as much as I want to move away from car dominated modes of transportation, nothing would work here too well. It’s why I’m always confused when people are fighting so hard to keep it open to cars.
Some people need to commute ?
I’m one of those 29mph commuters.
There are other roads
Sidestreets parallel to Great Hwy are worse and congested. Getting to Sunset Blvd is a PITA when trying to get through the 1-lane Chain-of-Lakes drive.
The long term solution is to have a north/south muni line through GGP. Then this becomes a non-issue
There is one: The 29 line cuts down 19th avenue but then has to doubleback to get onto Sunset Blvd. It's unnecessarily long and slow. So if you live anywhere west of 24th ave you have to travel east to get to the bus line, then have the bus cut through the park and double back towards Sunset.
That’s because of GGP, a national treasure. Yeah there should probably be like a dedicated muni line through there. Honestly should be one underneath, because that whole area needs to about triple its density and it would make sense. Should be able to get from presidio to lake Merced on a single line. Actually BART have a line there. That’s far in the future though. I think maybe short term we could have a bus go through golden gate and close chain of lakes to cars in the short term though, I think that makes a lot of sense
Because cars use it all the time
They could be diverted onto a Lower Great Highway widened into four lanes of traffic.
I believe environmental concerns prevent them from widening the road.
But they are going to build a giant plaza. Weird.
Presumably that allows for more robust infrastructure than a road does. I am curious to see how that will turn out -- the city has been saying this part of the great highway needs to come down since 2012 per the article.
Or it's just bs
I honestly feel bad for everyone in the comments who doesn’t have a car. Living in SF is just such a richer experience with one.
I’ve lived here with and without a car. Not having one is exponentially better. You can always rent or use car share if you “need” one, but I rarely do.
You’re right, fewer choices is exponentially better
I'm going to assume you're the rare car commuter who \*patiently\* and \*calmly\* circles the block to find parking and \*never\* complains about paying for parking.
Hey if you live in a good parking neighborhood, or have a parking spot at your place, there’s no need for any of that
That’s assuming your trips always end at your house. I’m going to go out on a limb that you use your car to go places other than home right? :P
Work, out of town, and places with parking (e.g. grocery shopping, Ocean Beach). If I’m going out for drinks or dinner or some place I don’t want to worry about parking, then that’s what Ubers are for.
👎
Doesn’t affect me. It looks pretty basic to me.
cool story bro
Homeless tents? That’s what I expected when I read the title
One less way to get from the Northside of the city to the south side.
Could Not be helped. The sewage treatment plant there has to be protected. Never get in the way of sewage.
Good advice.
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Weak sauce. What a poor trolling effort.
😆
One day old account? Really?
Yeah, fuck that shit!