Joanie Landon is 85. For years she drove eight minutes from her home to a thermal pool at the other end of San Francisco's Upper Great Highway, for her arthritis. Then the highway became a park. The same trip now takes at least 25 minutes, she says, so she cut her therapy from five days a week to three. “It's very stressful when you get to this age,” the retired daycare provider told the Journal's Jim Carlton.
The park is Sunset Dunes, 2 miles of old coastal highway with the cars taken off it. Cyclists get one side and walkers the other, with the surf right there. A pandemic pilot closed it on weekends, crowds came, and in November 2024 voters made it permanent with 55% support. The park opened in April 2025. The city billed it as the biggest project of its kind in California's history. It also pushed as many as 20,000 vehicles a day onto other streets. Judi Gorski, 75, lives above the park and won't set foot on it. Her street, she says, became a major artery.
Now Proposition G is on the Nov. 3 ballot. It would restore cars on weekdays. The fight is loud and well funded. Yelp (YELP) CEO Jeremy Stoppelman has paid about half of the $800,000 raised by the No side. The Yes side has raised about $130,000. Lucas Lux, 40, who leads the Friends of Sunset Dunes, calls it a rare place in the city where kids are safe enough to learn independence. Stoppelman says he takes his own children there. The city's own traffic numbers show driving times barely moved. Plenty of residents say otherwise.
Both sides have a point
Jennifer Dougherty, 55, a pet sitter who lives a block away, says trips to her mother's house take 15 to 20 minutes longer, with speed bumps and stop signs everywhere. Richard Corriea, a retired police commander and Landon's neighbor, helped lead the effort to reopen the road. The same group recalled a district supervisor in 2025 and collected nearly 16,000 signatures for Prop. G. On the promenade, the mood ran the other way. Skateboarder Kyle Martin, 37, called it “like a dream come true.” Both things are true at once. A park got better for thousands, and a drive got worse for an 85-year-old.
Our read
This is Housing (M6), and we'll stay out of the vote. The planning fact is that a home's value in retirement isn't only its price. It's the minutes between the front door and the things that keep you well. Landon didn't move. Her pool didn't move. A ballot measure moved the distance, and she lost two therapy days a week to it. City data can call that negligible and still be wrong for one person's week.
The item in your plan this story touches is the address line. This week, time the drive from your home to the one place you go most for your health, the clinic, the pool or the pharmacy. Then ask what the week looks like if that trip doubles. If the answer is fewer visits, that's a housing risk, and it belongs in the plan next to the roof and the mortgage. Look at your own Nov. 3 ballot while you're at it, because the measure that changes your street rarely says so in the title. Nobody buys the umbrella in the rain. If the drive already feels long, say so when we talk, and we'll plan for the day you can't make it.