Many residents of the west side of San Francisco clearly still long for their Great Highway.

They miss driving the 2 miles alongside the coast like they did for decades, taking in the view of the sun setting over the Pacific and surfers riding its waves, until the road closed for good this year. Others miss the speed with which they could zip down the thoroughfare to avoid navigating city streets.

On Tuesday, voters still miffed over the closure did not get their Great Highway back, but they did win payback against the man they blame for turning it into a car-free park.

They ousted Supervisor Joel Engardio, who represents the nearby Sunset District, in the latest San Francisco recall election.

Engardio conceded the election in a phone interview about 90 minutes after the polls had closed.

“My time as a city supervisor will be shorter than expected,” he said. “But we can still celebrate. We’re on the right side of history.”

The Sunset District is a quiet neighborhood with low-slung, single-family homes bordered by Ocean Beach to the west and Golden Gate Park to the north. It is politically moderate — by San Francisco standards, anyway — and heavily Asian American.

In 2022, voters there elected Engardio to represent them at the Board of Supervisors, akin to a City Council, viewing him as a common-sense, nuts-and-bolts kind of politician who would advocate their everyday interests at City Hall.

But after a bitter feud over the fate of the coastal roadway, they came to believe that he had misled them and betrayed them by robbing them of their Great Highway.

The road rage stemmed from the city’s closure of the thoroughfare in spring 2020 to provide a space for people to exercise while remaining socially distanced during the coronavirus pandemic. In 2021, as people returned to work and school, the city kept the road car-free on weekends, but opened it to traffic on weekdays.

That arrangement was set to end this year, so Engardio backed a measure on the November 2024 ballot to permanently close the road to cars and convert it into a park. Supporters argued that the park would be better for the environment and that clearing sand from the roadway for cars was becoming increasingly expensive.

The city as a whole favored the change, ensuring its passage. In April, it officially became a new park — called Sunset Dunes — and it is dotted with benches, murals, exercise equipment, hammocks and a children’s play structure shaped like an octopus.

There are pianos there, too, and on a recent day, a man played Tony Bennett’s “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” as people strolled and roller skated past him. Wooden signs point people to nearby shops and cafes, many of which say business is up since the park opened.

To Engardio, creating this slice of paradise was “absolutely” worth losing his job.

“Sunset Dunes is a success,” he said. “Soon, people will wonder why it was ever a controversy. San Francisco will only realize its potential if we let ourselves do bold things. We cannot be the most progressive city that fears change.”

But residents in Engardio’s district never loved the idea of losing a thoroughfare for the sake of a park. Nearly two-thirds of the Sunset District voted against the measure and resented the fact that residents farther from the beach got a park at the expense of nearby residents’ convenience.

Some Sunset residents relied on the street to travel in and out of the city. Others felt that the Sunset District had to bear the brunt of added cars on their neighborhood streets. The data has been mixed on the traffic impacts, but advocates of the park say such frustrations were overblown.

Many Sunset District residents say that the park is not used much on the weekdays or during the area’s notoriously chilly, foggy spells. John Crabtree, a volunteer for the campaign to recall Engardio, said he drove the Great Highway one last time on its last day in operation and felt sad to be losing it.

“It was an iconically beautiful drive,” he said. “People had a relationship with it, and it meant something. People were connected to this piece of infrastructure because it was part of living out here. It was part of the Sunset.”

Even if Engardio’s political career is on ice, Sunset Dunes is very much alive. The recall did not have any impact on the park, though a lawsuit to revert it to the Great Highway is proceeding. Crabtree said that those who want the highway reopened have now sent a clear political message by ousting the supervisor.

Mayor Daniel Lurie and the San Francisco Democratic Party stayed neutral on the recall effort. Lurie will appoint the supervisor’s replacement.

In a statement Tuesday night, the mayor said Sunset residents had felt “their government is doing things to them, not with them, and that government is not working to make their lives better.”

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Heather Knight
c. 2025 The New York Times Company