It’s Not Just the Great Highway. Some Chinese American Voters Have Felt Unheard for Decades 

On a sunny Saturday afternoon in November, a vibrant crowd gathered on the sand-covered median of the Great Highway. Young families, cyclists and seniors formed a sprawling half-circle along the coastal roadway near Ocean Beach. Some were on their feet, others perched on bikes, while a few sat casually, holding children. They were there cheering the passage of San Francisco’s Proposition K, a ballot measure that would soon make the roadway car-free seven days a week. 

“We’re gonna implement the best damn oceanfront park that this world has seen,” said Lucas Lux, who led the “Yes on K” campaign.  

Speaking to about 80 supporters, State Sen. Scott Wiener, dressed casually in a light grey hoodie and tan pants, acknowledged that many neighbors still opposed the measure. And there they were: Some two dozen detractors, mostly Asian Americans who spoke little English, stood behind him on the far edge of the roadway, holding protest signs. 

“I think we need to acknowledge that we are all San Franciscans, and we need to find a way forward and work together,” Wiener said. He spoke to the cheering crowd, with his back to the protesters, who chanted, “Share the road!” Their signs were now largely obscured by celebrants, who had moved to stand behind Wiener as he spoke, creating a backdrop of “Yes on K” signs. 

Wiener compared the political feud over the Great Highway — which could close to cars permanently starting as early as this spring — to those that surrounded the removal of San Francisco’s Embarcadero and Central freeways in the 1990s, and which seemed to die down after their demolitions. 

“This has been a contentious issue, but I am confident that years from now, we are all gonna all look back and say, ‘Why was this even controversial?’” he said, to applause and cheers. 

His comments echoed a narrative advanced by many advocates for Proposition K: that the old freeway controversies were distant and long forgotten. 

“Who said we’ve forgotten that?” Winnie Fung, a longtime Sunset resident, said in Cantonese after this reporter translated Wiener’s comments about the old thoroughfares. 

“It’s more true to say that he wishes we had forgotten,” she added. 

Many local officials and media outlets have portrayed Proposition K’s opponents as anti-park and pro-freeway without explaining why or acknowledging the pain that informed some of their positions. Through extensive interviews, the San Francisco Public Press found that many, especially older Chinese American residents, have felt dismissed and sidelined in discussions about transportation and land-use policy for decades, and resented the city’s past decisions to remove arteries that Chinese communities saw as critical for business and family needs. 

Now, with the impending permanent closure of the Great Highway — which has been closed to cars on weekends for two years— these sentiments have only deepened. The measure’s proponents say they hope to foster dialogue to address community concerns, while many opponents say they are fed up with being talked over. They are channeling their frustration into efforts to recall a key supervisor who backed the freeway conversion. 

Ed Ho, a longtime Sunset resident, described Proposition K’s passage as the latest in a string of defeats for the Chinese community.

“For 30 years, actually almost 40, we’ve been losing, losing, losing, losing, and that’s why this is just the last straw,” Ho said. “We were betrayed.”

Freeway closures left community feeling marginalized

Today, some in the Chinese American community still bear scars from battles to protect major highways that once powered local commerce and connected cultural hubs throughout the city and Bay Area. For families with roots in Chinatown but homes in other parts of the region, freeway access is about keeping touch across generations and geography, not just convenience.

In the 1960s and 70s, freeways were a hot-button issue in San Francisco as environmentalists, urban planners and business groups debated land use policy. Activists who sought to preserve green spaces and residential areas had successfully resisted new freeway construction and aimed to pare back existing highways. They proposed a plan to demolish the newly constructed Embarcadero Freeway, which connected the Bay Bridge to Chinatown and North Beach. 

Chinatown community organizer and political powerbroker Rose Pak led a counter-movement, fearing devastating effects for Chinatown if the off-ramp were removed. The freeway connected the neighborhood to other hubs of Chinese residents, like the Excelsior, the Sunset and parts of Oakland. Pak and her allies succeeded in 1986, when San Francisco voters rejected the plan to demolish the Embarcadero Freeway. 

It was a short-lived victory. The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake brought down the Embarcadero Freeway, as well as a small portion of the Central Freeway that connected U.S. Highway 101 to central San Francisco. The Chinese community pushed to repair them, unsuccessfully. 

Six months after the earthquake, a Board of Supervisors hearing on the future of the Embarcadero freeway drew hundreds of Chinatown merchants, who closed their stores to attend. They called the Embarcadero Freeway the “lifeline” of their businesses, which had already seen 20% to 30% drops in sales after the earthquake, according to news coverage at the time. 

Politicians and environmental groups, opposing investments in car infrastructure, argued the damaged freeway should be torn down. Newspaper editorials and waterfront developers agreed, saying it obstructed the views of the city’s waterfront and was too costly to repair. After a 4-hour hearing, the board voted to demolish the Embarcadero freeway. 

Through the early 1990s, the city also demolished several miles of the damaged Central Freeway and closed sections deemed structurally unsound.

In 1997, Chinese American groups on the west side put forward a ballot initiative to retrofit the stretch of the Central Freeway north of Market Street, calling it a “vital link” connecting their predominantly Chinese neighborhoods to downtown. Community historian David Lei said organizers went as far as launching a Cantonese radio station to mobilize residents in the fight to retrofit and preserve the freeway. The proposition passed.

This, too, was a short-lived victory, as the next year, voters passed another proposition, initiated by freeway opponents and residents living in its shadow, to reverse the decision. 

Voters were queried about the freeways yet again in 1999, with two conflicting ballot measures. Chinese American activists from the west side pushed a measure to rebuild an elevated section of the Central Freeway that had once stretched from South Van Ness Avenue to Oak and Fell streets. But four supervisors voted to place a second measure on the ballot on the last possible day to demolish more of the freeway and replace the already damaged elevated freeway on Octavia Street with a surface-level boulevard. The sponsors argued that the boulevard would be cheaper and faster to build, and safer in an earthquake. The surface street measure won.

Mary Jung, a political leader in the Chinese American community, said the supervisors did not communicate with the groups pushing to retrofit the freeway before submitting their measure. Jung said she saw the same thing happen in 2024 with the proposition to close the Great Highway, which five supervisors voted to put on the ballot at the last moment.

“I don’t know if it’s ignorance or a lack of caring,” Jung said. 

Legacy of freeway removal is still visible today

Both the Embarcadero and Central elevated freeways, which allowed drivers to travel unencumbered by stop signs or intersections, were eventually replaced with surface boulevards. The Central Subway, built as compensation for Chinatown’s lost freeway, was not completed until 40 years later. While the new line has helped ease local merchants’ sense of isolation, ridership picked up slower than expected. Today, many still blame the loss of freeway access for the decline of community-rooted businesses in Chinatown. 

“Business in Chinatown dropped greatly because of the loss of that road,” said westside resident Winnie Fung. “At the very least, they lost me as a customer, going there to buy groceries.” 

Supervisor Joel Engardio, who represents the Sunset District and supported Proposition K in the November 2024 election, said in a written statement that he was aware of the history of Chinese American mobilization against freeway demolition. He did not directly address a question about how, to his understanding, that history might contribute to his constituents’ sentiments regarding the Great Highway. Instead, he commented on climate change.

“As a society, we are much more aware and accepting of climate change and environmental threats than we were in 1989,” he wrote. Three generations have been born since the freeway removals, he added, and many San Franciscans “have no memory of the Embarcadero Freeway.” 

Jonathan Sit, a 33-year-old community leader who co-founded the Chinatown Volunteer Coalition, expressed surprise about the widespread narrative that locals had long since gotten over their opposition to the freeway removals.

“I feel that people are living in their bubbles,” he said.

Yet Sit acknowledged the generational gap in sentiments about freeways.  

“I’m probably the last generation that remembers the freeway,” Sit said.

Brian Quan echoed those observations. Quan has held positions in two local groups with completely opposite positions on Proposition K: the Sierra Club’s San Francisco Bay Chapter, which supported it, and the Chinese American Democratic Club, which vehemently opposed it. Quan advocated for Proposition K, but said he understood how past experiences drove older residents’ opposition to the Great Highway’s closure. 

“They feel like they are being taken out of the conversation,” he said. 

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Backlash over citywide benefit at one neighborhood’s expense

According to San Francisco State University politics professor Jason McDaniel, Proposition K asked voters to pick between “two competing public goods.”: Do you want a park or a highway? While creating a new park was popular citywide, voters who often drove on the road tended to favor the open highway option, he said. For many in the latter group, having residents of other neighborhoods vote to take away their preferred public good felt like a rebuke. 

For most westside residents, the Great Highway is the quickest route to destinations like the South Bay, where major employers are located, and the Richmond District, home to the San Francisco VA Medical Center, said David Lee, director of the Chinese American Voters Education Committee. He said that many in the city’s Chinese American community use it, and claimed turnout among Chinese voters was very high on Proposition K.

The strongest support for the measure came from neighborhoods far removed from the Great Highway. According to maps produced by citizen analyst Chris Arvin, in nearby neighborhoods, 63% of voters opposed Proposition K. Arvin’s analysis also shows a moderately strong correlation between higher proportions of Asian voters in a precinct and the likelihood that precinct voted against the measure. 

Sunset community leader Selena Chu said seeing widespread opposition to Proposition K on the west side reassured her that she wasn’t alone. The opposite was true for Sunset resident and business owner Britt-Marie Alm, who said her circle includes people of different ages and ethnicities, and all of them voted for Proposition K. 

“The Sunset I live in really, really wanted this,” Alm said. 

Victors seek harmony, while detractors organize recall campaign 

Back at the November victory rally, with the roadway literally dividing the crowd celebrating the measure from those protesting against it, residents shared mixed feelings.

“It’s wonderful to see it passed and sad to see people feel so strongly against it,” said Heidi Moseson, a Sunset resident and volunteer for the Yes on K campaign.

Opponents had argued that closing the Great Highway could increase traffic congestion and risk of collisions in the Sunset District. Moseson and others said good traffic mitigation and safety measures could ease friction between residents.

Brian Reyes, also a park supporter, said that he saw people coming to the Great Highway on a car-free day to vent their frustration about the presidential election by crying or shouting. 

He suggested the car-free road could serve the same purpose for his neighbors who opposed Proposition K.

“They’ve got to process their emotions too, right here,” Reyes said. He said that’s what he would have done if Proposition K had been defeated. 

Some neighbors said they are processing their emotions by launching a recall of Supervisor Joel Engardio. 

Among the first to sign the recall petition was Julia Quon. She explained that for multigenerational households in the Sunset, the Great Highway has been the fastest and easiest route to take kids to school and elderly relatives for medical appointments. Rerouting means making the same trips over longer distances or at slower speeds through residential neighborhoods.

“It’s time for us in the Sunset to stand up for ourselves,” Quon said.  

That may be difficult to do without the support of big political donors. Political strategist David Ho previously noted that local billionaires would likely oppose the recall and back Engardio. 

Lee, of the Chinese American voter education group, said it was unclear how a recall would resolve frustrations about the Great Highway’s closure. Still, he emphasized the need for grassroots organizing and better communication with officials. 

“We can direct that anger to action,” Lee said, “so that people get informed, have information, and have access to the decision makers.”

Editor’s note 2/13/25: This story has been updated with the correct spelling of Julia Quon’s name.