Vol. I, No. 51 · San Francisco — Friday, October 16, 2026 · Price: weekdays pending a vote

BY MAXINE DOLAN, CITY DESK

On an average weekday, the two miles of old highway between Lincoln Way and Sloat Boulevard draw about 3,800 visits, by the Recreation and Park Department’s count. On November 3, San Francisco votes on whether cars get those weekdays back.

Since 2021 the road had closed to cars on weekends. On March 14, 2025, it closed on weekdays too. In the year and a half since, the Sunset has moved less than either side of the fight said it would. Its sales tax grew 2.5 percent, behind the typical San Francisco neighborhood’s 6.1 percent and close to the Outer Richmond’s 2.0. Its injury crashes held flat while the city’s rose 7.5 percent. In both files the Sunset is the city’s Sunset/Parkside district: the Outer Sunset and Parkside, without the Inner Sunset. Neither file can see a single block, so a boom or a slump on a few beach blocks could hide inside its totals.

Proposition G would reopen the road on weekdays and close it from 6 p.m. Friday to 4 a.m. Monday and on holidays. Its backers, who include District 4 Supervisor Alan Wong, say the full closure has increased traffic injuries in Sunset neighborhoods. The city controller puts the cost of reopening at $9.8 million up front, mostly for traffic signals at eight intersections. Upkeep would add $500,000 to $1.9 million a year. Voters made the road a full-time park in November 2024. District 4 voted 64 percent against that measure, then recalled its supervisor, Joel Engardio, who had led it. On the night of the recall, Engardio called the park “good for our local economy.”

The city’s sales tax file credits each quarter’s tax to the neighborhood where a business sits. It leaves out chains, whose tax cannot be tied to one store. Sunset businesses produced $3.52 million in sales tax from April 2025 through March 2026, against $3.43 million in the four quarters before. That 2.5 percent beat the Sunset’s own 1.1 percent the year before. The city, though, was rebounding. The typical neighborhood went from a 1.1 percent drop to a 6.1 percent gain, and 18 of the other 26 grew faster than the Sunset. The Outer Richmond, a similar run of avenues by the ocean, went from a 3.0 percent drop to a 2.0 percent gain.

The whole city’s take rose 8.4 percent, and downtown’s Financial District supplied nearly two-fifths of that gain. The Outer Richmond missed the rebound too. One year of numbers cannot say whether the closure held the Sunset back or the rebound mostly skipped the avenues by the ocean.

Injury crashes barely moved. The Sunset had 104 in the year through August 2024, 106 in the year the road closed and 100 since. Citywide, injury crashes rose 7.5 percent over the same two years. Taking the Great Highway’s own crashes out of the Sunset’s count changes little: two in the first year, one in the last. Chain of Lakes Drive, in Golden Gate Park, had three in each.

Sunset Boulevard is the exception. Since the full closure it has averaged 17.1 injury crashes a year, against 10.9 in the weekend-closure years and 12.7 when the highway was open all week. Most of the rise came on Saturdays and Sundays, when the old road had been closed to cars before. The weekday closure does not obviously explain that. At about 25 crashes, chance cannot be ruled out.

The traffic did move, and mostly north. SFMTA’s counts in May 2025, two months after the closure, found about 2,000 more cars a day on Chain of Lakes Drive, a road across the park’s west end, up 21 percent. The Lower Great Highway, the residential street beside the old road, gained about 700 cars a day. The 28 bus on 19th Avenue ran one to two minutes slower southbound at rush hour. Sunset Boulevard stayed at 90 percent of its pre-pandemic traffic.

Counting both of the park’s western crossings, SFMTA found about 3,200 fewer weekday car trips than before the closure: trips that moved to other streets or other modes, or were not made. “Residents spend more time getting to work,” Wong wrote in his ballot argument.

The park counted 1.7 million visits in its first year: about 7,200 on an average weekend day or holiday, and 3,800 on a weekday.

Confidence is high in these counts and that neither file moved much for the Sunset as a whole. It is low on why the Sunset missed the city’s sales rebound, and low for any single block or street, Sunset Boulevard included. Neither file measures what a commuter gave up in time.

Proposition G is a vote about the weekdays: the 3,800 visits the park draws on each, against a slower drive around it.

The typical roof permit now comes the next day. Signs and awnings, which every new storefront needs, wait longest: of 111 filed since June, 42 have been issued, none within the city’s two-day goal.

BY GWEN OKAFOR, HOUSING DESK

In 2025, San Francisco’s Department of Building Inspection issued 3,923 over-the-counter permits to reroof a building. Of those, 92 percent were issued the same day they were filed.

On June 29 the city moved that work to PermitSF, the online portal Mayor Daniel Lurie opened in February to speed up permits. Of the 1,348 roof permits the portal has issued, 42 percent came the same day, and the typical wait is one day. The long waits are elsewhere, for storefront signs and fire alarms. More permit types move onto the portal each season, so its first eight months show what a homeowner or a shopkeeper can now expect.

Part of the drop is the clock. The old one started when the department logged a filing, and for a counter permit that could follow a wait in line. The portal’s starts when an applicant presses submit, at any hour. In its first two months, the city says, 15 percent of filings arrived outside business hours. The rest is the counter. A roof job that needs no plans can no longer be filed at the Permit Center. Instant approval now goes only to applicants the city has cleared for express permits, and only on homes that are not historic. Every other roof job waits for a reviewer.

For commercial roofs and for signs, the city’s goal is to approve a majority within two business days. The file cannot check the roof goal, since it marks neither commercial jobs nor the instant lane. Of all roof applications filed through October 11, 65 percent were issued within two business days. Set aside the 369 issued within 15 minutes of filing, most likely the instant lane, and 52 percent of the rest made it, right at the line.

Signs miss their goal entirely. None of 103 sign and awning applications made it. Of 111 filed since June 24, 42 have been issued, after a median of four weeks, and 62 are still waiting.

For windows, doors, siding and fire systems, the city aims to approve complete applications within two business days. Windows, doors and siding came in at 37 percent, fire alarms at 12 and fire sprinklers at 8. These figures count every filing, so an applicant slow to send a missing document pulls the share down. The portal began taking electrical and plumbing permits in mid-July and kitchen and bath remodels on September 14. The city states no target for them. They ran 65, 63 and 53 percent.

Windows lost their same-day lane and kept their slow tail. Under the old system, 61 percent of window and siding permits came the same day, and one in nine took more than a month. On the portal, 7 percent come the same day. Of window applications filed more than a month ago, about one in nine either took longer than a month or are still waiting. Electrical permits lost the same-day lane too: 97 percent came the same day in 2025, against 55 percent on the portal. The old file’s electrical filings fell from 1,402 in August to 548 in September as the work moved over.

Confidence is high on the portal’s timestamps, moderate on the before-and-after, and low on the instant lane, which the file does not mark. In 2025, nine in ten roof permits came the day they were filed. Now fewer than half do.

ON THE CALENDAR

MRC Run w Summer Spritz + DJ on the Green. A group run from the Marina, then a nonalcoholic spritz hour with a DJ. 130 people had registered as of early Thursday, up from 3 when the desk first saw the page on September 26. It is a one-off on the Marina Run Club’s calendar, not part of a series, with one host listed.

Saturday, October 17, 8:00 AM · Marina District, 500 Marina Blvd · free · lu.ma/xdcdpggp

From the desk’s calendar: public Luma pages, counts as of October 15, 1:59 AM. Tell the desk about the gathering it missed.

SOURCES & RECEIPTS

1. Recreation and Park Department figures, via Bay City News, April 13, 2026: 1.7 million visits from April 12, 2025, to April 12, 2026; averages of 3,800 visits a weekday and 7,200 a weekend day or holiday. Length of the closed stretch: NBC Bay Area, on Proposition G (“2-mile stretch”). 2. SF Public Press, “Proposition G Reopens the Great Highway Debate,” September 27, 2026: weekend closures from 2021, the measure’s terms, its backers’ injury claim, Wong’s ballot argument, and District 4’s 64 percent against Proposition K. Controller’s estimate as reported by CBS News Bay Area, August 12, 2026. Full closure on March 14, 2025: NBC Bay Area. 3. DataSF, Sales Tax by Analysis Neighborhood (w6qv-daq5), queried October 16, 2026, latest quarter January–March 2026. The file excludes businesses with more than one location and does not say which share of the tax rate it counts. Sunset/Parkside $3,395,760 (April 2023–March 2024), $3,434,414 (April 2024–March 2025) and $3,518,644 (April 2025–March 2026). Outer Richmond $1,956,854, $1,897,902 and $1,936,384. All neighborhoods $141.5 million, $135.8 million and $147.2 million; Financial District/South Beach gained $4.45 million of the $11.38 million rise. Typical neighborhood: the median change among the 27 neighborhoods with more than $1 million a year and every quarter reported, −1.1 percent, then +6.1 percent. 4. DataSF, Traffic Crashes Resulting in Injury (ubvf-ztfx), queried October 16, 2026, crashes through August 31, 2026; Sunset/Parkside analysis neighborhood, September–August years; citywide 3,006 and 3,231. Street counts take crashes naming the street as the main or cross street: the Great Highway, upper or lower, inside Sunset/Parkside; Chain of Lakes Drive anywhere. Sunset Boulevard: 66 crashes January 1, 2015–March 15, 2020; 39 from August 16, 2021, to March 14, 2025 (11 on a Saturday or Sunday); 25 from March 15, 2025, to August 31, 2026 (12 on a Saturday or Sunday). The Frisc (March 11, 2026) found a similar drop for District 4: 106 injury crashes in 2024, 99 in 2025. 5. Bay City News via NBC Bay Area, September 17, 2025 (recall; Engardio’s statement). 6. SFMTA, “New Data on Great Highway Road Closure,” July 25, 2025 (counts from May 2025). Queries in receipts.json.

2. DataSF, PermitSF Permitting Data (tyz3-vt28), 9,481 applications February 10–October 15, 2026, queried October 16, 2026; portal start dates by type are the first filing of each. DBI Building Permits (i98e-djp9), 2025 filings: reroofing (description beginning “re-roof,” “reroof,” “re roof” or “roofing”; 3,923 issued) and window or siding replacement (2,701 issued). DBI Electrical Permits (ftty-kx6y), 2025 filings (16,636 issued) and 2026 monthly filings. “Same day” means issued on the calendar date filed. Business days are weekdays, holidays not removed; pending and stopped applications count as not issued. Instant lane estimated as roof permits issued within 15 minutes of filing (369 of 1,402); cutoffs from 5 to 60 minutes put the rest at 50 to 55 percent. Window tail: of 1,688 applications filed more than 30 days before October 15, 92 were issued after more than 30 days and 98 are still waiting. 8. sf.gov, “June 29, 2026 updates for PermitSF”; “SF permits moving online,” January 23, 2026; “What to expect for new online permits.” 9. Office of the Mayor, release of April 28, 2026. Queries in receipts.json.

The Frisconian · Published from forty-nine square miles surrounded by reality · thefrisconian.com · @deaconsanti