SAN FRANCISCO – One week since San Francisco’s Great Highway was closed to make way for a park, the closure remains controversial.

Now, both sides of the issue are looking to see how traffic patterns have changed since the closure. 

The signs are clear that the southern portion of The Great Highway running along San Francisco’s west side is now closed. 

While the closure was controversial, now supporters and opponents of plans to transform the four-lane highway into a park are now debating how it will impact traffic.

On the Nextdoor app, some neighbors are complaining, saying traffic that should be on The Great Highway is instead speeding down residential streets. 

“I’ve lived on La Playa since February of 1992,” said Joe Baker, who lives just off the Great Highway and says the impact of the road’s closure has been clear.

“That traffic now being diverted down La Playa Street and down lower Great Highway, those cars are running right through those stop signs,” Baker said. “Those cars are not slowing down for speed bumps.”

Supporters of The Great Highway say they have data backing up their position that traffic has settled into a similar flow seen before the pandemic,  highlighting posts they gathered that say the traffic nightmare that some had predicted never materialized. 

Catherine Unertl lives on 45th Avenue, just a few blocks from the Great Highway and said she’s seen a modest increase in traffic. 

“I think during rush hour, there’s a little bit more traffic than would ordinarily be on the highway,” said Unertl. “But, most of the day, it feels just like it did a week ago.”

Commuters are learning to navigate the closure of The Great Highway. 

KTVU watched as vehicles traveling northbound on The Great Highway turned onto Sloat Boulevard, and then made a U-turn to head north on The Lower Great Highway and 48th Avenue, which run parallel to The Great Highway. 

Refugio Haro said before it closed, the Great Highway was his preferred route to get to work. 

“With the Great Highway you used to go 35 miles per hour to get to one end to the other,” said Haro. “It was a beautiful drive.”

He takes the detour up 48th Avenue and says it has added a few minutes to his drive, but says overall it hasn’t made a major impact on his morning commute. 

“It’s a little slower because of all the cars trying to figure out which way to go,” said Haro.  

People are still learning how to navigate around this closure, and traffic patterns are still developing.

SAN FRANCISCO – Destination Bakery in the Glen Park neighborhood has been shut down by the San Francisco Department of Public Health after inspectors discovered severe violations at the establishment.

An SFDPH official first inspected the bakery – located at 598 Chenery St. – on March 10, where they found “one live rodent in [the] kitchen area” and another fossilized rodent dead in a trap, according to a report.

The health department report also revealed that the inspector found rodent droppings on the floor throughout the bakery, as well as on pie tins, cake boxes, in the railing of a door to a refrigerated display case and in the dry storage area located in the bakery’s garage.

The inspector also found two bags of flour with gnaw marks, causing some of the flour to spill out into a container that was also contaminated with rodent droppings.

The SFDPH report indicated that the owner of the establishment had taken measures in an effort to alleviate the infestation, such as by repairing the bakery’s garage door. However, the report also found that there were still several points of entry for vermin to utilize, and the department ordered the bakery to close until it could remove all rodent droppings, clean and sanitize all surfaces where the droppings were located, get professionally licensed pest control services to treat the bakery for rodents, seal all holes and gaps, discard all bags of produce that were found to be contaminated and rodent-proof the entire bakery.

Upon a reinspection of Destination Bakery that was carried out Tuesday, the same inspector found another live rodent in the kitchen, as well as rodent droppings throughout the building.

Destination Bakery – which opened in 2000 – will have to remain closed until all of the documented violations have been rectified and the bakery’s permit has been reinstated.

KTVU attempted to reach out to Destination Bakery for comment on the closure. However, the phone number listed on the bakery’s website was disconnected.

Local perspective:

Destination Bakery caused concern among patrons and locals in 2023 when the establishment abruptly became a Mexican restaurant named Mamacita’s Café de Amor. The bakery’s owner and workers, along with members of the Glen Park Association and the Glen Park Merchants Association, were assailed with messages from the community lamenting what appeared to be the loss of a neighborhood staple.

However, it was later revealed that the bakery was the site of a film shoot by a crew of seven City College of San Francisco film students, who temporarily transformed Destination Bakery into Mamacita’s for a 17-minute short film.