Great Highway closed for road work

Southbound traffic on Great Highway will be detoured on weekdays through mid-March while work crews shift excess sand from the northern end of Ocean Beach to the southern end in an effort to combat erosion.

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and the National Park Service began working on Tuesday to shift around 25,000 cubic yards of sand from in front of the seawall north of Golden Gate Park to the eroding area south of Sloat Boulevard.

The beach has been widening and accumulating sand at its northern end for some time now, blocking stairwells and the walkway, while losing sand south of Sloat, leaving a critical wastewater tunnel that flows to the Oceanside Wastewater Treatment Plant unprotected.

In addition to moving some of the sand, the city plans to add natural brush fencing and other measures to reduce the amount of sand that gets blown into parking lots and the Great Highway south of Sloat, and will store sandbags at the San Francisco Zoo to protect wastewater infrastructure if an erosion “hot spot” develops.

Southbound traffic on Great Highway between Lincoln Way and Sloat Boulevard will be detoured to Sunset Boulevard between 6 a.m. and 5 p.m. on weekdays while work continues, but northbound traffic will be unaffected.

Beach access will be limited to designated stairwells and parking areas at the south end of the O’Shaughnessy Seawall and the overlook parking areas south of Sloat will be closed, but the parking lot at Sloat will remain open.