SF Rec & Park is Lying About Pedestrians/Bicyclists on Great Highway
There are apparent integrity issues with Gavin Newsom-appointed Phil Ginsburg.
• • • • • • • • • • July 2025 • • • • • • • • • •
To promote the closure of the Upper Great Highway via Prop K last November, everyone in the Sunset knew that San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation Authority (SFMTA) and SF Recreation & Park materially inflated the count of pedestrians and bicyclists who utilized the highway on the weekends.
The obvious issues with the two departments’ counts were:
1. How did they avoid double-counting people who started a walk at Point A, went to Point B, and then returned to Point A?
2. How did they not count beachgoers who merely crossed the highway to get to the beach (and then counted them again when they came back from the beach)?
In the photo below, note how hundreds of people are on the sand, and only a sprinkling on the closed highway. Were the SFMTA and Rec & Park counting these beachgoers as highway users?
Photo from SF Gate April 24, 2025
For the past few months, I obtained videos of a quarter to half-mile stretch of the Upper Great Highway. I posted my videos on Twitter. I’ve now hyperlinked my Twitter videos to the recently obtained Rec & Park daily stats from June 13 through June 30, 2025..”
New York Times Heather Knight’s stats and imagined facts
On May 27, 2025, former SF Chronicle writer Heather Knight published a post-Prop-K article in the New York Times. Knight stated that measured by sensors and cellphone pings, pedestrian/bicyclist traffic averaged 7,800 per weekend day and 3,400 per weekday.
Knight’s attendance numbers seemed way too high. I issued a public records request to Rec & Park (#25-4377) for the cellphone pings they obtained. Ginsburg’s Rec & Park responded that Heather Knight “was inaccurate.” Ouch!
1. Really, do we believe Heather just made the cellphone ping collections up? Should the New York Times issue a retraction? Or is Rec and Park covering up their access to cellphone data?
2. Note how the Rec and Park also refers to “sensors” in the plural. That means a walker or biker might be counted more than four times in the same day by two or more sensors.
Enter anti-car Jeremy Stoppelman’s photo
Knight’s article sent Jeremy Stoppelman into euphoria. Stoppelman, a Yelp founder, is a primary donor to stop the recall of District 4 Joel Engardio. Jeremey reposted Knight’s New York Times article on Twitter with these anti-car comments:
Jeremy, could you please provide your statistics supporting the fact that “business is booming in the neighborhood.” Preferably sales tax data. Not an anecdotal coffee shop or bookstore’s opinion. What’s at stake is your reputation.
Stoppelman later posted this photo of a pedestrian-dense Upper Great Highway:
Stoppelman’s photo caught my attention because I had never seen the highway that crowded. In fact, every time there is an event at the highway, photographs are limited to a concentrated area.
And Jeremy, before you go there, I don’t wear spandex, and I’ll match my Strava non-electric bike commute miles to yours anytime.
Ginsburg’s Rec & Park refuses to answer my public records request, questioning whether he is double-counting
To learn how attendance data was collected by Rec & Park, managed by Newsom-appointed Phil Ginsburg, I issued a public records request (25-4030) asking for the following:
Ginsburg’s department refused to answer the question on double-counting:
Gotcha, Phil. I’m correct. You’re hiding that you’re intentionally cheating on the stats you produce.
Readers, da ya think these two surfers, counted in Rec & Park’s numbers, drove all the way to Ocean Beach merely to carry their surfboards on a walk? We will never know. Ginsburg’s Rec & Park is refusing to answer how they filter out these beachgoers from their numbers.
Rec & Park’s records response claims attendance is generally spread out throughout the day
To get a feel for pedestrian attendance on the highway accumulated by the Rec & Park, I issued a public records request. I obtained Rec and Park’s hourly distribution of pedestrian/bicyclist visits.
Even an amateur statistician (or city employee) can see that the Matterhorn spike at noon on Saturday visits seems odd. It indicates that either a staged event occurs every Saturday, or there was a one-time gigantic event that skewed the averages, or Rec & Park’s numbers are inaccurate.
The other conclusion that we can reach is that people generally visit the Upper Great Highway throughout the day. This is important because it means my videos are representative of average activity.
Knight and Stoppelman’s weekend numbers of 7,800 pedestrians/bicyclists on the Upper Great Highway equates to 557 people on the beach every hour between 6 am and 8 pm. Divide those 557 people into the 2-mile highway, and we should see a person every 19 feet—the equivalent of 5 baserunners between home plate and first base. For weekday attendance of 3,400, we should see a human every 43 feet.
Video evidence Ginsburg’s Rec & Park is intentionally fabricating their numbers
For the past few months, I obtained videos of a quarter to half-mile stretch of the Upper Great Highway. I posted my videos on Twitter. I’ve now hyperlinked my Twitter videos to the recently obtained Rec & Park daily stats from June 13 through June 30, 2025.
This is by no means scientific, but it doesn’t take a genius to look at a photograph of a high school football game at Kezar Stadium to know there aren’t 20,000 fans in attendance.
Friday June 13, 2025. Per Rec & Park, 3,121 pedestrians or 222 people per hour
Saturday June 14, 2025. Per Rec & Park, 5,949 pedestrians or 424 people per hour
Sunday June 15, 2025 . Per Rec & Park, 6,229 pedestrians or 444 people per hour
Monday June 16, 2025. Per Rec & Park, 3,529 pedestrians or 252 people per hour
Tuesday June 17, 2025. Per Rec & Park, 4,770 pedestrians or 340 people per hour
Wednesday June 18, 2025. Per Rec & Park, 4,159 pedestrians or 297 people per hour
Thursday June 19, 2025. Per Rec & Park, 3,800 pedestrians or 271 people per hour
Friday June 20, 2025 Per Rec & Park, 1,187 pedestrians or 84 people per hour
Saturday June 21, 2025 Per Rec & Park, 5,181 pedestrians or 370 people per hour
Sunday June 22, 2025 Per Rec & Park, 7,331 pedestrian or 523 people per hour
Monday June 23, 2025 Per Rec & Park, 2,460 pedestrians or 175 people per hour
Tuesday June 24, 2025 Per Rec & Park, 2,204 pedestrians or 157 people per hour
Wednesday June 25, 2025 Per Rec & Park, 2,481 pedestrians or 177 people per hour
Thursday June 26, 2025 Per Rec & Park, 3,424 pedestrians or 244 people per hour
Friday June 27, 2025. Per Rec & Park, 4,685 pedestrians or 334 people per hour
Saturday June 28, 2025. Per Rec & Park, 6,089 pedestrians or 434 people per hour
Sunday June 29, 2025 Per Rec & Park, 4,969 pedestrians or 354 people per hour.
Monday June 30, 2025. Per Rec & Park, 2,862 pedestrians or 204 people per hour.
Growing up in the Sunset
While Newsom-appointed Rec & Park General Manager Phil Ginsburg was growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Heather Knight was baking in the heat of Davis, and Jeremy Stoppelman was attending school inVirginia, many of us were dealing with the frigid summers in the Sunset. We all accepted that on the first day of summer vacation the fog rolled in, and we would rarely see the sun until the first day of school in September.
And then we experienced the beautiful fall heatwaves from the confinement of our classroom. That was life in the Sunset. A park on Great Highway? Who would be stupid enough to suggest that? BTW, Jeremy, I bike-commuted to high school, college, grad school, Candlestick Park, and my job with the city.
And now, the abundance crew strives to make automobiles extinct in San Francisco to feed their goal of singularly ending global warming while Manhattan-izing the Sunset and Miami Beach-ing the Lower Great Highway. This same go-wild group preached Modern Monetary Theory, implemented before and after Covid. How did that brilliant progressive experiment work out? A little bit of inflation? LOL
Factor in the economic costs of the anti-car abundance movement into the equation of closing thoroughfares. However, we can’t start discussing the tradeoffs of closing highways until (Newsom-appointed) Ginsberg’s obviously fraudulent stats are rectified and Stoppelman’s claim that business is booming remains unsubstantiated.
Lou Barberini is a CPA and has been writing articles for the Westside Observer since February 2016.
July 2025
