A couple in matching Rollerblades canoodled in a hammock at the western edge of San Francisco. The sun was warm. The vibe was cool. The office most certainly did not beckon, though it was 3:15 p.m. on a Monday.

“You can say this is my lunch break,” said Ryan LaBerge, 52, who works in sales when he isn’t canoodling.

This is Sunset Dunes, San Francisco’s newest park, where people lounge, ride their bikes or scurry in their wet suits to surf in the Pacific.

But there is trouble in this paradise.

The park sits on a road.

In California, people really love their parks. They also really love their cars. Here, these devotions have collided, setting off a heated clash over what some people call San Francisco’s “war on cars” that has prompted a recall campaign, a lawsuit and threats of an effort to undo the new park entirely.

The transformation of part of a road into the largest pedestrian project of its kind in California history is the latest move by the city to dismantle highways in favor of parks and plazas.

There was the tear-down of the Embarcadero Freeway after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake damaged it. There was the removal of a damaged freeway off-ramp that became Patricia’s Green, a popular art-dotted park in Hayes Valley. There was the banning of cars from John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park during the pandemic, opening it up to roller skaters, joggers and toddlers learning to ride bikes.