But as a driver and pedestrian, I like that the new lights slow cyclists down, too. That east-west path is no longer pleasant to walk. This is a path through a park, not the Tour de France route. Cyclists have turned GG Park into a senior citizen’s nightmare.

Let’s see the city take out the parking on one side of Fell from Hayes Valley altogether, replace it with a bike lane and return the Panhandle to the pedestrians. There’s no inherent right to use the public street for auto storage, which, except for a few moments of street cleaning each week, occupies 50% of our roads.

I keep reading comments here about enforcement. How about a few tickets for cyclists who fail to stop for red lights or stop signs? Or who decide to use the sidewalk instead of the street? It seems a bit cynical to tout this as a walkable city when it’s actually fairly dangerous for pedestrians.

PS: Yes, I’ve been hit twice by bikes in the past ten years, both times on sidewalks.

Curious if this was prompted by the accident named above or overall increase in violations since the new lights, and/or if it’s resulted in more citations/enforcement. (Haven’t seen any action, but I’m usually just running by.)

While two-waying Oak and Fell would be one way to make the situation safer, keep in mind that Masonic is two-way, and the person who hit Cindy was on Masonic. Josh’s suggestion has the best hope of changing the situation, coupled with street design that visually and physically encourages appropriate driving (rely on signage is a bankrupt idea: it just doesn’t work, and neither does enforcement). Traffic funnels like Oak and Fell deliver drivers used to and expecting to drive in near-freeway-like conditions to pinch points like Masonic, and they act and react in car-only freewaylike frenzies. They expect to be traveling quickly, they are in channelized environments where they are not needing to be particularly observant as they drive (the worst effect of channelizing autos), and they are impatient and easy to anger when their progress is slowed. They tend to be extremely unobservant and oblivious.

There should be few if any streets in a dense city like San Francisco where drivers can expect to travel long distances without needing to stop, and where they can reach high speeds. While the 50′s traffic engineers at MTA will tell you that Oak and Fell are signalized to “only” 30 or 35 mph, drivers can and do go much faster, especially when they are hoping to make the next few lights before they go red so they don’t have to stop. And the countdown ped signals only help. At speeds of 15 mph or less, car/ped or car/bike accidents rarely result in injuries. And, contrary to logic, streets that operate at these slow speeds actually can handle more traffic than those that encourage faster speeds, and the drivers on them are more observant and less “in the zone”.

Street design is an art, not a rote application of standards by mechanistic thinkers.

This needs to be done not just at danger points like Octavia/Market and Fell/Masonic, but all over the city. Whether I’m walking, biking, or driving, I see drivers running reds and stop-signs everywhere. None of that will change until the city beefs up the fines, and the SFPD or DPT or whichever alphabet soup group gets its butt in gear and starts taking this seriously.

SF’s a great town. Nobody has the diversity of transportation methods we do, with the density we’ve got. But enforcement levels appropriate for 1990 do nobody any good.

That aside, adjusting the intersection so that only a single turning lane (in all directions) is physically *possible* would probably be helpful (it’s a scary intersection no matter what you take through it) – install curbs and lane dividers of some sort. Even simpler is the red light camera. People notice the flashes!

I wonder if a red light camera can be programmed to flash on yellow without taking a photo.

One thing that isn’t clear is whether the cyclist who was hurt was riding or walking.

You’re joking, right?

Masonic is the major north/south route to and from the Haight, for one thing.

If you cut that off, not are you going to have to reroute some of the city’s major bus lines as well as traffic wanting to get through the park, but getting police, fire and ambulance to and from Haight just got a LOT harder and will also, therefor, take a LOT longer to reach its intended destination.

Divisidero is already beyond capacity, and Stanyan is way too narrow to run not only the additional traffic, but also buses AND police, fire & ambulances.

Also, both of these streets are more than a quarter of a mile to either side of Masonic, meaning to get from the corner of Masonic and Fell to the corner of Masonic and Oak would add half a mile to any given trip.

Not to mention that any traffic shunted to Stanyan would have to deal with an already complex intersection and set of traffic lights. If traveling southbound on Masonic, you would be forced right onto Fell. Then you’d have to stay right for that short intersection/light at Fell & Stanyan to make a left onto Stanyan (currently only two or three cars can make it through at the moment do to the small physical space at that intersection, imagine if the traffic volume was increased by all the traffic from Masonic). Then wait for another light so you can turn left again onto Oak, currently getting 3 – 5 cars through at best. Then travel another quarter mile to get to within 100 yards of where you started.

You might as well ask to close off Masonic at Geary.

There are already lights at Schrader, Cole, Clayton and Ashbury to the West of Masonic, and lights at Central, Lyon, Baker and Broderick to the East.

Rather than re-route a huge chunk of car traffic, along with major bus lines as well as police, fire and ambulance service to one of two bad options (Stanyan or Divisidero), why not re-route BIKE traffic to any one of EIGHT, traffic-light controlled, and much lighter traveled streets?

As a bonus, when traffic is slower the capacity of the road increases with absolutely no widening needed.

But we need to look beyond this one intersection and look at Fell/Oak as a whole. These speedways were designed in a previous era and are the wannabe Panhandle Freeway. Both streets are overbuilt, too fast and completely inappropriate for a park setting.

Why does Fell have four lanes when three (likely two) clearly accommodate traffic east of Baker? Why is the speed limit 30 mph, especially considering the adjacent park and pedestrian traffic?

People will continue to drive recklessly at this intersection as long as these streets are designed like freeways.

The bad design was what we had before. When there was no turn arrow, it did encourage people to make left turns from both the left lane and the next one, which was dangerous. But now that there’s a big fat red left arrow, anyone who turns left from any lane is just an idiot; it’s not the fault of the intersection. If people are going to drive on autopilot based on the way the lights used to work, and ignore what’s in front of them, then they shouldn’t be driving in the city AT ALL – traffic signals get changed sometimes, that’s life. And if there are lots of terrible drivers breaking the law somewhere, like here, then it’s worth putting a cop or a camera around.

And of course traffic design has nothing to do with the jerk who ran straight ahead through a red and hit Cindy.

I have seen way way too many drivers on “autopilot” near-miss pedestrians, cyclists, or other cars. Blocking that section of Masonic entirely is not a viable option as you’d wreck a number of important MUNI lines. But maybe it’s time to just ban all turns on and off to start with, to avoid some of the problems.

That said, if people run reds, they need to be punished for breaking the law and endangering safety, period. People in SF are generally pretty unaware of anything outside their immediate haze, and don’t really pay attention much to others. That’s fine if you live in the country or something, but in a congested urban area, people need to follow common sense rules so everyone can be safe and free.

Paul’s idea is also good, but I’d flip it around. Instead of sending pedestrians underground, I’d have the cars pass down into an underpass, removing them from the street level. Someday, it would be nice if that whole artery was an underground tunnel … but one step at a time.

I think the bike stoplight has helped, but is obviously not preventing all accidents so something else has to be done. Why not close that block (Masonic, between Fell and Oak) off to cars and make it part of the Panhandle Park? I know it would increase traffic on Stanyan (and possibly Baker) but I think far too many motorists don’t understand how people and families use the park for *walking* and *riding,* not driving.

BTW, I drive a car as well as bike, but would never even consider running a red light through an intersection where people were crossing. I still have no idea what this woman was thinking….

Drivers are less likely to make that turn as the radius increases.

Dave’s idea about a median would calm the intersection as well.

But the lack of enforcement and consequences for dangerous conduct everywhere creates a climate of impunity which just encourages more dangerous conduct all over the city, including at these terror intersections.

-marc