Streetsblog San Francisco

If this *doesn’t* happen to me crossing the street in San Francisco, I consider myself lucky. Drivers in this town consider pedestrians inconveniences at best, and the infrastructure does nothing to discourage them.

As bad as it seems, when you step back and compare to the rest of California and the U.S., San Francisco is actually relatively one of the most pedestrian-friendly cities, with some of the most aware and respectful drivers regarding pedestrian and bicycle right-of-way. Isn’t this one of the reasons why people move here? In most other places, you’re more likely to just not be seen and get hit, or get brushed by aggressively. Yes, we should keep striving for progress, but also sometimes remember to appreciate it.

Wai – he’s making a left off a one way onto a one way, which can be done on red as long as the crosswalk is clear. But the crosswalk isn’t clear.

Check out this video I shot just yesterday around 6pm at Main and Harrison streets … about 1 minute 08 seconds into it, the poor pedestrian is trying to fend off some over-eager driver wanting to get to the Bay Bridge entry off of Harrison (at 1st) and not paying attention to pedestrians – hard to see pedestrians when there is chaos and no sense of order at this intersection anyway. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1Y0KVgnkUI

I’d like to start a campaign to kill the right turn onto Main Street from Folsom and onto Spear Street from Folsom on Monday through Friday, 3pm – 7pm to help the situation without involving DPT (as if we have money for that anyway, ha). I also want to stick four-way stops and a speed limit ratcheting down to about 25MPH throughout SoMa. You know where you can find me if you’d like to join in my effort … RinconHillSF.org

I’m not sure what the issue is. If the guy turning has a red light, than the pedestrian is crossing against the red light (jaywalking) and the vehicle has right of way to make the legal left turn after stop (two one ways can make a legal left on a red light after a complete stop). If the SUV has a green light, than he waited for the pedestrian to complete slowly crossing before he went. Who cares if he “seemed impatient”, who knows maybe he had indigestion, or was reenacting a scene from “Star Wars Send in the Clones” with John Williams style conducting.

@Wai and John Murphy -

I’ve seen this one way turn onto another one way problem over and over again. Pedestrians are the most common people at risk in these situations. In other locations, such as along Howard Street, in a series of lights, the first red is frequently missed…sometimes blocking the ‘keep clear’ area in front of the Fire Department.

The start of a solution is relatively simple: “no left on red” signs. Other measures, as appropriate.

This happens to me all the time on 19th Avenue. I blame those evil demand-activated countdown signals.

Imagine you reach the corner just as the light turns green. You walk into the crosswalk with the full green light. Then motorists start honking and swerving around you. They point at the red hand which indicates “Don’t Walk”.

So all of a sudden the pedestrian is the bad guy. The scofflaw. The motorist is justified in treating them badly. Thank you City and County of San Francisco.

Major American cities, which have lots of folks getting about using their legs and feet, should not allow drivers to make rights on the red light. When you get a red light, you should stop; there should be no thought allowed to appear in your mind that you can continue to move your car when you have a red light. Because drivers are allowed to make rights on the red, I notice that too many make lefts on red, too. This behaviour is ridiculous. The planning of our streets should be prioritized for the slowest movers on them, which are pedestrians, then bicyclists, then buses, then all the damn bloody cars and trucks. Cars and trucks should be given the lowest priority.

I think one-way streets are good. As someone said above, as a pedestrian you only have to “worry” about the vehicular traffic coming from one direction, which is much easier on one’s mind. However, the one-way streets in San Francisco are too, too, too wide for cars: They can accommodate two, three, four lanes of traffic, which look like, to the drivers, freeway lanes that they are “free” to speed along non-stop. The sidewalks need to be widened on all these wide-for-the-cars one-way streets. SF sidewalks should be boulevard width.

I love the “Eyes on the Street” pieces. I’d almost say they aren’t frequent enough. Take a visit over to NY Streetsblog sometime. They have (or had) a feature called the “Weekly Carnage”. I’d say our feature is more thought provoking.

In Montréal, right turns on red are forbidden. This actually makes things dramatically safer, as many of the large arterials have 2-way cycle tracks on the right side. If it weren’t for this prohibition, there would be very dangerous conditions indeed for cyclists stuck in the track with right turners crossing over their path.

Maybe I’ve been lucky or I’m walking in the wrong places, but I haven’t had that much of a problem with drivers flipping me off because I’m crossing the street with the green light. I will go out on a limb and even say SF has some of the more courteous drivers compared to other cities I’ve been to. I’m not discounting this as a problem, but I think this is an example of a driver that needs to be seriously re-educated or taken off the road if he can’t understand that turning drivers must yield to pedestrians if both have a green light.

Vincent – I completely agree with your points about 1-way streets. I don’t buy the argument that 1-way streets are more dangerous. Mikesonn points to speed, but there is speeding on 2-way streets too. In fact, I bet there is just as much if not more speeding on 2-way streets. It depends on the amount of vehicles and the signal timing. Since signals are timed for 25MPH, I doubt drivers will gain much by speeding since they will arrive at each intersection at a red light.

Jamie – The city does NOT need more 4-way stops, especially in the SoMA area. Stop signs don’t work at slowing people down. It only gives them another sign to ignore. That’s the reason why stop signs are so useless these days. Too many of them are placed at intersections that don’t need them.

Speed humps work better than stop signs. You need a few speed humps in each block (two to four, depending on the length of the block) so drivers maintain a steady, moderate speed (rather than stopping at intersections and speeding up between intersections).

Of course, it is also important to convert one-way streets to two-way.

There do exist one-way streets that are pleasant places for pedestrians and bicyclists alike, and I wouldn’t mind having more like them in San Francisco. But I am thinking of streets in Hyde Park in Chicago like Ellis, University, and Dorchester, with 28 to 32 feet between curbs, striped as two parking lanes and one travel lane. Are there one-way streets wider than that that work well?