On Sunday, June 27th, downtown Oakland opened two miles of its streets to fun and activities—zumba dancing, circus arts, BMX bike competitions and performances from local musicians. Walk Oakland Bike Oakland (WOBO) partnered with the East Bay Bicycle Coalition, Oaklandish, Oakland YMCA, Cycles of Change, and other civic organizations to create the East Bay's first “Sunday Streets” style event. Preparations are in the works for another Oaklavia in the near future. 

On Thursday February 19th, the MTA re-timed six traffic signals from 16th to 21st, a pilot for a few weeks that will enable the agency to gauge the real-world impacts of reduced speeds on traffic flow.

The main goal is to improve vehicle flow and calm traffic to prevent energy intensive starting and stopping. The slower synchronized timing will also likely prove to be a great convenience to cyclists along the route.

Motorists are already seeing a benefit. Initial studies show the re-timed signals improve overall travel time by more than a minute during peak commute hours. Additionally, motorists will save gas and reduce pollution if they drive at a steady 15 mph pace.

In 2002, Portland, Oregon implemented a citywide traffic signal optimization project, which saves motorists over 1,750,000 gallons of gas and 15,460 tons of CO2 each year. It cost $533,000, paid for by the Climate Trust of Oregon carbon offset program. The majority of streets in downtown Portland are timed at 12-15 mph for pedestrian safety and optimal traffic flow.

UK DOT statistics on vehicle/pedestrian collisions

In Amsterdam, both trams and buses save time from signal re-timing. On average trams move 1.5 minutes faster and buses 3 minutes faster.

This is expected to benefit pedestrians as well. Studies show the severity of pedestrian injuries in crashes with cars increases exponentially with only slight increases in vehicle speed. Pedestrians face a 5 percent chance of dying when hit by a vehicle traveling 20 mph, though that figure jumps to 45 percent for a vehicle going 30 mph and 85 percent at 40 mph.

Flickr Photo: pbo31 

Top 12 Intersections with Most Pedestrian Injury Crashes - Past 10 years (SWITRS)

One successful pedestrian safety project in San Francisco involved the installation of pedestrian countdown signals. The pilot study found the signals reduced pedestrians crossing on red from 14 to 9 percent, and decreased pedestrian collisions by more than 50 percent. 700 of San Francisco's 1,100 signalized intersections now have these signals. 

While the signals have helped, the streets are still perilous. MTA transportation engineer Christina Olea believes the most effective way to reduce pedestrian collisions is to slow vehicles. Streets with calmer traffic will also make walking and biking enjoyable enough for people to choose these modes over more polluting options.

Some successful calming techniques include roundabouts, lane narrowing, adjustments in roadway curvature, pedestrian refuge islands, and speed bumps. A report by the American Journal of Public Health found that vehicle crashes decreased 25 percent after these types of improvements were installed. Other treatments include pedestrian signal phasing and increased intensity of roadway lighting. For more descriptions check out this UC Berkeley Traffic Safety Center report: (PDF pg 17-22).

The MTA consults collision reports, community plans and public requests to figure out where to focus its pedestrian transportation improvements. MTA media relations manager Judson True noted they also take into account where the majority of crashes occur, however, based on actual improvements, there seems to be a disconnect between where the improvements are installed and where most crashes are happening.

This may be because the MTA prefers to slow traffic in residential areas rather than on arterial streets because they are afraid traffic will divert from arterials to residential streets. Manish Champsee, the President of WalkSF, noted that "traffic engineers like to split streets between arterial, collector and residential streets. However, in San Francisco, just about every street is a residential street and all of them should be treated that way."

The MTA has also been criticized for giving preference to moving cars quickly through the city, over accommodating pedestrian comfort and safety.

"Traffic engineers have to balance between the needs of automobile throughput and pedestrian safety. It is our view that pedestrian safety should trump concerns about vehicle throughput," said Champsee.

Portland Bureau of Transportation Detailed Crash Maps

Other cities are well ahead of us in engineering safer streets. One key is the creation of detailed crash maps and graphs (above), not only showing where the crashes have occurred, but also including information about what type of crash it was, demographic information, who was at fault, and the severity of the crash.

How You Can Get Involved

There are many ways you can encourage city officials to install safer pedestrian infrastructure. Directly request a traffic calming project for your neighborhood through the MTA’s livable streets program. Tell city officials how you want your tax money spent by contacting your elected officials , local transportation agency and regional transportation commission. And you can join Walk San Francisco, which is working to make the city more walkable and livable.

Also, come and voice your opinions at the many community open houses held around the city. Streetsblog San Francisco has an excellent calendar listing nearly all of these meetings. An important one coming up on February 24th is the redesign of Cesar Chavez which calls for a 14’ median in the middle. Medians have been shown to increase traffic speeds and take room from increasing sidewalk widths or physically separated bike lanes.

Next: What San Francisco can learn from the safest cities around the world, and creative ways to fund traffic safety projects.

As we've been reporting,  San Francisco is the fourth most dangerous city for pedestrians in the U.S. The victim in one of the latest crashes is a former Oakland Tribune reporter.

We want to put faces on the victims of these crashes and tell their stories but we need your help getting them to come forward.

Please email to tips@sf.streetsblog.org.

Editor's note: This is the first in a series of stories that will focus on how to improve streets for pedestrians.

Wide intersections like this one at Mission and 6th make it dangerous for pedestrians to cross.

This has already been happening on San Francisco's streets. According to a U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) study, SF is the 4th most dangerous city for pedestrians per capita (among U.S. cities with populations of 500,000 or more) and the streets are becoming more frightening by the day.

According to the latest crash data from the San Francisco 2007 Collision Report (PDF), in 2007 about 800 pedestrians were injured by cars. Given that as many as 21 percent of pedestrians don’t report the altercation, that amounts to nearly 3 pedestrians hit each day. Over the same period, the number of cyclists injured by cars increased by 31 percent to 451. Also, 32 pedestrians were killed by motor vehicles, an increase of more than 50 percent from the year before.

These crashes are not only devastating to the victims, but they burden health care systems and tax budgets. Twenty-five percent of pedestrian-auto fatalities were Muni crashes. In the past 7 years, Muni paid out about $66 million to people who experienced injury, wrongful death or property damage.

Vehicle-Pedestrian Injury Collisions 2001 - 2005 CHP Statewide Traffic Integrated Record System

Of all fatalities involving motor vehicles in SF, 26 percent were pedestrian deaths, and of total injuries, 24 percent were pedestrians. In 2006, 9.6 percent of San Franciscans walked to work. Despite the obvious quantified needs of pedestrians, the percentage of San Francisco’s transportation budget dedicated to pedestrian transportation is estimated to be less than one percent.

According to a study by UC Berkeley’s Traffic Safety Center, over half (58 percent) of pedestrian crashes were drivers’ faults, and the majority of these (35 percent) were drivers hitting pedestrians in crosswalks, followed by excess driving speed. Fifty-eight percent of driver-fault crashes were vehicles turning left. San Francisco has fewer intersections with protected left turn phasing compared to most other western U.S. cities.

As shown in the map above, the majority of pedestrian crashes occur in SOMA while a majority of all vehicle crashes happen on Market Street. Sixth Street at Market is the most dangerous intersection for pedestrians. It is no coincidence that the majority of collisions occur in areas with many one-way streets and multiple wide lanes, leading cars to drive very fast. As shown in the map below, most pedestrian crashes occur along the most expansive streets with fast moving traffic such as Market, Van Ness and Columbus.

An Intensive Pedestrian Safety Engineering Study Using Computerized Crash Analysis
Crash Data 1996 - 2001; UC Berkeley Traffic Safety Center 

NHTSA's most recent analysis of pedestrian fatalities found that the pedestrians most often killed by cars are age 70 and over. This is especially dire given the fact that city populations are aging, and an increasing number of baby boomers are moving to urban areas for cultural attractions, lower property taxes, better public transportation, and highly accessible health care.

There are many simple engineering treatments to make streets safer, however, most engineers were trained to merely move traffic through cities. They will not change their ways unless they hear from you.

As the cyclists in this video point out, re-timing signals for bike speeds (Green Wave) would make roads safer for all street users on Valencia Street. Before even mentioning re-timing signals, this was many cyclists' top request to improve their journey.

Recently, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA) found that during peak commute times vehicles run more efficiently when signals are timed at the speeds they actually travel during congestion -- 12 to 15 mph -- rather than the current 25 mph. Major bike streets in Portland, the Netherlands and Denmark have been timed for bike speeds and now it is time for San Francisco to ride the Green Wave! For more information read my previous SF Streetsblog article on the topic.

Photo by Barrie Rokeach (Copyright 2009 All Rights Reserved)

The plan proposes reducing carbon dioxide emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels, and relieving freeway congestion by 20 percent below 2006 levels. It outlines a carbon or vehicle-miles traveled (VMT) tax, parking surcharges, congestion tolls, encouraging new residential projects to be built close to jobs, transit, shopping and services; and various bicycle, pedestrian and transit projects.

The plan does support allocating funds for sustainable transportation but it is too heavily dependent upon technology to merely accommodate increased auto traffic on freeways. Sixty five percent of total funding is dedicated to transit and 32 percent to roads and bridges, leaving only 2 percent for bicycles and pedestrians. It is unacceptable to underfund the least polluting modes of transportation. The plan severely underestimates the huge displacement of auto miles traveled possible by investing in bike and pedestrian infrastructure.

As shown in the graph below, bicycle projects meet 3 goals to reduce pollution and VMT, compared to freeway projects, which achieve 2 goals. However, the bicycle projects are allocated much less funding and designated as achieving a “low” benefit to cost ratio compared to freeway projects determined to have “high” benefit to cost ratios.

Benefit to Cost Project Performance Measurements Pg. 40 Draft 2035 Plan

Rather than concentrating on reducing the amount people drive by investing in sustainable transportation, the plan allocates too much funding to implement intelligent transportation systems (ITS) to merely manage an increase in freeway traffic, and High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes so wealthy motorists can pay to use carpool lanes.

One reason the MTC underestimates the impact of investing in bicycles is because they use inadequate bicycle and pedestrian counting methods to forecast future trends. These models are not in line with local and national statistics that show bike use is on the rise, and the degree to which improved facilities increase bicycle travel.

It is important the MTC hears what you think about funding highway management and expansion over bicycle, pedestrian and transit projects. The more cyclists, pedestrians and transit riders at the meeting the better. So come with your bike helmets  and Muni passes in hand to one of the two public hearings scheduled this week. For more talking points read Livable City's RTP analysis and TransForm's comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR). All comments submitted in writing and recorded at the meetings will be documented and responded to in the EIR.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Public Hearing/Workshop: San Francisco
7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
San Francisco State Downtown Campus
Room 609
835 Market Street, San Francisco

OR

Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Public Hearing: Oakland
10:05 a.m.
MTC Commission Meeting
Joseph P. Bort MetroCenter
Lawrence D. Dahms Auditorium
101 Eighth Street, Oakland
(at the Lake Merritt BART station)

Please RSVP via E-mail to info@mtc.ca.gov or via phone to 510.817.5757. Leave your contact information and which hearing you plan to attend.

Ideally, timing should weigh in favor of actions that have the least impact on the environment and provide the most safety for all users. Not surprisingly, this ideology has been embraced by Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Odense in Denmark. In these cities, on key bicycle corridors traffic lights have been retimed for bicycle speeds, otherwise known as a Green Wave.

Retiming traffic lights on Valencia Street to an average bicycle pace would not only preserve cyclists’ momentum and energy, it would also make the streets safer for all road users. Slowing traffic to under 14 mph exponentially decreases the severity of all crashes. Furthermore, when motor vehicle traffic is traveling at the same speeds as cyclists, it is safer for cyclists to “take the lane” when there are obstacles in bike lanes, and it may also decrease right hook crashes.

While naysayers may object that this will increase traffic congestion, it is more than reasonable to counter that real-time traffic conditions on Valencia Street have already slowed to a general range of 8 to 20 mph. It makes logical sense that retiming traffic signals for actual traffic speeds would increase traffic flow, reduce idling, and minimize stop-and-go movements, thus decreasing pollution. 

Portland, Oregon has already realized this and implemented a citywide traffic signal optimization project, which saves motorists over 1,750,000 gallons of gas and 15,460 tons of CO2 each year. It cost $533,000, which was paid for by the Climate Trust of Oregon carbon offset program. In downtown Portland nearly every street is timed for 12 mph, making these streets de facto Green Waves.

When I proposed a Green Wave on Valencia to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) they conducted a series of traffic models in October 2008. The results confirmed that synchronizing traffic signals for 12 mph would decrease actual travel times during peak car commute periods by as much as 3 ½ minutes.

Despite these obvious benefits for all modes of transportation, one of the nation's most biked cities, San Francisco, has failed to move beyond simple traffic modeling. Even with recommendations from its own traffic planners, the SFMTA has insisted it does not have the funds to begin even a pilot study on Valencia Street, ignoring hard evidence of success from cities in the US and abroad.

This Streetfilm interview with cyclists on Valencia Street shows how Green Wave would benefit all street users.

Photos: zakkaliciousness on Flickr and fietsberaad.nl