Streetsblog San Francisco

Photo: Aaron Bialick

On Walk to Work Day, touted as the first official event of its kind in the nation, city officials strolled to a press conference on the steps of City Hall, where Mayor Ed Lee promised to implement the city’s Pedestrian Strategy [PDF].

Since the Draft Pedestrian Strategy was released in January, providing a rough guide for how the city can re-engineer streets and target traffic enforcement to make walking safer in the coming years, street safety advocates have praised the city’s vision, but have been concerned as to whether city leaders will take action to fund it.

“I’m going to see to it that we not have a [delay] where this stays on the shelf,” Lee told a crowd of dozens of Walk to Work Day participants. “We’re going to fund this thing.”

Lee said one-third of the estimated funding needed has already been identified, and that he’s confident the city will find the rest in the coming years. He also said the city plans to launch a website within the next two weeks where residents will be able to track the progress of implementation and “hold us accountable.”

Walk SF is “excited to see” a revised section of the Pedestrian Strategy which more specifically lays out the amount of funding needed and potential sources the city could use to procure it, said Executive Director Elizabeth Stampe. Of the estimated $363 million needed to implement safety upgrades on priority streets by 2021, the city has a $215 million shortfall, according to the plan. In the coming months, a steering committee is expected to develop criteria for how to prioritize safety projects where they’re needed most.

“It’s up to the mayor and the supervisors to help direct funding to fixing the streets and saving lives,” Stampe said.

So far, seven people have been killed by drivers on San Francisco streets this year. The latest victim was 60-year-old Becky Lee, who was hit and killed by a pickup truck driver Wednesday in a crosswalk at Judson Avenue and Edna Street, just east of City College’s Ocean Campus, and about a block from the 280 freeway. Last year, 20 pedestrians were killed, according to SFPD.

“We shouldn’t be losing 20 people a year. We shouldn’t be losing anybody just to walk in the streets of San Francisco,” said SFMTA Director of Transportation Ed Reiskin. “We should also be working to make it more enjoyable so that we can attract more people out of their cars and on to their feet, which will make San Francisco an even better place.”

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In the first three months of 2013, six pedestrians have been killed on San Francisco streets. At that rate, the city is on course for pedestrian deaths to rise for the third year in a row.

Walk SF Executive Director Elizabeth Stampe tells KTVU today, "We know what we need to do" to save lives. "We need action from our leadership."

The trend is striking: Since 2010, when 14 pedestrians were killed on San Francisco streets, more have died each year since. There were 17 deaths reported in 2011, and at least 19 deaths in 2012. (The Examiner reports that police data shows 20 deaths that year, and five this year. By our count, it appears one of those deaths may have been mistakenly counted in 2012. We’ve reported on six deaths this year, with the first occurring on the morning of New Year’s Day.)

From 2000 to 2008, pedestrian fatalities were on a downward trajectory: 2000 saw 32 pedestrian deaths, and 2008 saw 13, the lowest number within the period. The rate of pedestrian deaths in the first three months of 2013 is nearly twice as high as the rate in 2008.

Will Mayor Ed Lee go beyond publicity shots and take leadership to curb the rising number of pedestrian deaths on San Francisco streets? Photo: bubbletea1/Flickr

Mayor Ed Lee’s office says the city’s final version of the Pedestrian Strategy, which will include a plan to fund the pedestrian safety improvements that are needed, is expected to be released this week, KTVU reported today.

“We know how to fix these streets,” said Elizabeth Stampe, executive director of Walk SF. “Delay here means tragedy.”

The latest victim is Tania Madfes, a retired teacher who died in the hospital last Wednesday after she and her husband were run down by a driver in a crosswalk at West Portal Avenue and Vicente Street. The SF Chronicle reports:

A San Francisco woman who devoted her career to encouraging girls to pursue opportunities that had been denied to her has died after she was struck by a car while crossing a street in the West Portal neighborhood with her husband.

Tania Madfes, 68, and her husband, David Madfes, were returning home March 21 from an evening at the Berkeley Repertory Theater and were walking across Vicente Street at West Portal Avenue when a car struck them at 9:40 p.m.

“We were crossing Vicente and – I can’t reconstruct in my head what happened – next thing I knew this car was there,” David Madfes said Thursday. “It hit my leg just as it came to a stop, and I fell and my wife was lying on the street on her back.”

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How people get to Polk street, according to a new SFMTA survey. Driving only accounts for about 15 percent.

Updated 4:36 p.m.

If San Franciscans were to believe the hyperbole and fearmongering spread by merchants leading the “Save Polk Street Coalition,” removing even a small proportion of car parking along the corridor to make the street safer and more inviting will kill businesses. But new survey data from the SF Municipal Transportation Agency shows that only about 15 percent of people get to Polk Street using an automobile, while the rest either come by foot, bike, or transit. Drivers also reported spending the least amount of money per week compared to those who came by other modes.

The data is one more piece of evidence dispelling the myth that on commercial streets like Polk, business depends on drivers.

A parklet in front of Crepe House on Polk Street at Washington. It's more clear than ever that customers don't need to drive to do business on Polk Street. Photo: Bryan Goebel

The findings reaffirm those of a study on Columbus Avenue in 2008, conducted by the SF County Transportation Authority, which found that only 14 percent of people on that street arrived by car. Merchants who have fiercely opposed the SFMTA’s proposals to add improvements like parklets or protected bike lanes — which have generally been found to boost business on similar walkable streets — have dismissed such studies by claiming that Polk is different, and that the statistics “aren’t real.”

Other surveys have found that merchants tend to wildly overestimate how many of their customers drive. It remains to be seen whether this new data will help convince Polk Street merchants that is making the street safer and more attractive will be worth removing a fraction of the parking on the corridor.

“Business people are innately conservative,” said Bert Hill, a sustainable transportation advocate who chairs the SF Bicycle Advisory Committee and ran for election to the BART Board in 2010. “Their whole livelihood depends on there being sufficient customers, so they’re inherently nervous about [the improvements], in spite of the fact that communities that have made the change, like Valencia, like Market Street, are generally doing much better.”

“Particularly as a neighborhood densifies, as Polk Street is heading in the direction of, they will have more customers. But they hate to gamble on that,” he added.

Update: According to the SFMTA survey report [PDF], agency staff surveyed 410 people on Polk at six locations between Tuesdays and Thursdays, and on a Saturday. Respondents were asked which mode of transport they used to arrive on Polk that day, and which mode they typically used. In terms of modes typically used, 6.1 percent of respondents came by bike, 15.6 percent by car, 49 percent by foot (though 68 percent walked that day), and 19 percent by transit. The survey also found that “people who drive to Polk likely spend less cumulatively than other visitors.”

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As part of a newly-approved agreement, developers will add a sidewalk extension at Market and Dolores to make room for a mini plaza. Image: Prado Group

A plan to add a mini plaza and pedestrian safety improvements at Market and Dolores streets was approved by the SF Planning Commission on Thursday. The project will include new pedestrian refuges and sidewalks as wide as 14 feet, as well as special pavement treatments to highlight crosswalks on the block of Dolores between Market and 14th Streets. The crosswalk on Dolores at Clinton Park, a side street, will also be raised.

Image via Curbed SF

The plan received unanimous approval from commissioners, who were not swayed by some neighbors who opposed the conversion of two traffic lanes to pedestrian space on a short, lightly-trafficked section of Dolores. The improvements were part of a city agreement with the developers of an 85-unit apartment building and Whole Foods Market under construction at the corner. The arrangement calls for the developer to install the street upgrades in lieu of $510,000 in impact fees.

“The current design allows cars to whip around the corner quickly onto Dolores, endangering people who are crossing,” Walk SF Executive Director Elizabeth Stampe wrote in a letter to the Planning Commission in support of the project. “Dolores itself is also a high-speed street, making conditions more dangerous for all users, since any collisions are made much more serious at higher vehicle speeds.”

D8 Supervisor Scott Wiener praised the plan because it “appropriately balances pedestrian safety with traffic flow in the area. It’s a unique opportunity that we’re not gonna have again to do this upgrade.”

“If you’ve ever walked that intersection or driven by it, it is an incredibly wide, long pedestrian crossing — one of the longest in the area,” he said.

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Image: Google Maps

A driver hit and killed 69-year-old Hector Arana on Wednesday morning at 6:26 a.m. on six-lane San Jose Avenue in the Outer Mission neighborhood. According to reports, the driver was headed northbound in the direction of the nearby 280 freeway, when he hit Arana near the intersection of Liebig Street, where Google Maps shows legal but unmarked crosswalks.

SFPD spokesperson Albie Esparza told SF Weekly, ”The driver was not speeding, there were no drugs or alcohol involved, it was just an unfortunate accident.”

“The police are right that this is tragic, but calling it an accident tends to assume that there’s no fault and that it’s not preventable,” said Elizabeth Stampe, executive director of Walk SF.

Stampe pointed out that in New York, police have officially dropped the term “accident” as of this week. As the New York Times reported Sunday, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly announced that police reports will use the term “collision” instead. ”In the past, the term ‘accident’ has sometimes given the inaccurate impression or connotation that there is no fault or liability associated with a specific event,” Kelly wrote in a letter to City Council.

Will SFPD Chief Greg Suhr step up and make a similar policy change?

“It is possible to find fault,” said Stampe, “and it is possible to prevent [crashes].”

When Streetsblog asked how investigators ruled out speed as a factor, Esparza said in an email, “We reconstruct the collision. There is math, science, physics to determine speed, distance, etc.”

Was the driver who killed Arana watching the road? Could his death have been prevented with better enforcement and traffic calming measures on a street designed to be hostile to pedestrians? According to the SFPD, there are no lessons to learn from San Francisco’s fifth pedestrian fatality this year.

“San Jose is, in all but name, a freeway,” said Stampe. “It could really use gateway treatments to communicate to drivers that they have left the freeway and are now in a community where people live and walk, and they need to watch out.”

“We are eagerly awaiting the mayor’s Pedestrian Strategy, which will lay out how the MTA and the police will do what they can to penalize those at fault and prevent more of these tragedies.”