Streetsblog San Francisco

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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Potrero Avenue looking north at 23rd Street. Image: Google Maps

Four blocks of Potrero Avenue, from 21st to 25th Street at SF General Hospital, could be made safer under proposals from the Department of Public Works to extend sidewalks, narrow the roadway, and plant existing median space. But whether the street’s narrow 9-foot sidewalks will be widened to 15 feet on the east side depends on city officials’ willingness to re-allocate public space from car parking to people.

DPW staff presented street design proposals for Potrero at a public meeting at SF General on Tuesday. The project would add greening and pedestrian safety upgrades to coincide with a street re-paving, sewer replacement work, and a hospital rebuild scheduled for completion in June 2015.

Residents said safety improvements to slow drivers and protect pedestrians on Potrero are sorely needed.

“I always think, when I’m crossing the street, this is the way I’m gonna go,” said Potrero resident Deborah McKnight, who said she gave up her car two years ago. “If there’s a way we can balance, respectfully, the rights of people who feel like they need to be in their cars 24-7, and the rights of people who would like to walk a little bit more and use public transportation, I think we can find it.”

Fran Taylor, a neighborhood pedestrian advocate, pointed out that February 11 was the ten-year anniversary of the death of Elizabeth Dominguez, a four-year old girl who was killed by a Muni maintenance truck driver who jumped the curb when she was waiting with her mother at a Muni stop on Potrero and 24th Street.

“Drivers are not the only people who have the right to get around,” said Taylor. “The sidewalk widening would be very helpful… It’s a lot of people who have crutches, who have helpers walking with them who have to be side-by-side. It’s a hospital,” she said, eliciting broad applause from attendees.

Potrero currently has four traffic lanes, two bike lanes, and a bus-only lane that only runs northbound for just over three blocks between 21st and 25th. Under any of the redesign options, the transit-only lane would be removed, and the outer two traffic lanes widened to 12 feet. DPW project manager Cristina Olea said the existing transit lane, at 10 feet, isn’t wide enough to fit buses on Muni’s 33-Stanyan and 9-San Bruno lines, and that the project wouldn’t preclude any future plans for Bus Rapid Transit on Potrero.

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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.”

The bureaucratic red tape encumbering the city’s progress on life-saving pedestrian safety measures is the target of a new legislative package set to be introduced by Supervisor Scott Wiener at today’s Board of Supervisors meeting.

Photo: Streetsblog

“Current city procedures and rules significantly undermine the delivery of pedestrian safety improvements, with insufficient agency coordination and policies that de-prioritize improving pedestrian safety,” Wiener’s office said today in a press release.

The legislation has four components, including the creation of a new entity to streamline coordination between the different agencies involved in street design:

(1) an ordinance that mandates interagency coordination by creating a centralized Street Design Review Committee, which was a key recommendation from a 2010 Controller’s Audit [PDF]; (2) an accompanying resolution calling for city agencies to modernize street code provisions , better coordinate their efforts around public projects and to formulate clear procedures to do so [PDF]; (3) an ordinance making it easier for developers to build pedestrian safety projects and gift them to the city [PDF]; and (4) an ordinance amending the Fire Code to ensure that pedestrian safety projects are not unnecessarily impeded by the code’s definition of minimum street width [PDF].

Walk SF Executive Director Elizabeth Stampe applauded Wiener’s move to help speed the implementation of safer streets. “It is critical to reduce the delays and vetoes behind closed doors that drive up costs, weaken projects beyond recognition, or kill them entirely,” she said. “From Valencia to Fell and Oak to Broadway, there are examples of this on almost every street-improvement project in the city, plus many more that never happened at all, despite clear community demand. It’s time to change that, and deliver on the promise of safer, better streets.”

Supervisor Scott Wiener. Photo: Sarah Rice, SF Chronicle

The legislation seems like a promising step toward achieving the targets set in the SF Municipal Transportation Agency’s draft Pedestrian Strategy – a 25 percent reduction in injuries by 2016, and a 50 percent reduction by 2020. The strategy calls for substantial pedestrian infrastructure improvements on five miles of “high priority” streets per year.

As Streetsblog has reported, two to three pedestrians are injured on San Francisco streets every day. Four pedestrians have been killed by drivers this year alone, and 19 were killed last year.

One commonly cited reason for SF’s slow pace on pedestrian safety upgrades is what an SF County Transportation Authority official has described as “fragmented responsibility” between the SFCTA, SFMTA, the Department of Public Works, and other agencies. Wiener’s proposed Street Design Review Committee would help address this issue by creating “a central clearinghouse for project disputes among agencies.” His office says this “will ensure that proposed improvements are consistent with established policies like the Better Streets Plan and the Transit First Policy.”

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Sloat Boulevard, at the crosswalk where Hanren Chang was killed by a driver last Saturday night. Photo: Lea Suzuki, SF Chronicle

Friends and family mourning the death of Hanren Chang, a 17-year-old Lowell High School student who was killed on Sloat Boulevard last Saturday night by driver 29-year-old Kieran Brewer, are calling for safety fixes to prevent future deaths on the excessively-wide speedway. Brewer was arraigned yesterday on felony charges of DUI and felony vehicular manslaughter.

Hanren Chang. Photo via Change.org

Some safety improvements are already in the works for three intersections on Sloat, including the one where Chang was killed — but they’re not scheduled to be implemented for at least another 18 months, according to a memo from the SF County Transportation Authority [PDF]. The Board of Supervisors coincidentally approved a $797,000 federal grant on Tuesday to plan and construct sidewalk bulb-outs and flashing pedestrian beacons, and adjourned the meeting in honor of Chang. But as the SF Chronicle reported today, the plan is only set to be designed by the end of the next fiscal year — June 2014 — and built within a year after that.

Caltrans, which has jurisdiction over state Highway 35 (which includes Sloat), did implement a road diet in January 2012 on the stretch where Chang was killed, converting two lanes to buffered bike lanes and installing more visible crosswalk designs and signage.

But Sloat, where drivers are invited to speed on an excessively wide roadway, remains a deadly place for pedestrians, as Anyan Cheng, a close friend of Chang’s who launched a petition for safety improvements, told the Chronicle. ”It’s like a freeway in a residential area,” she said. “People don’t stop for you. Drivers don’t see you.”

As Streetsblog has reported, 54-year-old Feng Lian Zhu was killed by a driver in January 2010 on Sloat near Forest View Drive — the same intersection where Chang was killed. In 2011, 33 traffic crashes occurred at Sloat intersections, according to police data. In those crashes, two pedestrians were injured at Everglade Drive and 44th Avenue, and two bicycle riders were injured at 19th Avenue, also a state highway.

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An allegedly drunk driver was arrested for hitting and killing 17-year-old Hanren Chang on Sloat Boulevard near Vale Avenue on Saturday night. According to CBS 5, 29-year-old Keiran Brewer was driving westbound on Sloat at about 11:20 p.m. when he hit Chang, who was crossing the street in the northbound direction, and dragged her “a short distance.” Update: According to ABC 7, Chang was a student at Lowell High School and had just got off a Muni bus on her way home after celebrating her birthday.

Hanren Chang. Photo: ABC 7

Walk SF Executive Director Elizabeth Stampe said the organization “is saddened to learn of San Francisco’s fourth pedestrian death this past weekend. Hanren Chang was a young girl who lost her life in an awful way, killed and apparently dragged by a car on Sloat Boulevard, one of San Francisco’s most dangerous streets.”

“It’s time for Mayor [Ed] Lee to mobilize city agencies to make our streets safer for everyone, and prevent more needless tragedies,” she added.

Keiran Brewer. Photo via CBS 5

Despite some recent safety improvements, Sloat, a state highway run by Caltrans, remains a deadly speedway dividing the Parkside neighborhood. In January 2012, Caltrans put Sloat on a road diet (converting two of six traffic lanes to buffered bike lanes), upgraded some crosswalks with more visible markings, and lowered the speed limit from 40 mph to 35 mph. However, without further physical traffic calming measures, the lives of residents crossing the street are still at serious risk.

Two pedestrians were injured on Sloat in 2011, and as Streetsblog reported in January 2010, 54-year-old Feng Lian Zhu was killed by a driver on Sloat near Forest View Drive.

“We were encouraged by the recent improvements Caltrans made on Sloat,” said Stampe. “Clearly much more needs to be done, and the city and the state need to work together quickly to add lights and further traffic-calming to fix this deadly road.”

Sloat runs along the border between District 4 and District 7, whose new supervisor, Norman Yee, expects to hold a hearing later this month to review dangerous spots for pedestrians and the status of safety projects. Eileen Barrett was killed by a driver two weeks ago on Lake Merced Boulevard, another high-speed road in Yee’s district.

As of last week, District 4 is represented by newly-appointed Supervisor Katy Tang, who replaced Carmen Chu. On the Board of Supervisors, Chu pushed Caltrans to initiate last year’s safety improvements. Although Tang didn’t initially mention pedestrian safety when asked about her transportation priorities, she followed up with Streetsblog saying she’d like to discuss the issue further. If you have a pedestrian safety question you’d like us to bring to Tang’s attention, let us know in the comments.

Update: Tang told ABC 7 that pedestrian improvements are slated for the intersections of Sloat and Everglade Drive, Forest View Drive, and 23rd Avenue.

With a trial period for double traffic fine zones on 19th Avenue, Van Ness Avenue, and Lombard Street set to expire at the end of the year, State Senator Leland Yee hopes to extend them indefinitely, crediting the measures for drops in pedestrian injuries, despite results appearing mixed. Yee’s new proposal, SB 219, could get the backing of the SF Board of Supervisors, which is set to consider a resolution [PDF] on Tuesday introduced by Supervisors Eric Mar and Norman Yee declaring the board’s support for the bill.

Senator Leland Yee on 19th Avenue in 2008, announcing the trial for double-fine zones with then-Supervisor Carmen Chu. Photo: Office of Senator Yee

“San Francisco’s streets, as many of us know, need to be a safe place for everyone,” Mar told the board on Tuesday. “But we have a long way to go, and major thoroughfares that drivers treat like expressways — you all know many of those streets, from Masonic to 19th Avenue — but they still pose a major to pedestrians every day.”

Yee’s proposal would make double-fine zones permanent on the surface streets comprising Highways 1 (19th/Park Presidio) and 101 (Van Ness and Lombard Street), which fall under the jurisdiction of Caltrans. “Some of the most dangerous streets are those which also serve as state highways,” added Mar.

Elizabeth Stampe, executive director of Walk SF, said the organization supports Yee’s proposal, and will be watching for the police department to step up traffic enforcement against dangerous driving violations on the corridors. ”There should be a penalty for speeding and driving dangerously in a densely populated urban area where you can hurt a lot of people,” she said. “That’s what this legislation ensures.”

The double-fine zone trial was instituted at the start of 2009 at the behest of Yee, who sought the measure to bolster pedestrian improvements on 19th. The Senate approved the experiment on the condition that the zones also be tried on Van Ness and Lombard, which didn’t see other improvements, as a baseline for comparison.

Results on the efficacy of the measure, however,  have been mixed: In 2009, while pedestrian crashes on 19th decreased from 17 to 14 compared to the previous year, they actually quadrupled on Van Ness. The next year saw injuries drop on all four streets, according to the SF Examiner, but they increased again in 2011 on each street except Van Ness, with 19th seeing a 67.6 percent increase from the previous year.

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Supervisors Eric Mar, Mark Farrell, and London Breed.

The plan to overhaul deadly Masonic Avenue with pedestrian safety upgrades and raised, protected bike lanes could get much of its funding from a regional grant program. The Masonic project has received a strong endorsement from three members of the Board of Supervisors, who sent a letter last week to the head of the SF County Transportation Authority, urging the agency to make Masonic a priority as it decides which projects it will recommend to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission for funding.

Image: SF Planning Department's City Design Group

Chances that the $20 million project will get a substantial chunk from the MTC’s “One Bay Area Grant” are promising. When the SFCTA presented [PDF] its initial list of ten potential OBAG projects in December, Masonic was in the “upper tier.” It remains to be seen how much funding will go to Masonic, which along with other projects, such as the redesign of Second Street, is in the running for a limited pool of funds. The SF Municipal Transportation Agency applied for $16 million in OBAG funds for Masonic, but the SFCTA says only $35 million will be available for $54 million in funding requests citywide.

In their letter to SFCTA Acting Executive Director Maria Lombardo [PDF], Supervisors Eric Mar, Mark Farrell, and London Breed pointed to “a number of high-profile collisions and fatalities on this route in recent years,” asserting that “we must act fast to improve this corridor.”

We recognize there are multiple candidate projects with needs exceeding the total available funds, but we ask you to prioritize Masonic Avenue. We consider it a matter of public safety. The project will rectify what is now a fundamentally unsafe street design. It will also improve transit on a major north-south corridor, reduce environmental impact, and increase livability, thus meeting all the criteria established in the Transportation Plan.

Masonic is the only north-south bike route in the area, but is currently very unsafe and unappealing for most riders. The sidewalk bulb-outs, grade-separated bikeways, and tree-lined median are desperately needed on Masonic Avenue.

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A map of pedestrian injuries between 2005 and 2010 using data from the Department Public Health.

The deadly stretch of Sixth Street between Market and Howard Streets in the South of Market District may get some long-overdue pedestrian safety fixes. The SF Municipal Transportation Agency kicked off the first of several community planning meetings on Tuesday for a project that could add pedestrian bulb-outs, marked crosswalks, and other measures that could make for a more livable street.

Sixth Street, designed to speed drivers between the Tenderloin and the 280 highway through a dense SoMa neighborhood, has an alarming rate of traffic violence. According to data from the Department of Public Health, 93 pedestrians were injured by drivers between 2005 and 2010, including five people who were killed.

“Right now, the design of Sixth Street prioritizes fast car travel to the freeway instead of the safety and comfort of the people who live and work here,” said Walk SF Executive Director Elizabeth Stampe. “It’s time for that to change.”

On a recent walking tour of the neighborhood organized by the SF Planning and Urban Research Association, D6 Supervisor Jane Kim noted that her district, which sees nearly 30 percent of the city’s pedestrian crashes, “has the most collisions in the entire city.”

“San Francisco has one of the worst vehicle-pedestrian collision rates in the country,” she said. “It’s the worst in the state of California, worse than New York City, Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and a lot of major cities. We have some work to do.”

Sixth and Mission Streets. Photo: Aaron Bialick

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