Streetsblog San Francisco

Photo: bhautik joshi/Flickr

More than a year after the Mayor’s Pedestrian Task Force began meeting to develop San Francisco’s Pedestrian Action Plan, the SFMTA said the agency expects to finalize the document by late summer. Unclear, however, is whether the plan will include a measurable commitment to implementing physical pedestrian safety infrastructure.

To meet the targets set in former Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Executive Directive on Pedestrian Safety — a 25 percent reduction in injuries by 2016, and 50 percent by 2020 —  the document will lay out a blueprint for safety improvements on wide, high-speed streets known as “arterials,” where pedestrians are most at risk of serious traffic injuries, SFMTA Senior Transportation Planner Frank Markowitz told the Pedestrian Safety Advisory Committee yesterday.

The plan would also set metrics to gauge the city’s progress toward four goals: Reducing severe and fatal pedestrian injuries, reducing injury inequities between neighborhoods, increasing walking trips as a share of all trips, and providing “high-quality walking environments.” The Task Force expects to begin conducting public outreach in May and to release a draft plan in mid-summer, said Markowitz.

“Most of the actions would be implemented in the next two, three years, funding permitting,” he said.

The strategies in the plan will include physical traffic-calming measures as well as media campaigns, upgraded speeding enforcement technology (i.e. LIDAR guns), and more thorough data collection on injuries, said Markowitz. Other efforts already underway, he added, include 15 mph school zones – 88 percent of which have been implemented as of last week, according to the SFMTA. The agency also continues daylighting street corners, installing pedestrian countdown signals, and more.

Physical street improvements, like corner sidewalk bulb-outs, improved crosswalks, and traffic-calming measures, said Markowitz, will be largely funded by incorporating pedestrian infrastructure into transit and bicycle projects, since dedicated revenues for pedestrian improvements are scarce. Funding would also depend on allocations from Prop B bonds, which include $50 million for pedestrian and bike projects.

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The intersection of Castro, Market, and 17th Streets where Sutchi Hiu was killed. Photo: Google Maps

D8 Supervisor Scott Wiener today pointed to the need for pedestrian safety upgrades at dangerous, high-speed intersections along Upper Market Street in light of the recent bicycle-pedestrian collision at Market and Castro that killed 71-year old Sutchi Hui.

“We have a city that, despite all the work we’ve done, is still in large part designed for cars,” Wiener said at today’s Board of Supervisors meeting. “Castro and Market, for those who cross it — and I cross it multiple times every day — is incredibly wide.”

Fixing “disastrous” intersections “all along the Upper Market corridor,” he said, “requires investment, it requires prioritizing making these kinds of expenditures, because it does save lives when you reduce crossing distances, when you increase visibility for all users of the road.”

Hui’s death, he added, is “another reminder that we need to keep moving forward with enforcement, with education, and with the investments to make our city the pedestrian-friendly place that we know it needs to be.”

Bayshore and Alemany Boulevards, next to a Highway 101 onramp. High-speed motor vehicles on streets like these still pose the greatest threat to pedestrians by far. Photo: Aaron Bialick

In the midst of a wave of media attention around the recent bicycle-pedestrian death in the Castro, walking and bicycling advocates today re-affirmed the greatest dangers facing pedestrians on San Francisco’s streets: high-speed roads and dangerous driving behavior.

In a KQED radio forum this morning, Walk SF Executive Director Elizabeth Stampe, SF Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) Executive Director Leah Shahum, SF Bicycle Advisory Committee Chair Bert Hill, and Captain Al Casciato of the SFPD Traffic Company all seemed to agree that the recent death of Sutchi Hui was as tragic as any, and that safer streets will require better street engineering as well as more effective enforcement and education efforts to elicit more courteous behavior among people using all modes of transport.

Still, there’s no question, they said: The vast majority of the more than 800 pedestrian injuries or deaths on San Francisco’s streets every year involve motorists and occur disproportionately on high-speed “arterial” streets.

“In a way, this is kind of a man-bites-dog story,” Stampe said of the bike-ped crash — an event receiving an unusual amount of attention precisely because it happens so infrequently, while too-common car-pedestrian crashes go vastly under-reported. ”This is a real tragedy,” Stampe continued. “I don’t think anybody disagrees, a lot of people are upset, and it’s not okay for people to be hit in a crosswalk and killed in San Francisco. But the fact remains that three people a day are hit by cars… and that’s an underestimate.”

In fact, four other pedestrians have been killed this year alone, according to the SFPD, two of them in the same week as the bike-pedestrian fatality. The death of one still-unidentified victim killed by a Muni bus driver also made national headlines, but the other three victims killed by auto drivers, including 45-year-old Tom Ferguson (killed on the same day as the bus victim), received little more than a few blurbs in the media.

As the SF Bay Guardian pointed out, from 2000 to 2009, 220 pedestrians were killed in San Francisco, mostly by car drivers who rarely face criminal charges. None of those deaths are known to have involved bicycles. Media attention, however, seems to have focused on the two fatal bicycle crashes that occurred within the last year, and their reports rarely provide the statistics about traffic deaths in San Francisco. (Some of the more dramatic cases, like the Concord driver who ran over a family biking on the sidewalk this weekend, killing two, tend to garner more media attention.)

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Standing on the corner of Castro and Market yesterday afternoon, CBS 5 reporter Ken Bastida relayed to the camera a sad tale of the dangers of walking in San Francisco.

Ken Bastida, newfound pedestrian safety advocate. Image via CBS 5

“We’re about to do something here that really could be taking your life into your hands,” Bastida said before entering a crosswalk.

He’s not kidding: Two or three people are injured on the city’s streets every day, statistically speaking. And Bastida, being the hands-on newscaster he is, was in the field to get to the root of this “growing problem for pedestrians,” as CBS 5 put it.

“We talked to a lot of the people who live in the neighborhood. It’s not just this neighborhood,” Bastida said before cutting to an interview with a man on the street. I was glad to hear him acknowledge this — a pedestrian was injured around the corner from my home in the Inner Sunset that evening.

This issue needs more scrutiny from the media. After all, 800 pedestrian injures are reportedly hit every year, and 13 people were killed last year — the vast majority by cars.

Except Bastida wasn’t there to talk about cars. CBS sent the journo-turned-pedestrian-advocate out there to talk about bikes.

That’s because a bicycle rider hit an elderly man at that intersection yesterday morning, and both were hospitalized. “Witnesses say a bicyclist came barreling down the street, right down Castro, through the red light, and struck him,” Bastida said. Fortunately, both parties seem to be making a recovery today.

There’s no excuse for colliding with a pedestrian in a crosswalk, no matter what your mode of travel. But there’s also no excusing the double standard apparent in the media’s obsession with bike crashes, while traffic injuries caused by motorists go vastly under-reported.

Like Bastida, many local media outlets took up the cause of pedestrian safety after yesterday’s crash. The story even held one of SFGate‘s three photo-feature slots for hours on its front page.

Yet, despite the abundance of pedestrian injuries caused by drivers, reporters like Bastida don’t seem as quick to cover them.

As I wrote earlier this week, the media generally tends to jump all over relatively rare pedestrian crashes with bicyclists and Muni drivers while overlooking the far bigger risk posed by private motorists. (There was one very welcome exception in the Chronicle yesterday: Columnist and former pedestrian-victim-blamer C.W. Nevius conceded that when you look at the numbers for pedestrian injuries, “It is pretty hard to escape the conclusion – it’s the drivers’ fault.”)

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Photo: SFBC/Flickr

The San Francisco Police Department yesterday announced a commitment to reduce pedestrian injuries through targeted enforcement of dangerous driving.

In a joint statement with Walk SF, the SFPD said it will target violations like speeding and red light-running, especially in areas with the highest pedestrian injury rates. SFPD also plans to sign an agreement soon to share data with the SFMTA and the Department of Public Health, to implement “systematic” education and enforcement at new 15 MPH school zones as each one rolls out, and to streamline its reporting on enforcement to the Pedestrian Safety Task Force.

The new emphasis on pedestrian safety was prompted by last month’s incident in the Tenderloin, where a van driver slammed into an elderly pedestrian with the right-of-way in a marked crosswalk, writes Walk SF:

Walk SF recently met with the Police Chief and the Mayor’s office… We will be meeting with the District Attorney as well, to urge more action on penalizing dangerous driving.

This is a real milestone. This is a commitment to accountable enforcement of the laws that protect you when you walk.

Walk SF appreciates the commitment by the Police Department and the Mayor to making San Francisco’s streets better and safer for everyone.

In the joint statement, Walk SF and SFPD note that “these actions will help to meet the city goals set by the 2010 Mayor’s Executive Directive on Pedestrian Safety to reduce serious and fatal pedestrian collisions by 25 percent by 2016 and by 50 percent by 2021.”

Read the full statement after the break.

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Three alleyways in the city’s motor-dominated South of Market (SoMa) area could be transformed into pedestrian-friendly havens with a new plan approved by the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA) Board yesterday.

The new plan would add features similar to those implemented on a block of Minna between Sixth and Seventh Streets last year. Image: SFCTA

The Western SoMa Neighborhood Transportation Plan would bring traffic-calming measures like chicanes, greening, pedestrian bulb-outs and raised crosswalks along Minna and Natoma Street between Seventh and Ninth and Ringold between Eighth and Ninth. It would also add crosswalk markings and traffic signals across the arterial streets they meet.

“The plan and the designs create safe, inviting space in one of the most pedestrian-unfriendly parts of the city,” said Walk SF Executive Director Elizabeth Stampe.

The improvements are just one step in the Western SoMa Community Plan, which includes a long-term effort make SoMa safer and more inviting for pedestrians. Jim Meko, chair of the West SoMa Citizens Planning Task Force, said the goal of the Transportation Plan is to streamline a set of priority projects to pedestrianize SoMa alleys, where he said most residents live.

“We wanted to do smaller things that people would begin to notice right away,” said Meko. “With the alleys that we chose, it will begin to also introduce the social heritage aspects of the plan. The Minna and Natoma alleys are particularly important to the Filipino community… and Ringold has always been important to the LGBTQ community.”

The improvements could be implemented as soon as 2014 depending on funding availability, according to the report. Once implemented, the alleys should feel more like “shared” streets (known as “woonerfs” in the Netherlands), where motor vehicles are allowed, but pedestrian uses take precedence.

“In this neighborhood, there is a relative scarcity of park space, and the real sources of community space in this area are the streets,” SFCTA transportation planner Chester Fung told the Plans and Programs Committee last week. “We know that the alleys are promising in some ways — they are quiet respites, refuges, from the high-traffic arterials.”

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Two men were killed by drivers in San Francisco yesterday, but only one of those fatalities made national headlines.

The media often doesn't give due attention to the most frequent cause of traffic injury on SF streets: pedestrian victims hit by car drivers. Photo: Matt Smith, SF Weekly

The crashes were strikingly similar: Both victims were males in their 40s who were reportedly crossing mid-block, and both drivers were apparently sober and stayed at the scene.

But while the death of 45-year-old Thomas Ferguson — hit by a private auto driver on Lombard Street near Van Ness Avenue — only appeared in a handful of local media outlets, the death of the unidentified man hit by a Muni bus driver at Hayes and Fillmore Streets was picked up by the Associated Press. The wire report broadcast the news of a transit vehicle driver killing a pedestrian in publications across the country. So far, in the SF press, the Muni collision has generated about twice as many stories as the Ferguson case.

Yet the statistics show that relatively few pedestrians in San Francisco are killed by Muni drivers — far and away, most are killed by drivers of private cars. Of the 13 pedestrians killed in 2011, two were hit by buses, according to SFPD data, and all but one of the others by auto drivers. About three pedestrians are injured in San Francisco traffic every single day – the vast majority by cars.

All pedestrian deaths are preventable, and in order to save lives we have to understand what causes car-pedestrian fatalities, then take steps to prevent them. Yet the media seldom seeks out and publishes the details of these cases.

Given past coverage of similar cases, we probably won’t see follow-up reports about what caused Ferguson’s death. A vague description from Bay City News labeled Ferguson a jaywalker “apparently walking outside of the crosswalk” when he was ”struck by a passing vehicle.” There was no mention of the driver’s speed. (The driver was only mentioned to note that he or she was “very cooperative.”)

It was last July when a media firestorm followed the case of Randolph Ang, the first bicyclist to kill a pedestrian in the Bay Area in at least five years. Just two weeks ago, Ang’s sentencing received an inordinate amount of coverage compared to the more than a dozen car-ped deaths each year. Seldom do San Franciscans learn what sentence, if any, a fatally reckless driver receives. And while the Ang case was followed by calls in the local press for a crackdown on bicycle riders, it’s hard to imagine that Ferguson’s death or the other pedestrian deaths caused by drivers this year will result in calls for a crackdown on drivers.

Whether it’s simply because rare news grabs headlines, or because most editors and reporters are immersed in a car-centric culture that won’t face up to the greatest dangers on our streets, our local media is failing to convey vital information about the dangers faced by people walking in San Francisco.

Image: ABC 7

It’s a common sight in downtown San Francisco, drivers line up on a bustling street, waiting to make a turn, and one or two impatient motorists can’t seem to believe that pedestrians are crossing in front of the queue.

When the queue moves, if that driver reaches the crosswalk and then runs over a pedestrian, should he or she be able to escape the consequences of committing what is effectively assault, so long as they claim not to have seen the victim?

In the case of the paratransit van driver who ran over a man at Eddy and Leavenworth Streets in the Tenderloin this Valentine’s Day, the “I didn’t see him excuse” worked like a charm. Surveillance footage and eyewitness accounts make it plain that the driver honked impatiently then ran down the victim in a marked crosswalk, yet the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office says no criminal charges can be brought against him because he stayed at the scene and “cooperated” with police, the victim didn’t die, and law enforcement determined that he was not driving “recklessly.”

Charges of reckless driving, according to DA spokesperson Omid Talai, only apply when the driver is “in willful and wanton disregard for the safety of other people.” In this case, the victim was hospitalized and will likely suffer life-long consequences, but without a reckless driving charge, the only consequence for the perpetrator will be a single traffic citation for failing to yield — and even that ticket probably wouldn’t have happened if not for a show of outrage from pedestrian safety advocates.

If San Francisco expects to have streets where people are safe to walk without suffering debilitating injuries, then the DA should consider this driver’s actions to be reckless. It’s clear that the driver was impatient and careless enough to barrel through the intersection as though no one were nearby, even though he was behind the wheel of a multi-ton motor vehicle in a crowded downtown neighborhood that sees as much or more pedestrian crashes as any other in the city.

The walk signal was on, the sun was out, the crosswalk was marked with an especially visible design, and the victim was crossing for several seconds before the driver accelerated. The fact that he didn’t see the victim is a result of his willful recklessness, not a test to determine whether recklessness occurred.

If someone can inflict serious injuries on another person by recklessly operating a lethal machine, and get right back behind the wheel without so much as a suspended driver’s license, then our legal system is broken.

Image: ABC 7

It took a show of public outrage, but the SFPD has reversed course and decided to issue a traffic citation to the paratransit van driver who was videotaped running over a man who had the right of way at Leavenworth and Eddy Streets last week. The driver will be cited for failing to yield to a pedestrian; no criminal charges will be filed as of yet.

An SFPD spokesperson had initially said police wouldn’t cite the driver in the “unfortunate” crash because he cooperated with authorities, but the department apparently changed its mind after Walk SF rallied members to call on the SFPD and city leaders to “defend everyone’s right to walk safely.”

“What a shame that no action is being taken against the driver of the van who was obviously negligent,” wrote one member in a message to the mayor, the District Attorney, the SFMTA and the SFPD last week. “The message this sends to San Francisco drivers is that it’s okay to run over people that are obeying rules when crossing a street. Our streets are unsafe and we need to do something about it!”

The SFPD’s citation is the bare minimum that could be applied in this case, according to Shaana Rahman, an attorney who defends pedestrian victims in civil court. “The gross negligence of this driver is absolutely clear,” she said. ”Not only does the video show that the victim had the right of way, it also shows that the pedestrian was in the crosswalk for several seconds and was clearly visible to the driver, had the driver been paying attention.”

Denis O’Leary, head of the SFPD Traffic Company, said the driver wasn’t intially cited at the scene because “he was not feeling well and ended up in the hospital.” O’Leary said he ordered officers to cite the driver for failing to yield to a pedestrian after the crash was evaluated by a state-certified investigator. However, Rahman pointed out that the driver violated at least one other law — California Vehicle Code 22107, which prohibits moving “right or left upon a roadway until such movement can be made with reasonable safety.”

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Demand for traffic calming improvements like these outstrips funding by a factor of five to one. Image: SFMTA

The demand for projects to calm motor traffic and improve safety on San Francisco streets is far greater than the SFMTA can currently handle.

The agency says its Traffic Calming program lacks the staff and funding needed to address the overwhelming number of neighborhood requests for safer streets. As a result, many residents are left waiting a decade or longer for improvements that are proven to save lives and prevent injuries.

“We feel like there’s been such a latent demand — or current demand, even — for traffic calming that, given various limited resources, these requests are piling up,” SFMTA Livable Streets Senior Engineer Mike Sallaberry told the SF County Transportation Authority (SFCTA) Plans and Programs Committee last week, which approved funding for program staff to revise its five-year project prioritization plan.

According to Sallaberry’s presentation [PDF], the SFMTA receives an average of six to eight applications for traffic calming improvements every month, adding up to more than 500 since the agency began accepting them in 2001. By the time the SFMTA started implementing projects in 2005, staff already had over 135 approved applications in the pipeline.

The SFMTA has put its application process on hold until later this year as it determines which projects to prioritize over the next five years. The backlog of projects for that time frame would require an estimated $64.7 million to implement, $27 million of which have been planned (or are being planned). But only $12.4 million will be available to build out the projects, according to projections presented [PDF] to the SFMTA Board of Directors this week by Chief Financial Officer Sonali Bose. The funding comes from various grants and the city’s Prop K sales tax revenue, which is allocated by the SFCTA to transportation projects citywide.

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