Streetsblog San Francisco

Widening sidewalks in San Francisco is a time-consuming task — it’s the only city in California where even minor changes to a sidewalk’s width require legislative approval. But a new proposal headed to the SF Board of Supervisors would cut some of the red tape standing in the way of implementing such street improvements.

"Bulb-outs", or curb extensions, like this one at 7th Avenue and Irving Street could be installed more easily under a new proposal. Image: Google Maps

The proposal, sponsored by Supervisor Scott Weiner and Mayor Ed Lee, was moved forward by the SF Board of Supervisors Land Use and Economic Development Committee today. It would streamline the bureaucratic process for building sidewalk extensions (a.k.a. “bulb-outs”) — a street design tool often used by planners to calm motor traffic, improve pedestrian visibility and comfort, and ease transit boardings at stops — by eliminating an outdated requirement for changes to sidewalk widths less than one block long to be approved by the Board of Supervisors.

“This will be a significant improvement in our process in terms of making our city more pedestrian-friendly and safer for pedestrians, improving the vibrancy of our commercial districts, and creating more public space that is not for cars, but rather for people,” said Wiener.

“Upon adoption of the Better Streets Plan, we’ve seen more and more projects come through for minor sidewalk changes such as corner bulb-outs for individual projects that don’t exceed one linear block,” said Nick Elsner of the SF Department of Public Works (DPW), the primary agency responsible for implementing sidewalk extensions. ”This would greatly expedite and make the process much more efficient.”

According to legislative documents [PDF], the proposal would amend an ordinance passed in 1910 requiring project approval from supervisors, which “result[s] in a very lengthy process and often lead[s] to project delays.” It would also establish a speedier approval process for the SF Planning Department, but projects would still need to be approved by other affected agencies like the SFMTA. The change would save the DPW an estimated $2,500 in processing costs for a block of construction, said spokesperson Gloria Chan, and the SF Planning Department would save about $1,375 in reviews.

Bulb-outs, the documents note, are an important tool in pursuing the city’s goals of improving the pedestrian environment. Stephen Shotland of the Planning Department said the proposal is intended “to be able to move projects forward that really are consistent with the General Plan and consistent with the adopted Better Streets Plan,” which, along with several neighborhood plans cited in the documents, call for improvements like widening congested sidewalks, minimizing crossing distances, and discouraging high-speed car traffic on local streets. “Staff would be able to review projects to make sure that, in fact, is the case,” said Shotland.

The proposal passed the committee today without objection and is expected to go before the full board in the coming weeks.

With Mayor Ed Lee inaugurated to his first full term, Streetsblog is asking leading advocates and experts to lay out their ideas for how the mayor can move San Francisco’s transportation policy forward. We continue our series with today’s installment from Elizabeth Stampe, executive director of Walk San Francisco.

At Walk San Francisco’s big member bash last month, Mayor Ed Lee celebrated San Francisco becoming the first big city in the state to take swift action to make neighborhoods safer for kids to walk to school by implementing 15 mile per hour zones at 60 schools out of 180 to come.

Mayor Lee speaks at a Walk to School Day press conference in October. Photo: Marianne Szeto

“We will, in our lifetimes, get to zero” pedestrian deaths, declared the Mayor, calling for “experimenting out of the box with every possible idea to make streets safer.”

The mayor set a bold vision for San Francisco, and an “out of the box” approach may be just what we need to reach it. But to stand by his commitment, Mayor Lee must provide the leadership our city needs to make smart, immediate investments to improve pedestrian safety in 2012.

Over half of the city’s serious and fatal pedestrian crashes occur on just 7 percent of the city’s streets, according to the Mayor’s Pedestrian Safety Task Force, which started work last year on former Mayor Gavin Newsom’s December 2010 Executive Directive on Pedestrian Safety [PDF].

That finding can provide critical guidance for the city to effectively direct its resources — from traffic enforcement to street redesigns — to save the most lives. Streets that are safer and more pleasant to walk on, research has shown, also tend to increase home values and benefit the bottom line for local businesses and city coffers.

We have the funds available to invest in safer streets. San Francisco voters in 2010 approved Prop AA, a vehicle license fee that helps fund pedestrian safety improvements, as well as last fall’s Prop B, which provides $50 million in bonds for both walking and biking.

As Mayor Lee begins his first full term in 2012, here are a few key initiatives he can take to save lives and help boost the economy:

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At least 13 pedestrians have been killed on San Francisco streets this year, all but one of them by motor vehicle drivers. The toll is all too typical for the city, as is the fact that most of those drivers won’t face prosecution.

District Attorney George Gascón. Photo: Matthew Roth

Last month, District Attorney George Gascón seemed to employ a tough new standard when he filed misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter charges against Randolph Ang, the first bicycle rider to kill a pedestrian in the Bay Area in at least five years. The exceedingly rare event drew a tidal wave of media attention and calls for stricter traffic enforcement of people on bikes, and it was followed by targeted police stings on Market Street.

Ang, who hit and killed 68-year-old Dionette Cherney in July when he ran a red light on the Embarcadero at Mission Street, now faces up to a year in jail due to “ordinary negligence that resulted in the tragic death of a pedestrian,” according to the DA’s office.

“The District Attorney’s Office takes seriously any case where criminal conduct is the cause of an injury or fatality,” read the statement. “Before our office files charges on any cases, we need all the evidence and information regarding criminal conduct to build a strong prosecutable case.”

However, the DA does not usually seem to take “ordinary negligence” seriously when it’s careless driving that causes a pedestrian fatality. The vast majority of the drivers who killed pedestrians this year — 11 of 12 — have not been known to face any charges, though there are signs that could begin to change.

Gascón, who was appointed DA in January, indicated late last month that his prosecution of Ang might be followed by stronger policies to hold deadly drivers accountable. He announced that three drivers could be prosecuted for recent pedestrian deaths, and he’s followed through with one of them so far. Gregg Wilcox, the driver who killed William Cox at 14th an Noe Streets in September, was charged last week with misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter because he was driving while wearing a leg cast, said DA spokesperson Stephanie Ong Stillman.

The Muni driver who killed 23-year-old Emily Dunn in the Castro could also still face charges along with the UCSF shuttle driver who caused the death of Dr. Kevin Mack, a passenger who was killed in a crash with a big rig the day before Ang’s crash, Stillman said.

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A 5-year-old boy walking across 3rd Street with his family is in critical condition at San Francisco General Hospital after being run over by the driver of a shuttle bus. Here the details the SFPD is choosing to release, from Officer Albie Esparza:

On 9/8/11 at 339PM an auto vs pedestrian collision occurred at 3rd St / Williams St.

A mother was walking south bound on 3rd street (at Williams) from the n/w to s/w corner.  She had one child immediately with her and the second child, a 5 year old male, was trailing behind. The mother and first child made it across the street.  A private shuttle bus that was e/bound Williams at 3rd then made a right turn onto 3rd Street injuring the 5 year old (that was trailing behind) causing injury.  The child was taken to the hospital by ambulance with life threatening injuries.

The shuttle bus reportedly had one passenger who was not injured.  The shuttle bus driver stopped and was cooperating with the investigation.

The incident is being investigated by the SFPD Hit and Run Detail, which by policy, investigates all major injury and / or fatal collisions.  No citations or arrests were made at the time of the incident. Impairment is not suspected.  Cause of the collision has not been determined. NO FURTHER INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE. Please do NOT call or email for updates.

We’ll post more information as we get it.

William Cox was walking in this crosswalk Tuesday morning, just like this man, when he was run over and killed by an SUV driver. Residents say the intersection of 14th Street and Noe has long been a trouble spot. Photo: Bryan Goebel

On most recent mornings, 59-year-old William Cox walked several blocks from his Mission District apartment to the bustling Peet’s store on Market Street in the Castro for his daily dose of coffee, crossword puzzles and conversation. He had given up his Jeep Cherokee shortly after moving to San Francisco from San Rafael two-and-half years ago and got around mostly on foot and transit. On Tuesday morning, he paid a visit to his best friend, David Douma, who lives across the street from Peet’s.

“Around 9 a.m. he would usually ring my phone to announce he was at my front door, and then he would hang out in my apartment for awhile, every day,” said Douma.

On this day, Cox — known to his friends as Bill — arrived early, around 8:24 a.m., because he was scheduled to help a friend who lives near Ocean Beach move some large musical equipment. It was in his nature, said Douma, to always offer help when a friend needed it. He didn’t stay as long as he usually did, and left a half-cup of coffee behind. Cox then stopped at nearby Rosenberg Deli, Douma later confirmed, before embarking on the four-block walk up Noe Street to catch the N-Judah train.

Sadly, he never made it.

According to San Francisco police, Cox was in the crosswalk on 14th Street at Noe around 10:39 a.m. when he was run over by an unidentified driver behind the wheel of a Ford SUV who had been southbound on Noe, and was making a left turn onto 14th. Cox underwent two operations and despite the best efforts of trauma surgeons at San Francisco General Hospital was pronounced dead at 5:36 p.m., becoming the 10th pedestrian to be killed on the streets of San Francisco this year.

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The pedestrian environment on eastern Cesar Chavez Street is in desperate need of improvement. Photo: SF Planning Department

New designs have been drawn up for eastern Cesar Chavez Street and will be presented to the community next week, nearly two months after a contentious meeting in which attendees were told, just days before the striping of new bike lanes, that plans for a road diet were being scrapped by the Mayor’s Office and Port of San Francisco because of concerns from industrial businesses about reducing road capacity for trucks hauling goods.

The new designs will not be made public until the August 24 meeting, where options for short-term and long-term plans will be presented. Sources who have seen the designs say the short-term plan does not remove a travel lane like the original plan. Instead, it would remove parking to add one-way protected bike lanes on both the north and south sides. The short-term plan is part of an air quality grant to improve biking and would not change the sidewalks.

“The plan that was going to go out in July was going to put a bike lane between a parking lane and a bunch of trucks,” said Peter Albert, the manager of urban planning initiatives at the SFMTA. “It seems like the low hanging fruit in that whole thing was the on-street parking, so why was on-street parking for basically two dozen spaces so sacrosanct that it was forcing bicyclists to pit themselves against trucks and buses?”

Under the new designs, he said, “the bike experience is much better because you’ve got no parked cars or dooring to the right, you’ve got complete clarity on your path and the trucks don’t have to intersect with you in any way.”

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Photo: KYW-TV

A 9-year-old boy from suburban Philadelphia who was struck and severely injured by a hit-and-run drunk driver in SoMa last week, after watching his hometown team beat the Giants, has been upgraded from critical to serious condition, and his family says he faces a long recovery.

Ryan White began speaking in sentences this morning after giving only thumbs up and thumbs down responses, according to a statement issued this afternoon by his parents, Ken and Roseanne White. The statement was made available through the spokesperson for San Francisco General Hospital

“Ryan has a long road ahead of him, but he is young and strong and we expect steady improvement, especially when he can engage in full-time rehabilitation. We are working with doctors at SFGH to determine the best way for Ryan to return to Pennsylvania to continue his recovery,” the statement read.

White was walking with his family back to their hotel from the Giants game on Thursday evening around 10:30 when he was struck by a white Toyota pickup being driven by 21-year-old Andrew Alan Vargas of Hayward. Police said Vargas was driving drunk and traveling the wrong way on New Montgomery Street before he turned onto Mission Street, where the family was crossing.  The boy’s 58-year-old aunt, from Granite Bay in Placer County, was also hit, and suffered a foot injury.

Footage of Vargas’ pickup showed a smashed front end. Police said he also hit a number of cars after fleeing the scene. He was arrested in Hayward by police there about an hour later.

The San Francisco District Attorney’s office said Vargas has been charged with “two counts of felony drunk driving with injury and one felony count of hit-and-run with injury which also carries an allegation of causing great bodily injury.”

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Market and Kearny and 3rd Streets, 1909. (Photo: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library)

“Whose Streets? OUR Streets!” yell rowdy demonstrators when they surge off the sidewalk and into thoroughfares. True enough, the streets are our public commons, what’s left of it (along with libraries and our diminishing public schools), but most of the time these public avenues are dedicated to the movement of vehicles, mostly privately owned autos. Other uses are frowned upon, discouraged by laws and regulations and what has become our “customary expectations.” Ask any driver who is impeded by anything other than a “normal” traffic jam and they’ll be quick to denounce the inappropriate use or blockage of the street.

Bicyclists have been working to make space on the streets of San Francisco for bicycling, and to do that they’ve been trying to reshape public expectations about how streets are used. Predictably there’s been a pushback from motorists and their allies, who imagine that the norms of mid-20th century American life can be extended indefinitely into the future. But cyclists and their natural allies, pedestrians, can take heart from a lost history that has been illuminated by Peter D. Norton in his recent book Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City. He skillfully excavates the shift that was engineered in public opinion during the 1920s by the organized forces of what called itself “Motordom.” Their efforts turned pedestrians into scofflaws known as “jaywalkers,” shifted the burden of public safety from speeding motorists to their victims, and reorganized American urban design around providing more roads and more space for private cars.

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