Streetsblog San Francisco

Two years after the Pedestrian Safety Task Force formed to devise a plan to meet the ambitious targets for reducing injuries set by former Mayor Gavin Newsom, the SF Municipal Transportation Agency has released its Draft Pedestrian Strategy [PDF]. The document serves as a rough guide for how the city can re-engineer streets and target traffic enforcement to make walking safer in the coming years.

Second Street. Photo: Michael Short, SF Chronicle

Advocates say the goals are on par with the targets set forth by cities like Chicago and New York, who have recently set the bar with their own pedestrian safety plans. But implementing the infrastructure called for in the plan will require leadership from Mayor Ed Lee and other elected officials, who must increase the abysmal level of funding dedicated to pedestrian safety projects, as well as a diligent effort by city agencies to get the most out of their budgets by integrating pedestrian improvements into transit and road re-paving projects.

“We’re very pleased with the central ambitious commitment set out in the Pedestrian Strategy: to fix five miles of streets per year,” said Walk SF Executive Director Elizabeth Stampe, who praised the plan for taking “a big step forward with clear metrics and timelines. With these, it creates accountability. Walk SF and its members will be monitoring the implementation of the plan closely.”

“The mayor’s goal is to cut injuries in half,” added Stampe. “To succeed will take political will and funding. The SFMTA’s Strategic Plan states that ‘infrastructure support for walking is cost-effective,’ but over and over again [at the SFMTA board meeting this week] we heard how little we’re spending on pedestrian improvements.”

Will Mayor Ed Lee bring leadership and help fund the Pedestrian Strategy he's touted to make streets safer for San Franciscans? Photo: Thor Swift, Bay Citizen

As Streetsblog has reported, two to three pedestrians are injured in San Francisco every day. In addition to the human toll, this costs the city an estimated $76 million per year, much of that in health care costs paid for out of public funds. Two pedestrians have been killed in January alone. Last year, 19 pedestrians died in traffic, and 17 were killed in 2011. Overall, roughly 800 to 900 pedestrians are hit by cars in the city every year.

“When comparing ourselves to other major U.S. cities, many look towards San Francisco as being on the leading edge of progressive transportation,” said Paul Supawanich, a transportation planner at Nelson/Nygaard and former chair of the SF Pedestrian Safety Advisory Committee. “However, in the arena of pedestrian safety, places like New York and Chicago were setting the standard, we were behind. While it’s taken longer to produce than many had expected, the Pedestrian Safety Task Force has produced a great vision, and one that provides meaningful and tangible steps towards reducing pedestrian injuries and fatalities.”

Read more…

This morning the SF Municipal Transportation Agency is presenting its strategic plans to reduce pedestrian injuries and increase bike ridership over the next five years at a staff workshop with the agency’s board of directors.

It’s an important moment for livable streets in San Francisco, and we’ll be bringing you detailed coverage after the workshop. In the meantime, here’s a look at the targets the agency is setting for its walking and biking programs.

The Draft Pedestrian Strategy [PDF] sets out to cut pedestrian injuries in half and increase walking from roughly 19 percent of all trips to 23 percent by 2021. A major strategy is to re-engineer at least five miles of “high priority segments” per year, including 10 bulb-outs per year. To pay for it, the agency will need to secure about $6 to $8 million in additional annual funding for pedestrian safety.

From an SFMTA presentation on the Draft Pedestrian Strategy.

The Draft Bicycle Strategy [PDF] lays out three scenarios that vary based on the amount invested in bicycling. The “Strategic Plan” scenario — the medium choice — is projected to raise bicycling’s share of all trips to 8 to 10 percent by 2018. The more ambitious “System Build-Out” is projected to raise bicycling mode share to 20 percent. In one sense, the funding gap is substantial. Under the status quo, the agency would have $30 million to invest in bicycling between now until 2018, while the “Strategic Plan” scenario calls for $190 million over the same period. Within the context of the agency’s overall budget, however, the ramped-up investment in bicycling is not asking for all that much. The SF Bicycle Coalition pointed out that even under the “System Build-Out” scenario (total cost: $500 million for infrastructure), bicycling would still account for less than 8 percent of the SFMTA’s capital spending.

From the SFMTA's Draft Bicycle Strategy. Click to enlarge.

Stay tuned more details on each plan.

Images: SF Planning Department

The city’s effort to make Castro Street more welcoming for pedestrians took a step forward yesterday, when the SF Planning Department presented preliminary design concepts at a packed community meeting.

The plan [PDF] would improve the pedestrian realm on the commercial corridor with wider sidewalks, sidewalk seating, pedestrian-scaled lighting, small plazas, and greening, while reclaiming some of the excessive street space devoted to automobiles, which would reduce double parking and tame motor vehicle traffic.

Castro’s intersections with Market/17th (at the Castro Muni Metro Station), 18th, and 19th Streets would also be made safer with bus bulb-outs, sidewalk extensions, and more visible crosswalks re-aligned to shorten crossing distances. Planners are considering banning right-turns at red lights to discourage drivers from blocking crosswalks.

The proposal is based on a plan adopted in 2008 by the Castro/Upper Market Community Benefit District, which, coupled with $4 million in Prop B street improvement bonds recently secured thanks to D8 Supervisor Scott Wiener, helped move the project forward.

“We get used to all sorts of plans and ideas that don’t go anywhere because there isn’t the political will, or there isn’t the money, and to finally have the money set aside set for the project and so much community support is just terrific,” said Wiener.

An early milestone came when Jane Warner Plaza was created in 2009, carved out of a section of 17th Street at Castro, as envisioned in the CBD’s plan. “Re-claiming that asphalt for people, and the fact that it was instantly occupied and successful, demonstrated that there’s a latent demand for more and better-quality public space in this area,” said Ed Reiskin, director of the SF Municipal Transportation Agency. “People are sometimes walking in the road to get through the crowded sidewalk.”

Read more…

Seventh and Howard Streets. Image: Google Maps

Last Friday, two drivers ran over and killed 44-year-old Melissa Kitson of San Lorenzo at 7th and Howard Streets, the second pedestrian fatality in San Francisco this year.

Melissa Kitson. Photo via LinkedIn

According to press accounts, the crash occurred at about 5:45 p.m. Police say the investigation is ongoing, and there are few details available on how it occurred. Both drivers reportedly stayed on the scene, and we’re waiting to hear back from the SFPD about whether either of them will be cited or charged.

As the Chronicle reported, Kitson worked for RedBricks Media, located on Folsom Street just east of 7th, and may have been on her way home when she was hit and killed instantly. Elliot Easterling, the ad firm’s CEO, told the Chronicle, “She was a very sweet and superb person. She was a good worker.”

“Two people have already been killed while walking this year in San Francisco,” said Elizabeth Stampe, executive director of Walk SF. “When she was hit by two cars and killed, Melissa Kitson was likely walking home from work. That shouldn’t be a life-threatening activity, especially in San Francisco.”

The wide, one-way streets in the South of Market district continue to function as speedways for drivers, and the rate of  pedestrian injuries and deaths in the area will remain disproportionately high until Mayor Ed Lee and SFMTA Director of Transportation Ed Reiskin make traffic calming measures there a priority. “We need leadership and commitment from the city to fix dangerous streets and prevent more bewildering tragedies,” said Stampe.

District 7′s new supervisor, Norman Yee, took the earliest opportunity to call for a hearing on pedestrian safety in the neighborhoods he represents, which include West Portal, Parkside, St. Francis Wood, Forest Hill, Ingleside Terrace, Sunnyside, and Park Merced.

Supervisor Norman Yee. Photo: SF Examiner

Pedestrian safety is “an issue that is very personal to me and I care deeply about, and that I’ve heard from many, many residents in District 7 are deeply concerned about,” Yee said at his first regular meeting on the Board of Supervisors yesterday.

Yee called on staff from the SF Municipal Transportation Agency, the Department of Public Works, and Department of Public Health to report on District 7′s pedestrian crashes, most dangerous intersections, and the status of safety projects that are in the works to reduce injuries.

In media appearances during the recent election season, Yee regularly named pedestrian safety as a top priority. As he noted to the SF Bay Guardian, he’s been injured by a driver himself. Yee’s campaign website has a page devoted to pedestrian safety that names “several areas that are real danger zones for pedestrians including 19th Avenue, Portola Drive, Sunset Boulevard, and Lake Merced Boulevard.”

Walk SF Executive Director Elizabeth Stampe said she “applauds Yee’s leadership on this.”

“We look forward to working with him to make streets safer for people in District 7 and throughout the city,” she said. “Residents in Supervisor Yee’s district, especially parents, have been demanding better walking conditions for a long time. There are several dangerous corridors in D7 — from 19th Avenue to Ocean to Monterey — and it’s time for the city to get serious about fixing them.”

Yee, a Chinatown native known for his tenure as president of the School Board and director of a children’s services non-profit, has lived in District 7 for 25 years. His emphasis on pedestrian safety is a departure from his predecessor, Sean Elsbernd, who represented the district for eight years and wasn’t known to regularly devote attention to the issue.

“I look forward to a constructive dialogue over the upcoming months,” said Yee, “and I will be working closely with community members and city staff to monitor this important issue.”

Jones at Turk Street. Photo: pbo31/Flickr

Despite living in one of the city’s densest residential neighborhoods with one of the lowest rates of car ownership, Tenderloin residents have endured some of San Francisco’s most dangerous streets for walking since traffic engineers turned most of them into one-way, high-speed motorways in the 1960s.

In a BeyondChron article yesterday, editor and Tenderloin Housing Clinic Director Randy Shaw spotlighted the city’s longstanding neglect of safety improvements and traffic calming on Tenderloin streets, even while such projects come to other neighborhoods. The SF County Transportation Authority’s Tenderloin/Little Saigon Transportation Plan, which was adopted in 2007 and calls for two-way street conversions and other upgrades for pedestrians and transit, has seemingly remained a low funding priority for the city, wrote Shaw:

While the city finds money for streetscape improvements on Divisadero, Upper Market, the Marina and other affluent neighborhoods, the city has not funded a single major Tenderloin pedestrian safety or streetscape improvement program in over thirty years…

San Francisco is actively creating more livable streets for pedestrians, bicyclists, local businesses and neighborhood residents. It’s a terrific development.

But what’s not terrific is denying the Tenderloin its fair share of transit funds. It is a blatant example of the city discriminating against low-income residents.

There is hope that most of the improvements in the Tenderloin Plan could be funded by California Pacific Medical Center in a development agreement with the city for its plans to build the massive new Cathedral Hill Campus at Geary Boulevard and Van Ness Avenue. However, with a revised agreement being negotiated behind closed doors that will likely be downsized from the original one, it’s unclear whether the new version will retain a requirement for CPMC to provide nearly $10 million in funding for street improvements to mitigate the impacts of inundating the Tenderloin with car traffic. ”Not only do the traffic impacts caused by the project require it,” wrote Shaw, “but transit planners still have no plans to allocate public dollars for calming traffic, improving streetscapes or doing anything else along Eddy and Ellis Streets” beyond the few blocks that have been converted to calmer, two-way traffic flow.

“Randy is rightly cross about the slow pace of implementing the Tenderloin transportation plan,” said Livable City Executive Director Tom Radulovich. ”San Francisco’s traffic patterns tend to impose the greatest traffic burdens on neighborhoods like the Tenderloin, Mission, and SoMa — generally denser, poorer, and whose residents generate the least car traffic. The bureaucratic foot-dragging around reclaiming traffic sewer streets like those in the Tenderloin is both unjust and unsustainable.”

Read more…

Yuee Yao, 56 (left) was killed by a drunk driver on a Twin Peaks road on December 20 during a visit from China. In a separate crash yesterday in the Mission, an unidentified 29-year-old woman (right) was killed while riding in a car, as was 26-year-old Francisco Gutierrez (no photo available) while walking into a convenience store. Drivers have been charged in both cases.

Two pedestrians and one vehicle passenger lost their lives in separate car crashes in the last two weeks, marking the last of 19 pedestrian deaths in 2012, and the first two traffic fatalities of 2013.

David Morales seen here during his arrest following the crash. Photo via KTVU

Yesterday at approximately 8 a.m., 19-year-old driver David Morales of San Francisco was fleeing from police when he crashed into a car at South Van Ness Avenue and 21st Streets, killing an unidentified woman in the car and causing it to slam into a corner store and kill 26-year-old Francisco Gutierrez as he was walking in, according to SFPD spokesperson Gordon Shyy. The driver of the car that was hit was also hospitalized with life threatening injuries, but has since been upgraded to critical condition.

Morales, who was arrested at the scene of the crash (captured in a video here), allegedly fled a traffic stop after police received calls about a shooting at the Valencia Gardens housing complex at 14th and Guererro Streets, according to the SFPD. Morales was charged with two counts of murder for the fatalities caused by the crash, as well as multiple other charges in relation to the shooting.

The scene of the car crash at 21st St. and South Van Ness Ave. during a police chase on New Year's Day. Photo: Michael Macor, SFGate

Read more…