Street safety advocates have long pushed for the SFMTA, and other agencies, to cut the red tape and lack of coordination that result in the painstakingly slow roll-out of pedestrian and bike safety measures.
While SFMTA officials haven't set specific targets that would measure progress on bureaucratic reforms, their current goal is to implement safety fixes on at least 13 miles in each of next two years. Walk SF Executive Director Nicole Schneider pointed out that that falls well short of the 18 mile goal (targeted to "high-injury" streets) requested by the Vision Zero Coalition of advocates at a recent rally. However, it does best the SF Pedestrian Strategy adopted last year, which calls for fixes on five high-injury miles per year.
Tim Papandreou, SFMTA's director of strategic planning and policy, said a goal of 13 miles annually -- not necessarily along high-injury corridors -- seems to be a realistic expectation. "At least there's one bar that we can cross, and say 'we did that,' " said Papandreou. "Anything above that would be great."
The city's "challenges to project delivery," listed along with efforts underway to address them (in bold). Image: SFCTA [PDF]The city's "challenges to project delivery," listed along with Maguire's efforts underway to address them (in bold). Image: SFCTA [PDF]
Of the items on Maguire's list of ten SFMTA reforms [PDF], he specifically promised to streamline the contractor bidding process. Bundling smaller safety projects together into fewer, larger contracts, he said, will attract more bidders and reduce delays for each component.
Maguire also said the "lack of a modal hierarchy" -- #2 on the city's list of "challenges to small project delivery" -- was fixed when Vision Zero named pedestrian safety the top priority. He also said he established a "principal-level working group," a bureaucratic think tank, to help the SFMTA and Department of Public Works to "knock down barriers" on high-priority safety projects.
Supervisor Scott Wiener asked Maguire how agencies are working out disagreements and turf wars that have held up, or watered down, street safety projects. As an example, he pointed to SF Fire Department officials' insistence on wider roads for fire trucks, sticking to their narrow interpretation of state fire codes. "You have to work very hard to try to achieve consensus, but not at the cost of a good project," said Wiener.
Maguire said he would resolve such issues by going out to examine the streets' real constraints together with various agencies' engineers. Real constraints, rather than specific code interpretations, should be the focus, he said. "The abstract and the reality can be really quite different," said Maguire.
The number one "challenge to project delivery" listed was that the "City lacks strong and clear leadership implementing transportation policies."
To that, Maguire said, "I personally feel, and my staff collectively feels at the Sustainable Streets Division at the MTA, that we are the ones accountable for delivering Vision Zero."
Aaron was the editor of Streetsblog San Francisco from January 2012 until October 2015. He joined Streetsblog in 2010 after studying rhetoric and political communication at SF State University and spending a semester in Denmark.