A driver slammed into a Walgreens in the West Portal neighborhood of San Francisco on Wednesday.
Nobody was killed or seriously injured, so no doubt this incident will be quickly forgotten. But it shouldn't be, because this is a stark reminder of the failure of SFMTA's board of directors to fulfill its obligation to act as a politically independent body after a driver mowed down and killed an entire family a block from the location last March.
From the San Francisco Chronicle's story on this latest crash:
Around 8:30 a.m., firefighters, police and paramedics responded to a Walgreens at 200 West Portal Ave., where the driver had struck the front of the building, causing “moderate damage,” said San Francisco Fire Department spokesperson Lt. Jonathan Baxter.
The driver was cooperating with the police investigation of the incident, said San Francisco Police Department spokesperson Paulina Henderson, noting that drugs and alcohol did not appear to be a factor.
The police and apparently the fire department, as usual, have already exonerated the driver without an investigation. "This was an elderly person, it was an accident," Baxter was also quoted as saying. Really? What if Mary Fong Lau, who was 78, had missed the Pinto de Oliveira family on March 16 and just hit the West Portal Library's wall? Presumably, Baxter would have said the same thing about that "accident." (She was eventually charged with vehicular manslaughter).
Clearly, many people have licenses who are so mentally impaired that they can't reliably tell a gas pedal from a brake. Our streets are designed to tolerate reckless driving and to allow cars to easily jump onto a busy sidewalk. These aren't accidents. They are clear evidence of broad, systemic failures in how we license drivers, how we enforce driving laws, and how we design our streets.
It's important to note again that the West Portal merchant corridor exists not because of cars, but because three Muni lines come together there. That brings an unusually high number of pedestrians, including families with children, to the area. This hits me personally, because my brother raised his kids in West Portal and we used to go to that Walgreens, the library, and all the other shops and restaurants, regularly. On Wednesday, thank God, there wasn't a family on the sidewalk right at the location where the driver hit the Walgreens. But the crash should be treated with the same gravity, because in a location with so many pedestrians, transit vehicles, and traffic, it was just a matter of luck.
If another family had died Wednesday, so soon after March's catastrophe, the blame would have been rightfully leveled at the SFMTA board and the past and present supervisors. After the Pinto de Oliveira family was killed, SFMTA staff proposed a strong plan that was obviously inspired by the 40th Street Portal Station area on Philadelphia's trolley system (see lead image). This would have prevented through traffic with planters and re-prioritized the area back away from cars for pedestrians and transit vehicles. It would have minimized this game of Russian Roulette San Francisco leaders seem willing to play with the public.
But a handful of incredibly self-centered merchants who drive screamed and yelled about the loss of parking and through traffic. Their arguments were as heartless as they were spurious. But Supervisor Melgar, who was up for re-election, hit "pause" and created the intentionally misnomered West Portal Welcoming Committee to placate them. Thus ended the plan to make West Portal safe and to finally put transit first by banning driving on the trolley tracks.
Legally, Supervisor Melgar had zero authority to pause or nix the plan. That's actually on the SFMTA board, which could have approved the plan before or at any time after the committee was formed. But the board leadership decided to delay (and when has a delay in a safety plan ever lead to anything except its dissolution?) and then approved a neutered plan out of consideration for Melgar's election.
The irony: Melgar won re-election with a healthy margin. It seems unfathomable that had she stuck to her principles (whatever those actually are) she would have lost, especially considering those same merchants are still whinging about even the watered-down plan.
Either way, with new leadership on and coming to the SFMTA board, I can only hope it will stop being a rubber stamp for supervisors and the mayor and will start fulfilling its charter to act independently. Otherwise, what's the point in sitting on the board? Do its members just get a kick out of listening to that weird French guy rant about water engines during public comment?
I don't know the answer, I just know that good, strong board leadership can make a huge difference in the day-to-day lives of the people of San Francisco. We've seen that work: remember when past chair Cheryl Brinkman broke with the consensus, pushed back against Supervisors Peskin and Walton, and single-handedly saved Caltrain's operational funds?
On the other hand, when board leaders kowtow to staff, try too hard to get along with everybody, and make themselves subservient to political considerations, it may make everybody in the city family happier. But it has a downside: the system that causes these crashes remains in place. That gets people killed. Let's hope next year's board and incoming members can focus on that fact.
