Going by headlines in the mainstream media, a new safety feature on Kirkham Street in San Francisco is "causing confusion," "driving motorists crazy," and even making "the street more dangerous."
I went there Monday expecting to see some driver drama.
But after standing at Kirkham and 9th for about a half hour watching drivers slow down, pass one another carefully, and even wave, I was bored stiff. In reality, the "neck-down"—also called a pinch point or choker—is calming traffic exactly as it's supposed to.
"Right now I only have data from the start of the trial on Oct. 30 thru Dec 31, 2024, but no collisions reported during that window," wrote an official from SFMTA.
The neck-down installed on Kirkham is nothing experimental or new. It's a ubiquitous safety treatment used in cities that have better safety records than San Francisco, including London, as seen in the image above.
But somehow "mainstream" journalists seem bent on finding whingey drivers who just complain about everything new. One example is Jay Stone, some rando interviewed in the SF Chronicle about it: “Just look at what’s going on here, it’s ridiculous,” Stone told the Chronicle.
I asked around and found that the dry cleaner on the corner doesn't like the neck-down either and insisted it made the street more complicated and annoying.
"You know what's a whole lot more than annoying? Getting plowed down in the street by a speeding driver—and what’s really unacceptable is that more lives were lost to traffic violence last year than any other year since adopting Vision Zero," wrote Claire Amable, Director of Advocacy for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition.
Meanwhile, after my observations of the neck-down in operation I didn't hear a single horn or shout or revving engine. One driver failed to yield but the driver coming the other way waited and a collision was easily avoided.
More importantly, everybody drove slowly and carefully—something not often observed in San Francisco.
"Dangerous speeding threatens our lives and our communities. With speed as the #1 cause of severe and fatal traffic crashes in San Francisco, we should be celebrating solutions like this and asking for more," wrote Walk S.F.'s Marta Lindsey.
If Streetsblog had any quibbles with the design, it's the usual one: that SFMTA should bolster it with more concrete. At some point a texting, drunk, or otherwise errant driver is bound to crash into the metal sign seen above which will just bend over or sheer off. It'd be better if egregiously reckless drivers hit something that disables their cars and stops them from killing someone.
But this is certainly a step in the right direction for safety.
So will there be more neck-downs in San Francisco's future? "We’re collecting data and conducting outreach to inform possible other locations down the line, but nothing set in stone for a future location yet," wrote SFMTA's spokesperson.
