District 5 Supervisor Bilal Mahmood applied some of the first paint that will eventually cover curbs in the North of the Panhandle neighborhood in his district, and then throughout San Francisco. He rolled on the red at Hayes and Broderick during a press event Monday afternoon about efforts to make streets safer.
"We have the money. We have the will," said Mahmood about plans to daylight intersections.
From a release from Walk San Francisco:
Every day, an average of three people are hit while walking in San Francisco. The vast majority of these crashes happen in the intersection.
One of the best ways to make sure people are safe at intersections is called ‘daylighting.’ Daylighting prevents parking at certain parts of the intersection to ensure clear sightlines for drivers and pedestrians.
When there aren’t clear sightlines, it is very dangerous. Pedestrians are forced to step into the crosswalk without being able to see if it’s safe to do so. Daylighting helps drivers, too – and not just with seeing pedestrians, but also being able to see approaching vehicles.
Mahmood explained that SFMTA was painting curbs to comply with A.B. 413, a state law passed in 2023, that, with some exceptions, bans parking within 20 feet of a crosswalk. But SFMTA leadership made the decision earlier this year not to cite drivers for breaking this law unless the curb is painted red to avoid confusion. By doing so, the agency obliged its crews to paint every corner red within the 20-foot daylighting zones.
Viktoriya Wise, SFMTA Director of Streets and a speaker at the event, said the city will use all available tools to make streets safer. "This started with kids, with daylighting around schools," she said, adding that almost all of the intersection curbs around San Francisco schools are now painted red, since the city decided that should be the paint shop's priority. "And on August 5th, we will start issuing citations from our speed cameras."
"This will be a huge win for safety," said Walk San Francisco's Marta Lindsey of the daylighting effort.
That said, there are concerns that painting curbs red won't accomplish daylighting on its own, considering how many drivers already use existing red zones as short-term parking. A neighbor who passed by remarked that delivery trucks will just ignore the red paint and park there anyway.
"The City's daylighting efforts pail in comparison to New York City, Hoboken, and Jersey City, and other cities who have placed planters, bike corrals, large rocks, plastic posts, or other objects in daylighting spaces—also known as 'hardened daylighting'—to significantly increase safety by making it impossible to park a car there," said Streets Forward's Luke Bornheimer.
Mahmood told Streetsblog the paint will be a big improvement in the short term. The data seems to confirm that, with a 14 percent drop in collisions in the Tenderloin neighborhood, the first in his district to get the red curbs. He promised to push for hardened daylighting in the future. "Next time we will."
