A hit-and-run driver killed a cyclist over the weekend on Alemany Boulevard at Naglee Avenue in San Francisco. From a statement from the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition:
As we wait to learn more details about the person who was killed this week, what we do know is that Alemany Blvd is a nightmare for people to ride on, and has been for years.
As a wide four-lane road with 30mph posted speed limits, Alemany is unsurprisingly a known high speed corridor – in fact, SFMTA placed one of the automated speed enforcement cameras on Alemany between Naglee and Farragut, near where this crash happened, and data shows that 27% of people were driving more than 10mph over the posted speed limit before the implementation of the speed enforcement cameras. And while the cameras are proving effective at lowering reckless speeds, automated enforcement alone is not sufficient to protect people’s lives.
Back in 2017, Streetsblog covered the death of Moises Chavez at Silver and Alemany Boulevard, just a few minutes by bike from the location of this weekend's tragedy. A driver killed Chavez as he was riding his bike across the intersection. Comments from that tragedy still apply:
But Russell Ibrahim Blank summed it up perfectly when he posted on the San Francisco Bike Ride Crew Facebook page "Damn, look at that intersection. It was designed for cars to speed through, not with pedestrian safety (or, in this case, a person on a bike) in mind." Or as Nathan Woody posted: "Terrifying looking intersection. How many is that this year?"
The only thing that has changed on this stretch of Alemany is the addition of more paint and a speed camera. But as Streetsblog has pointed out over and over again, speed cameras are one tool for reducing reckless driving. But they don't actually force drivers to slow down and pay attention; they just act as a deterrent. The city still needs concrete interventions, such as physically protected bike lanes and intersections.
More from SFBike:
Alemany Blvd is the main designated bike route between the south and southwest of the city into the heart of San Francisco. Yet west of Rousseau, Alemany bike infrastructure consists of paint-only bike lanes for the entire length of the corridor through Mission Terrace and Outer Mission, which we know fails to protect people biking, particularly along wide roads with high speeds. The existing painted lanes on Alemany are an insufficient facility for people biking, especially in a part of the city where residents are disastrously underserved by All Ages and Abilities facilities.
And the consequences of this unsafe road design have been tragic – since 2017, there have been dozens of traffic-related collisions resulting in injuries or death involving people biking or walking along Alemany in District 11.
We have long called for improvements not just to Alemany, but also many other streets on the High Injury Network and inadequately protected bikeways in southern San Francisco that have been putting residents in those neighborhoods at risk of serious injury or death for many years.
The city knows all this. That's why SFMTA has made legitimate improvements to short sections of Alemany where it hugs I-280 and there are no political considerations because there are no houses, driveways, or parking spots to take. This shows that the city has the capability to make all of Alemany safe using inexpensive, quick, concrete interventions. They just don't.
The residential parts of Alemany that could actually be useful for cyclists and safer for pedestrians, especially for connecting to BART, need protected lanes too. A little more from SFBike:
Today, in the wake of another preventable death along this corridor, we demand that city leaders direct the SFMTA to accelerate implementation of street safety and traffic calming projects in D11, and prioritize projects that adhere to All Ages and Abilities standards, to ensure that everyone in San Francisco can get where they need to go by their chosen mode without risking their lives.
Are Mayor Daniel Lurie (contact) and District 11 Supervisor Chyanne Chen (contact) willing to push for this? Putting in protected bike lanes on all of Alemany is going to be a tough fight, but it would save lives and allow more people to take more trips without driving. All of the houses on Alemany have garages to store at least one car off-street, so there's no rationale for leaving this deadly status quo.
