In the week from February 27 to March 6, San Francisco traffic violence claimed the lives of three people, including a small child. In addition, on Friday a truck driver ran over a cyclist in the Inner Sunset, crushing her leg.
Even for San Francisco, it was a week of unparalleled carnage. "All collisions are preventable with slower streets and better infrastructure that reduce or eliminate conflicts between cars and vulnerable road users," reminded the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, in its statement.
Mayor Daniel Lurie responded to all the horror with an Instagram post, announcing a meeting with all the relevant departments for street safety, including of course, SFMTA.
In response, Streetsblog sent the following email to Mayor Lurie's office:
Great video. But is Mayor Lurie willing to go to the mat for a concrete, citywide street safety transformation? Because just turning this back over to SFMTA is not going to work. We know that from the complete failure of the original Vision Zero resolution made over ten years ago.
As you know, the mayor's video was in response to last week's traffic violence--a child was killed by a driver in Mission Rock, a man was crushed to death by a driver on the sidewalk in North Beach, a driver killed a pedestrian in the Outer Mission, and a truck driver hit a cyclist in the Inner Sunset. She lost her leg.
For over a decade now, this carnage has continued with SFMTA doing spot improvements or upgrades to a street here or there in response. They are almost always installed in a piecemeal fashion after a horrible tragedy: a driver killed Kate Slattery on Howard, so SFMTA installed a protected bike lane on a few blocks of Howard. Then a driver killed Tess Rothstein on a different part of Howard, so SFMTA installed a few more blocks of protected bike lane. A driver mows down two pedestrians at Polk/Hayes and SFMTA fixes one more block, but leaves the Polk Safety project unfinished. And so on and so on.
Meanwhile, I went to Paris in 2023. I hadn't been there since 2013. That's a city that has completely transformed (and is still at it) by installing concrete barrier-protected bike lanes and pedestrian safety features throughout. Mayor Hidalgo committed to that citywide transformation.
Here in San Francisco, there's nothing on that scale. Nothing even close. And the projects we have planned either fester (ex, Arguello) or get watered down or eliminated (Better Market Street, Franklin, West Portal). We still haven't even finished the protected bike lanes on Valencia. SFMTA even removes successful safety features if neighbors/a supervisor complain.
With so much carnage, is the mayor now ready to commit to a Paris-level transformation of SF's streets? Or are we, again, going to do a few paint-and-plastic spot fixes where these tragedies occurred and then return to business as usual?
An official with Lurie's office responded with the following: "The mayor’s street safety executive directive outlines his plans here, and we’ll of course, share more as we work on the items outlined in the plan."
Streets Forward urges the mayor to commit to specifics, such as establishing citywide bike and scooter parking in daylighting zones, or implementing citywide "no turn on red," something SFMTA and the mayor have refused to support.
As Streetsblog has pointed out, the mayor's existing directive contains no such specifics and is, in effect, another plan to make a plan. From Streetsblog's view, there is no need to study and analyze the problem—not when solutions that work in other cities are readily available. Speed cameras are one such example that is finally up and running in San Francisco. But there aren't enough of them. And speed cameras alone won't solve traffic violence.
If you think it's long-past time for the Mayor of San Francisco to give specific and sweeping instructions to SFMTA and other city agencies, let him know.
