Driver Kills Pedestrian at Arguello and Anza as City Continues to Drag Feet on Funded Safety Project
A tow-truck driver killed Yuan Jun Zhu, 80, a pedestrian who was crossing the street Monday afternoon in the Richmond District at Arguello Boulevard and Anza Street. Meanwhile, a safety project for Arguello that might have prevented the crash has festered for at least three years—but San Francisco’s politicians and officials keep passing the buck, making the same circular statements, and just not getting it done.
“The SFMTA is currently developing designs for protected bicycle corners at multiple intersections along Arguello,” wrote Matt Lasky, Livable Streets program manager for SFMTA, in an email sent Wednesday about the incident. “We will be vetting them through our SFMTA and interagency review processes in the next two months. Following that review, proposed designs and locations will be presented at a public hearing before we work with SF Public Works to finalize the design and construction plan.”
Haven’t we heard all this before?
As previously reported, in 2023, Assemblymember Phil Ting secured $1.2 million in state funds to build protected bike lanes on Arguello. District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan and then-District 2 Supervisor Catherine Stefani pledged $50,000 each from their district community funds towards the project. SFMTA itself pledged to match that with another $100,000 from its budget.
But then nothing happened.
“We’ve been calling for improvements on Arguello for years, and the clock is running out to take action—funding for the project will be lost if it’s not used soon,” said Christopher White, executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition.
“Phil Ting secured state funding for a safety project on Arguello more than three years ago, yet the project remains un-built,” said Streets for All San Francisco’s Robin Pam. “Supervisor Connie Chan called for more community input before proceeding.”
Streetsblog reached out to District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan, District 2 Supervisor Stephen Sherrill, and Mayor Lurie’s office demanding an explanation for why the city sat on this project. “As you know, Supervisor Chan has been supportive of this project from the beginning and continues to be so,” wrote a spokesperson for the the District 1 Supervisor. The mayor’s office said they are deferring to SFMTA. A spokesperson for SFMTA pointed out that they are daylighting corners in the area (as is required by state law).
But SFMTA’s response sidestepped the fact that “protected bike lanes and intersections on Arguello and Anza could have prevented this tragedy,” said Streets Forward’s Luke Bornheimer. “We need Mayor Lurie to lead by directing SFMTA to install protected bike lanes and intersections on Arguello Boulevard and Anza Street by the end of the year.”
Kristin Tièche, a long-time member of the recently dissolved Bicycle Advisory Committee, got a direct response from Chan on Monday’s carnage, which she forwarded: “Kristin, the pedestrian fatality incident is heartbreaking and SFMTA’s investigation report will give us more details about the facts that caused the fatality and will give us more information to make pedestrian safety improvements. The $1.3 million specifically for cyclist safety project is another way to make Arguello safer, and SFMTA has been making progress that will begin with intersection improvements. My team can provide more details shortly—Connie.”
But Tièche and other advocates told Streetsblog they’re skeptical that “more details” will materialize, as the reply above is more or less a repeat of past statements. “Chan, [former District 2 Supervisor] Stefani and the MTA had an opportunity to take action years ago,” she said.
“To my knowledge, the [$1.3 million in] funds allocated by Ting, Chan and Stefani in 2023 should still be available,” said Tièche. But “…to quote the SFMTA project manager responsible for the Arguello Safety Project in his email to me on September 17, ‘I don’t have any Arguello updates at this time.'”
Arguello remains on San Francisco’s high-injury network. A teenager was badly injured there in 2022. Cyclist Ethan Boyes was killed on Arguello by a drunk driver in 2023. And the SF Standard‘s Griffin Gaffney was seriously injured when a reckless driver swerved into the bike lane in front of Temple Emanu-El just last year. Now add a dead senior to the list of casualties caused by San Francisco’s failed leadership.
“In San Francisco, we remain in a state of stagnation because our leaders cannot envision a more livable, safer, greener, healthier, climate-resilient city in their myopic, car-shaped brains,” said Tièche. “While cities like Paris make leaps and bounds to protect their residents, San Francisco continues to do nothing but make excuses.”
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