San Francisco pedestrians have been subject to more car violence than most major cities in America. And so far, 2014 isn’t shaping up to be much better. With an unbelievable amount of pedestrian-related car accidents popping up in the new year, city officials, community groups, and the San Francisco Police Department teamed up last week to announce the potentially game-changing proposal to quell the high numbers of people being hit by cars.
With the recent announcement still fresh on our minds, I thought it might be of use to take a quick look at where we are in terms of our city’s dangerous streets, what San Francisco is doing to make them safer, and what this means for pedestrians going forward.
Where are we now?
San Francisco has a pedestrian safety problem. In 2000, 32 pedestrians died in car accidents, the highest in the last 14 years, and has averaged almost 18 pedestrian fatalities each year ever since. From Dec 31 until January 12, SF Weekly reported that there had been 167 pedestrians hit by cars (almost 12 people a day) with two people already dead (6-year-old Sophia Liu and an 86-year-old man). Both former Mayor Gavin Newsom and current Mayor Ed Lee have dipped their fingers in the pedestrian safety pond with little to no results. With 2014 kicking off so poorly, community groups, government officials, and the SFPD are just about foaming at the mouth for something, anything to change. Which is exactly what the Vision Zero plan is hoping to do.
What exactly is Vision Zero?
Announced last Thursday at a specially convened meeting of the Police Commission and the Board of Supervisor’s Neighborhood and Safety Committee, Vision Zero is a bold proposal to Mayor Ed Lee to eliminate all pedestrian deaths in the next 10 years. Based on ideas formulated in Copenhagen (one of the few cities in the world to see pedestrian deaths decrease as the population increased) and instituted in both New York and Chicago, Vision Zero seeks to accomplish a trio of simple, but extremely ambitious goals.
What are we looking at here?
Vision Zero is aimed at three main things: escalated city improvement, an increase in both the quality and quantity of traffic law enforcement by the SFPD, and a rigorous resident-education program. Let’s take a peek at the main features:
- The“Strategic Street Action Team” Sure, City Hall can talk up fixing the streets all they want, but if it’s all just bluster, who gives a damn? The Strategic Street Action Team would look to make progress on 24 traffic safety improvement projects in the next two years (many of these aimed at the SOMA and the Tenderloin – notoriously dangerous neighborhoods for people on foot or bike). The “improvement” wheelhouse would include better-lit intersections, safer crosswalks, protected bike lanes, and more.
- Make the police, police. Pedestrians get hit for a lot of reasons, but a main one is the fact that drivers break easily enforced laws and the SFPD doesn’t really do anything about it. Vision Zero calls on the SFPD to step up their game on better-policing the most dangerous intersections and the five main traffic violations that lead to collision: running red lights, failing to yield to pedestrians, speeding, driving over the “limit lines” (the thick white bars at stop signs/lights that tell drivers where they should stop) and finally, not yielding to oncoming traffic. Cops are going to be required (because for some reason they already aren’t) to be trained in bike and pedestrian laws and how to handle a pedestrian or bike collision
- Teach the people. City Supervisors John Avalos, Jane Kim, and Norman Yee (authors of the Vision Zero press release) look to use state funds to create an educational program for any and all city-employed drivers as well those that contract the city. This would see taxis, rideshare companies, delivery drivers and corporate bus operators and more, put through a hopefully rigorous program to help better the awareness of bikes and pedestrians.
What’s next?
Sadly, Vision Zero, for the moment, is just a well-planned and progressive proposal. For it to go any further Mayor Lee has to take the initiative and start working with City Hall to knock a few of these big ideas out. And though Lee’s already increased police motorcycle units by 12 percent this year to better police the 50 most dangerous intersections and announced an SFMTA-sponsored “Be Nice, Look Twice” pamphlet campaign, he’s made no formal statement yet about the Vision Zero proposal.
What does this all mean?
San Francisco is getting hit hard and San Francisco is scared. We’ve got some got some great government officials trying to do good, but the fate of Vision Zero and to some degree the safety of our many, many pedestrians are in the hands of Ed Lee. It’s up to him, and we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
Photo by No.Meds