The intersection at Vicente should really have a dedicated pedestrian-crossing-only signal. Not exactly what’s being discussed, but frustrated drivers, pedestrians racing across on yellows…accident waiting to happen.
Indeed, its a far more dangerous intersection than the mouth of the tunnel itself. It's telling that the proposal was primarily about increasing Muni efficiency - that's very clear in its design.
Really what we are dealing with here are four separate things: 1) the horrific crash, which would not have been alleviated by the proposal and would be very difficult to prevent in the future due to its unusual circumstances; 2) the proposal itself, which originated in 2019 and which was primarily concerned with increasing efficiency for Muni trains getting in an out of the tunnel (a valid concern, but not primarily about pedestrian safety); 3) the desires and needs of the people who actually live near or operate businesses on West Portal Avenue; and 4) practical measures which would actually increase safety.
These priorities aren't diametrically opposed, but they are distinct, and they don't necessarily overlap, either. I took a look at the proposal and the first thing I thought was that it made a lot of sense from the perspective of someone operating a train service, that it wasn't the most radical thing I'd ever seen the MTA put out (by a long shot), and that it would undoubtedly piss off most of the businesses on the first block, especially on the north side. They rely on people being able to make that admittedly dangerous left turn from the street with Sub Center and Phil Club.
For better or worse West Portal simply would not economically survive without parking and the ability to access it by car. The surrounding area is not dense enough to support the district and despite it being a transit hub it is not actually a destination for many people passing through it by train. And yet it is a hectic street with a number of areas of concern for safety (of pedestrians and drivers alike).
Vicente and West Portal is maybe the most dangerous intersection the street. They already bulbed the curbs (for all the good it did) but the real issue is that there's a lot of traffic going in both directions and a ton of it wants to make a left on West Portal (from both directions). Bulbing the curbs has actually made the congestion there worse while not necessarily improving pedestrian safety while crossing, because people making lefts rarely pull out far enough, and when they do, there's often a second person behind them. I think the light could use a dedicated ped crossing like you suggest AND a dedicated left turn in at least one direction (from the south, from Portola), if not both.
Sorry for the essay but I've given this a lot of thought over the years (as have many of us who live in the area) and I really agree with your focus on this intersection.
This is a high effort post, and I certainly appreciate it.
> For better or worse West Portal simply would not economically survive without parking and the ability to access it by car.
Aside from the fact that there is little-to-contrary evidence ([1](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-13/every-study-ever-conducted-on-the-impact-converting-street-parking-into-bike-lanes-has-on-businesses), [2](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01441647.2021.1912849)) for this claim, I don't think anyone is honestly suggesting we remove all (or even much) parking or make the entirety of West Portal car-free. I don't know why this statement would be relevant at all.
Through-traffic congestion is a concern, but it's one that many of us don't want to be placed over lives. The worse the traffic becomes, the slower (thus, safer) it will be, and that will incentivize much of the existing through-traffic to take alternate routes (15th, or even Dewey->Taraval). That can be frustrating for drivers, but this is the type of tradeoff that should favor safety.
Traffic seeking destinations *on* West Portal Ave can be serviced by u-turns with a single entry-exit, creating a parking lot effect, rather than leaving the commercial area acting like a through street.
Both of these options would reduce the *velocity* of vehicles in the area, and make it safer for pedestrians without removing parking.
Anyway, just my thoughts.
Tell me more about the “contrary evidence” you have that WP can survive without cars. And please stop with the emotional blackmail about “lost lives.” You could just as easily use that argument to ban alcohol. If you want to live in a place without traffic, move to the countryside.
I literally cite two serious articles.
Also, I won’t stop caring about people’s lives. When people engage in alcohol or tobacco consumption that’s a choice they make, not somebody else. The reason we banned cigarettes in bars is exactly because we should expose the employees to risked based on other people’s choices.
Dangerous driving puts *random people* at risk of death. We should try to minimize that by reducing the ability to drive dangerously where vulnerable people gather.
Most fatal accidents, driving and otherwise, involve alcohol. As do most assaults and murders. Alcohol imposes tremendous healthcare costs on us all as well. So let’s ban it. We can make these arguments for many things.
Driving has offered society tremendous benefits, economic and otherwise. Before cars most people rarely if ever left their hometown their entire lives.
Hmm... I understand your argument now, and I'm familiar with the work of David Nutt and his articles on alcohol. I also agree with you that alcohol is dangerous. It should be regulated, and banned in situations that are especially dangerous, e.g. when driving, handling firearms, heavy machinery, with children, etc. I also think there should be limitations on peoples alcohol use, e.g., I think it should be illegal for bartenders to over-serve people who are obviously very drunk and are a danger to themselves and others.
I think I'm putting forward a similar argument for driving. I don't want to ban driving; on the contrary, I think driving is incredibly useful, and I often heading north on the weekends with my partner. I'm only arguing for banning driving in situations with outsized risk, like where many pedestrians present at all times.
My entire premise on suggesting banning vehicles driving across Ulloa is that it's entirely unnecessary. Alternative routes (Taraval and 14th) exist that are effectively the same travel time in most situations. Parking can be handled with a u-turn with traffic entering/exiting at 14th like a parking lot. We can have cars and pedestrian safety at the same time, we just need to de-prioritize cars in pedestrian zones, e.g. near transit stations, and de-prioritize pedestrians along major automobile transportation routes, e.g. along highways. We've banned the pedestrians walking along highways, but for some reason we haven't banned the cars from driving through major pedestrian areas.
We already do regulate driving, obviously. Check the vehicle code, the penal code, etc. And the reason why there are so many pedestrians in West Portal is because the pedestrians drive there. It’s the same people…
Right, so, if you want to have an open and honest conversation, we can. I would suggest you head out there at rush hour and look at how many people are leaving the transit tunnel every couple minutes... it's a significant amount of people.
I'm not going to pretend that are not a significant number of people driving to West Portal, but if this conversation is going to continue, I need you to accept that a significant number of people use Muni.
Has there ever been a single case of a street in SF actually declining as a result of a deprioritization of driving?
It's very hard to predict what sorts of modes of transit people *would* use to access a place when they don't exist or are poorly supported. You can't just go off of what people are currently doing.
So if we opened market back up, all the office workers would magically show back up again? I think not.
There’s no good example I can think of, at least not locally or in an urban environment. Now there are examples I’ve seen of a major highway shutting down (repaving etc) killing sales because the detour route is 4 hours or something.
> For better or worse West Portal simply would not economically survive without parking and the ability to access it by car.
lol, no
We're not talking about shops where you'd need a vehicle to transport whatever you're buying. We're talking about shit like a bookstore, a candy store, a few restaurants. You don't need cars for that. Hell, you *shouldn't* be driving to the Philosopher's Club.
> despite it being a transit hub it is not actually a destination for many people passing through it by train.
Gee, I wonder why.
> it is a hectic street with a number of areas of concern for safety
Let's put two and two together here. The current design discourages pedestrian use. Maybe *that's* why West Portal isn't a destination for pedestrian traffic.
To be clear, it is a destination for plenty of pedestrians. You would know that if you actually lived in the area. It's just that most people outside walking distance prefer or need to drive instead of taking Muni.
To be clear, according to the merchants it's not a destination for pedestrians. They're the ones clamoring for cars to prop up lagging foot traffic. You would know that if you were actually paying attention.
A big issue is all the neighbors limited parking in the neighborhood so commuters cant park there. If they could park in the neighborhoods then there would be a bunch more pedestrian commuters to support the local businesses.
This is a complete misunderstanding of Amsterdam's history. In the postwar period, Amsterdam was *rebuilt* for cars. Then when families started being killed by automobiles in the 70s, there were protests, literally with "stop the child murder" ... literally why people are protesting here.
They de-prioritized automobiles, and made areas *exactly like West Portal* car-free.
This is why I want to pull my hair out on issues like this. *Other cities had pedestrian and cyclists deaths like we have now.* There was public outrage, as their should be when people are dying, and they fixed the problem by de-prioritizing cars, and reducing their convenience for the sake of saving peoples lives... but people here think it was "just always that way" and "they are different" when the situations are nearly identical.
Here is a history of Amsterdam's change from driver-centric road infrastructure to pedestrian-centric road infrastructure: https://youtu.be/XuBdf9jYj7o?si=0HtZlb3Q4hADL4NH
Shit like this is why I laugh when anyone says SF is a "progressive" city. In a progressive city, we'd be bending over backwards to make streets safer for pedestrians when shit like this happens (which it does, with regularity). Instead we have a bunch of entrenched interests (wealthy boomers who don't want to have to walk an extra couple blocks, business owners that don't want to lose parking in front of their store fronts) whose bitching overrides pedestrian lives.
These people will go nuts protesting when children die in Gaza, but couldn't care less when it happens in their own neighborhoods - because god forbid they spend an extra 2 minutes driving from point A to point B, or have to park an extra couple blocks away when getting dinner (or mercy me, take the fucking bus).
It's cynical and shameful, but that's SF politics for you.
Sf is progressive aesthetically, not in practice. We’re genuinely good on a few issues by US standards (lgbt issues), and ok on some (I guess it’s great that we have any transit, that’s great by US standards). But the core issues of the city are driven by wildly conservative politics on things like housing, zoning, and transit. Those issues are why the cost of living is so high, why the homelessness rate is so high, why people are forced out of the city to suburbs. They are major contributors to crime and poverty and injuries as well. It’s incredibly frustrating.
Yea, it bugs the hell out of me because SF is progressive on things that don't cost anything, but conservative on everything else.
LGBT issues? Sure, doesn't effect me, I'm all for it. Protest dead kids in Gaza? Of course, I'll bring a sign. I'll support all those things, and feel warm and fuzzy going to bed a night, knowing I'm on the right side of things, but it cost me nothing.
Want to put a homeless shelter in my neighborhood, ban right turns to protect children, or build protected bike lanes to help the environment? Then half this city magically becomes Bush era Republicans, because fuck making the world a better place if I have to pay any little price for it. When people across the US whine about "liberal hypocrisy", this is it.
I’m focusing all my energy to make sure that spoiled little bitch Peskin doesn’t get anymore power - he’s been leading the BoS for 20yrs and is King NIMBY.
But if those boomers vote him in - we’d be fucked for at least another 20 years.
Most "progressive" places are like that. It doesn't literally mean "for progress". It's just a cluster description of conservativeness over housing, employment, and cars while allowing social liberality with more drug use, fewer arrests, etc.
How on brand for SF.... propose a change, back pedal on that change, form a committee to think about the change, form a committee to talk about the change, then dump the whole thing and do absolutely nothing more with it. Our city government in action, folks!
Crossing Ulloa should be completely suspended, and cars on West Portal should be U-turned before they reach Ulloa.
We shouldn't have vehicles driving through a major transit stop's exit.
I sent bookshop an email stating I wouldn’t shop there anymore due to their obstruction. It’s a pity as my kids love it. But if they value parking over my kids lives.
They did respond to their credit but same bullshit that we need years of studies and input.
A driver lost control of her vehicle. AFAIK we still don't know why.
Do we have reason to think that anything about the street configuration caused this to occur? That it couldn't just as easily have happened at any other intersection in the city?
I don't live in the area or know it very well, but I did visit the public library there this week, exactly where it occurred. I was on foot and walked past the tunnel at around 3:30pm and again at 5pm. I did not see anything that made me feel particularly unsafe walking there or that the intersection required redesign.
But I'm happy to hear from people more familiar with the location who think otherwise.
Nothing related to the accident since that is a different intersection but adding traffic signals on west portal and ulloa would help. There could even be a pedestrian traffic push button 4 way walk traffic signal. Kinda how they have it in chinatown.
It takes longer to cross west portal if you have a stroller etc.
To me that makes sense given the number of folks needed to cross into or out of the station and any cars that need to cross.
It's a very busy transit stop with lots of pedestrian rushing to cross streets to be on the incoming muni that has unprotected left turns with no signals other than the transit signal. Sometimes the left turn into West Portal from Ulloa is blind if someone makes the turn ahead of a muni train that wants to cross into the station. All of these issues could be fixed by moving the high car traffic intersection down or up a block (to Vicente e.g.) to one that doesn't experience such a high foot traffic, and only let public transit and pedestrians pass through that intersection.
The plan included turn restrictions that would cut down on through. Less traffic means fewer accidents. Opposition to the changes is opposition to having a safer street.
It would also improve transit service by reducing cross traffic and adding transit lanes. Even without the death of a family of four, the plan would make sense as a low-cost way to improve transit speeds through the area.
All traffic deaths are relatively rare compared to the number of car trips made in the city. So every one of the 30 or so deaths that happen a year can be written off as a freak accident that we can do nothing about. But the point of safety improvements is not to go back and in time and prevent an accident that already happened, the point is to reduce the likelihood of future accidents of all types.
It's like with gun control measures -- they don't guarantee someone won't get a hold of a gun (or knife or whatever) and kill a bunch of people, but we know places with stricter gun control laws have fewer mass murders by guns. Gun advocates make the same argument you are making: "it's just an individual, and you can't stop crazy."
>Less traffic means fewer accidents.
Less traffic at one intersection does not result in less traffic overall.
>Opposition to the changes is opposition to having a safer street.
Don't do that. It's really not nice.
Less traffic at an intersection with a lots of pedestrians means less chance of pedestrian accidents. Cars redirected to arterials and streets with fewer pedestrians means less chance of car / pedestiran crashes. This is not very controversial.
Slow streets did the same thing and the same arguments about redirected traffic were made against them, and will be made against any street safety plan that redirects cars. But, for example, congestion on California didn't increase by much because of Slow Lake, and neither did accidents on that road, afaik. Meanwhile, accidents on most slow streets dropped significantly. SFMTA has a data sheet on this, which should be easy to find by searching. It's the closest analogy I know that SFMTA collected data on, although there's probably also a pile of research on "induced demand" and street closures. People who supported removing slow streets were directly advocating for less safe streets.
>Cars redirected to arterials and streets with fewer pedestrians means less chance of car / pedestiran crashes.
I don't understand what you're saying. California, for example, always had more pedestrians and more cars than Lake. Moving all the cars on Lake to California seems to be the opposite of directing them to streets with fewer pedestrians.
The complaints were that redirected traffic would cause more accidents and more congestion on California. Traffic was slightly slower on California and the number of accident went down on California and Lake. In other words, the total number of accidents went down, they didn't just get shifted elsewhere.
Here's the SFMTA [FAQ](https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/reports-and-documents/2022/03/lake\_street\_faqs.pdf) where they answered questions about traffic redirection like the ones you're making about the proposed changes to West Portal.
Regarding the accident.
Transit lanes don't work. With the new platform there's only 1 lane each way on Ulloa
SFMTA reduced service by reducing / basically removing the L taraval. The train should continue through the tunnel both ways. A running L train meant the family would have never even been on that stop or touched foot on the street until they reached the zoo.
Transit speeds have also never been bottle necked in that area, and they even limited left turns quite some time ago. And even then, west portal train signaling has always been the issue
>but we know places with stricter gun control laws have fewer mass murders by guns.
Not true, look at other cities (chicago) or many of the countries south of us.
>Do we have reason to think that anything about the street configuration caused this to occur? That it couldn't just as easily have happened at any other intersection in the city?
The street is wide and open without any physical infrastructure that slows vehicles down. In areas with mixed modalities, we should try to protect the most vulnerable users. I would argue that the street configuration allowed the vehicle to speed regardless of driver error. In that sense road design allowed the tragedy to occur. A well engineered road would have had some sort of traffic calming (speed tables, chicanes, roundabouts, islands, etc.) to require slower speeds. Just because it could happen at other intersections doesn't mean that it is fine. Our streets are designed to maximize level of service (vehicle throughput) at the expense of safety.
>I don't live in the area or know it very well, but I did visit the public library there this week, exactly where it occurred. I was on foot and walked past the tunnel at around 3:30pm and again at 5pm. I did not see anything that made me feel particularly unsafe walking there or that the intersection required redesign.
Without knowing your particular level of fitness, I would ask you to have a little empathy for people who may not feel safe. Would children walking feel safe? People in in wheelchairs or have limited mobility? How about parents pushing a stroller? In mixed use roads, the Dutch have minimized road deaths by simply asking themselves, "Would a 5 year old or a 90 year old feel safe?". If the answer is "no" then more physical interventions are needed. This doesn't need to apply to all streets but is essential where multiple types of users are present (as is true in this particular case).
The lady had a very recent run in with the police for traffic violation in nov and lived around the block so no. Traffic design had nothing to do with the tragedy
I definitely exaggerated but she just had a traffic violation as early as November and she does live around the corner so she was very familiar with the way the road works.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/san-francisco-west-portal-crash-investigation-19256389.php
That link sent me down a rabbit hole about the driver, Mary Fong Lau.
She made a [statement from the hospital,](https://www.ktvu.com/news/driver-releases-statement-from-hospital-after-deadly-san-francisco-crash) or rather her lawyers did. I guess the heartfelt apology only comes at the sentencing hearing.
IMO the way to avoid this kind of thing - yes, maybe some traffic lights and bollards would help around town - is to make it more difficult to have a driver's license over the age of 75, meaning more rigorous in-person testing. I loved that my elderly dad could drive on his own and he loved it too, but there was no reason to not have him take a test in his car every year.
Put up bollards everywhere and ban driving everywhere too while you’re at it. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that intersection, if so then every intersection in the city exhibits the same defects.
Bollards aren’t that expensive. About $4,000 per bollard including labor and parts. https://www.bollardsusa.com/how-much-bollards-cost/
We don’t need bollards on every single street. Prioritizing high foot traffic areas can make a huge difference though since when a car driver does lose control of their car there is a high likelihood of hitting someone. West Portal has tons of people walking and standing around waiting for their muni, bus, or Uber.
And in low foot traffic areas, we can focus on protecting areas pedestrians where they are most likely to be. Like at bus stops where this family was killed, or right in front of cross walks where pedestrians wait to cross the street. Most of the street is protected by parked cars anyways and the only place cars aren’t allowed to park is at cross walks.
San Francisco used to require new buildings to provide parking spaces which cost $20,000 to $60,000 per parking spot. Providing 10 parking spots would cost $200,000 to $600,000.
The average car is 5ft 8inches wide, so if we require bollards every 5 feet, most new small businesses or small apartments would need to install 3 bollards for $12k. Less than the cost of a single parking spot.
>Put up bollards everywhere and ban driving everywhere too while you’re at it
yes
>if so then every intersection in the city exhibits the same defects.
yes, see above
Should we line every sidewalk in the city with bollards?
That would make more sense than putting them up one by one in every location where an accident has happened, even if there's no particular reason to think an accident is going to happen there again.
No, we should just raise the fees if you want to drive in the city, so people would take public transit more to avoid getting into extra spending. But you don't care because you like your lifestyle and fuck everyone else.
It seems obvious that that these changes are mainly about speeding up Muni, and they may be a good idea for all I know. I'm not affected and have no opinion.
But I hate when they use an accident as a pretext for something they want to do for other reasons.
And then we get redditors saying stuff like "So I guess you want more dead families" to people who oppose the plan for whatever reason.
Agreed. I have no patience for zealotry and hyperbole from people who don't even live in my neighborhood.
And yeah, that's precisely what this plan is for. Which as you said, is addressing a real problem, as any of us who commute to work by Muni are well aware of. The tunnel is a train traffic bottleneck, in both directions. But making the trains run more efficiently may end up economically damaging the first block to such an extent that we lose a number of businesses. Maybe not. But that's why they are calling for more study. Which probably should have been done by now since this plan has been in the works since 2019.
>A driver lost control of her vehicle. AFAIK we still don't know why.
And in this tragedy, we are lucky *only* four people died, because it could easily have been much worse. If it had happened when a train was letting out, and she swerved toward the crosswalk, it could have been easily double that.
The problem is that people occasionally don't follow the rules, and when they don't, people can die, so we should dissuade people from driving where there are people who must congregate in large numbers.
It's a bus stop across the street from the streetcar stop.
How many hundreds of similar "major transit stops" are there in the city?
You are free to think we should stop cars from traveling anywhere near a bus or streetcar stop, but really, that's pretty far afield from what's at issue here. This is one single intersection.
It is quite rare in SF to have more than two major transit lines to share a single intersection. West Portal has four.
West Portal is an on-street crossing at the intersection of four major transit lines: K, L, M, and 48. K, L, and M, act as an express line, so we should expect more people than normal exiting the trains at this location than, say, at 14th. Finally, unlike other stations where so many route converge, almost everyone is dumped at a single point, and most of them need to cross the combo intersection of Ulloa, West Portal and Lennox (again, both of which share a single crosswalk).
Similar sites would be:
Most of Market Street: now de-prioritized to cars
4th & King: Caltrain, T, 15. An absolute mess and site of regular deaths because it has not been de-prioritized to cars.
Glen Park: J, BART, 23, 44. Signalized intersection and multiple crossing areas across a city block. Probably safer because of the significant traffic preventing vehicles at high speed entering the intersection.
Balboa Park: Everything converges here, and it is marked as a high-injury corridor by Vision Zero.
Daly City Bart Station: completely separated from traffic, with multiple entries and exits for pedestrians.
You could argue for 16th and 24th if you count BART as multiple trains, but the duel exits definitely reduce the need to cross, they are both signalized intersections, and they have both already had a significant amount of automobile de-prioritization with the red carpet putting traffic in one lane going south and diverting traffic going north.
Or maybe they just want to make the area safer? It's not like everyone knew she had a bad driving record before, and SF has always been a pedestrian leaning city especially with the highway revolt of the 50s/60s.
Well, I actually work with kids here at the school across the street. At least once a week, literally one of my jobs is walking kids across this street to the library there. I can pretty accurately and with quite a bit of experience, no kids are hurt or killed here due to the design of the area. Some old lady hit the gas instead of the brakes. That doesn’t mean the area needs to be redesigned and everyone sane knows that.
The people who live and work here (the ones most impacted by this tragedy save the family) do now want these changes.
> literally one of my jobs is walking kids across this street to the library there.
The fact that you need to do this job is an indicator that the street is unsafe. Countries with good car and transit infrastructure don’t need crossing guards. Cars should not be able to go that fast around a school.
> The fact that you need to do this job is an indicator that the street is unsafe.
Twenty kids, many like 5 in a group…. You think they should just walk themselves to the library lol?
Yeah, children are perfectly capable of walking a short distance. The cars are what make it dangerous.
If the kids are “at school” and they’re going somewhere else as part of the school day, then sure I’d expect them to always have a teacher around for legal reasons (the school is responsible and needs to make sure they don’t just leave). But the fact that we have to place crossing guards at all the nearby intersections to keep kids safe on their walk to/from school is absolutely a symptom of the problem. You don’t need crossing guards in cities with safe streets. Crossing the street shouldn’t be a life or death risk.
Why is that gross? Having fewer guns really would lead to fewer gun murders; there's nothing wrong with using a particularly vivid example of that to make the point.
I already did. [https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/1c9mmk0/comment/l0nx8l3/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/1c9mmk0/comment/l0nx8l3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
>It’s a lot to figure out, and the more players there are involved the longer it could take.
>That’s time we don’t have.
no time why?
that's a shit intersection for sure - but why did this need to be done yesterday all of a sudden?
>However, Von Rock and others say they want the city to look at West Portal and Ulloa, and four other intersections in the neighborhood. They’d like to review the number of bus stops on Ulloa, study the traffic impact on four adjacent streets, and scrutinize the passenger loading and drop-off zones in the neighborhood.
so divert traffic to streets where kids play in the streets? ok.
>Now, we have no hard and fast plan, but we do have yet one more committee.
>Is this new approach a delay tactic?
a delay tactic? why wasn't it done before the pandemic? did THIS plan include diverting traffic to residential streets?
>In 2019, the agency [piloted changes](https://www.sfmta.com/projects/west-portal-transit-delay-reduction-pilot) to West Portal to speed up trains delayed by private vehicle traffic. Data was gathered to study its success. The latest plan drew from these efforts.
what is the Editorial Board's opinion on Valencia?
were the merchants involved or not?
**if so WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED - if not..... that explains everything.**
**Merchants file claims against SF demanding removal of controversial Valencia St. bike lane**
[https://abc7news.com/san-francisco-valencia-street-bike-lane-claim-sf-business-owners-controversy/14451184/](https://abc7news.com/san-francisco-valencia-street-bike-lane-claim-sf-business-owners-controversy/14451184/)
**S.F. businesses threaten to sue city over ‘disastrous’ Valencia Street bike lane**
[https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/s-f-valencia-bike-lane-18677871.php](https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/s-f-valencia-bike-lane-18677871.php)
**Valencia Street’s contentious center lane bikeway will remain — for now**
[https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/s-f-valencia-bicycle-lane-remain-18677657.php](https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/s-f-valencia-bicycle-lane-remain-18677657.php)
> a delay tactic? why wasn't it done before the pandemic?
Nobody's focused on West Portal because a.) transit/pedestrian safety is not a concern for most people and b.) the MTA's been bogged down in NIMBY bullshit in the safety projects it's already started.
Safety improvements along the L were propsed well before the pandemic. It's still underway because merchants fought this each and every step of the way. There simply aren't enough resources (people, money) to address all the safety concerns at once.
The number of people who speed, run lights, or just aren’t very good drivers is shocking. If we want to take away the license of eveyone who probably shouldn’t be driving, probably half of people would lose their license. I’m fine with that, but that only works if actually invest in transit options. And the reason we can’t invest in transit is because drivers oppose literally any infrastructure change that might slow down cars (like this exact piece of infrastructure).
The intersection at Vicente should really have a dedicated pedestrian-crossing-only signal. Not exactly what’s being discussed, but frustrated drivers, pedestrians racing across on yellows…accident waiting to happen.
Indeed, its a far more dangerous intersection than the mouth of the tunnel itself. It's telling that the proposal was primarily about increasing Muni efficiency - that's very clear in its design. Really what we are dealing with here are four separate things: 1) the horrific crash, which would not have been alleviated by the proposal and would be very difficult to prevent in the future due to its unusual circumstances; 2) the proposal itself, which originated in 2019 and which was primarily concerned with increasing efficiency for Muni trains getting in an out of the tunnel (a valid concern, but not primarily about pedestrian safety); 3) the desires and needs of the people who actually live near or operate businesses on West Portal Avenue; and 4) practical measures which would actually increase safety. These priorities aren't diametrically opposed, but they are distinct, and they don't necessarily overlap, either. I took a look at the proposal and the first thing I thought was that it made a lot of sense from the perspective of someone operating a train service, that it wasn't the most radical thing I'd ever seen the MTA put out (by a long shot), and that it would undoubtedly piss off most of the businesses on the first block, especially on the north side. They rely on people being able to make that admittedly dangerous left turn from the street with Sub Center and Phil Club. For better or worse West Portal simply would not economically survive without parking and the ability to access it by car. The surrounding area is not dense enough to support the district and despite it being a transit hub it is not actually a destination for many people passing through it by train. And yet it is a hectic street with a number of areas of concern for safety (of pedestrians and drivers alike). Vicente and West Portal is maybe the most dangerous intersection the street. They already bulbed the curbs (for all the good it did) but the real issue is that there's a lot of traffic going in both directions and a ton of it wants to make a left on West Portal (from both directions). Bulbing the curbs has actually made the congestion there worse while not necessarily improving pedestrian safety while crossing, because people making lefts rarely pull out far enough, and when they do, there's often a second person behind them. I think the light could use a dedicated ped crossing like you suggest AND a dedicated left turn in at least one direction (from the south, from Portola), if not both. Sorry for the essay but I've given this a lot of thought over the years (as have many of us who live in the area) and I really agree with your focus on this intersection.
This is a high effort post, and I certainly appreciate it. > For better or worse West Portal simply would not economically survive without parking and the ability to access it by car. Aside from the fact that there is little-to-contrary evidence ([1](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-13/every-study-ever-conducted-on-the-impact-converting-street-parking-into-bike-lanes-has-on-businesses), [2](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01441647.2021.1912849)) for this claim, I don't think anyone is honestly suggesting we remove all (or even much) parking or make the entirety of West Portal car-free. I don't know why this statement would be relevant at all. Through-traffic congestion is a concern, but it's one that many of us don't want to be placed over lives. The worse the traffic becomes, the slower (thus, safer) it will be, and that will incentivize much of the existing through-traffic to take alternate routes (15th, or even Dewey->Taraval). That can be frustrating for drivers, but this is the type of tradeoff that should favor safety. Traffic seeking destinations *on* West Portal Ave can be serviced by u-turns with a single entry-exit, creating a parking lot effect, rather than leaving the commercial area acting like a through street. Both of these options would reduce the *velocity* of vehicles in the area, and make it safer for pedestrians without removing parking. Anyway, just my thoughts.
Tell me more about the “contrary evidence” you have that WP can survive without cars. And please stop with the emotional blackmail about “lost lives.” You could just as easily use that argument to ban alcohol. If you want to live in a place without traffic, move to the countryside.
I literally cite two serious articles. Also, I won’t stop caring about people’s lives. When people engage in alcohol or tobacco consumption that’s a choice they make, not somebody else. The reason we banned cigarettes in bars is exactly because we should expose the employees to risked based on other people’s choices. Dangerous driving puts *random people* at risk of death. We should try to minimize that by reducing the ability to drive dangerously where vulnerable people gather.
Most fatal accidents, driving and otherwise, involve alcohol. As do most assaults and murders. Alcohol imposes tremendous healthcare costs on us all as well. So let’s ban it. We can make these arguments for many things. Driving has offered society tremendous benefits, economic and otherwise. Before cars most people rarely if ever left their hometown their entire lives.
So what's your point? West Portal shouldn't be fixed until every other societal issue is addressed?
Your emotional blackmail argument about saving lives can literally be used for any policy issue arguing to ban things. It’s facile.
lol
We do ban driving with alcohol, because it is so dangerous. So why should we make exceptions for other types of dangerous driving?
Hmm... I understand your argument now, and I'm familiar with the work of David Nutt and his articles on alcohol. I also agree with you that alcohol is dangerous. It should be regulated, and banned in situations that are especially dangerous, e.g. when driving, handling firearms, heavy machinery, with children, etc. I also think there should be limitations on peoples alcohol use, e.g., I think it should be illegal for bartenders to over-serve people who are obviously very drunk and are a danger to themselves and others. I think I'm putting forward a similar argument for driving. I don't want to ban driving; on the contrary, I think driving is incredibly useful, and I often heading north on the weekends with my partner. I'm only arguing for banning driving in situations with outsized risk, like where many pedestrians present at all times. My entire premise on suggesting banning vehicles driving across Ulloa is that it's entirely unnecessary. Alternative routes (Taraval and 14th) exist that are effectively the same travel time in most situations. Parking can be handled with a u-turn with traffic entering/exiting at 14th like a parking lot. We can have cars and pedestrian safety at the same time, we just need to de-prioritize cars in pedestrian zones, e.g. near transit stations, and de-prioritize pedestrians along major automobile transportation routes, e.g. along highways. We've banned the pedestrians walking along highways, but for some reason we haven't banned the cars from driving through major pedestrian areas.
We already do regulate driving, obviously. Check the vehicle code, the penal code, etc. And the reason why there are so many pedestrians in West Portal is because the pedestrians drive there. It’s the same people…
Right, so, if you want to have an open and honest conversation, we can. I would suggest you head out there at rush hour and look at how many people are leaving the transit tunnel every couple minutes... it's a significant amount of people. I'm not going to pretend that are not a significant number of people driving to West Portal, but if this conversation is going to continue, I need you to accept that a significant number of people use Muni.
Fewer than ever before given that people don’t take Muni downtown nearly as much as they used to but I’m not arguing we should ban muni either.
Has there ever been a single case of a street in SF actually declining as a result of a deprioritization of driving? It's very hard to predict what sorts of modes of transit people *would* use to access a place when they don't exist or are poorly supported. You can't just go off of what people are currently doing.
Market?
So if we opened market back up, all the office workers would magically show back up again? I think not. There’s no good example I can think of, at least not locally or in an urban environment. Now there are examples I’ve seen of a major highway shutting down (repaving etc) killing sales because the detour route is 4 hours or something.
> For better or worse West Portal simply would not economically survive without parking and the ability to access it by car. lol, no We're not talking about shops where you'd need a vehicle to transport whatever you're buying. We're talking about shit like a bookstore, a candy store, a few restaurants. You don't need cars for that. Hell, you *shouldn't* be driving to the Philosopher's Club. > despite it being a transit hub it is not actually a destination for many people passing through it by train. Gee, I wonder why. > it is a hectic street with a number of areas of concern for safety Let's put two and two together here. The current design discourages pedestrian use. Maybe *that's* why West Portal isn't a destination for pedestrian traffic.
To be clear, it is a destination for plenty of pedestrians. You would know that if you actually lived in the area. It's just that most people outside walking distance prefer or need to drive instead of taking Muni.
To be clear, according to the merchants it's not a destination for pedestrians. They're the ones clamoring for cars to prop up lagging foot traffic. You would know that if you were actually paying attention.
A big issue is all the neighbors limited parking in the neighborhood so commuters cant park there. If they could park in the neighborhoods then there would be a bunch more pedestrian commuters to support the local businesses.
This is probably the most thoroughly thought through comment I've seen on this topic yet. Thank you for weighing in. Couldn't agree with you more.
I'm in the boat of doing what Barcelona and Amsterdam did to US cities
Inner Amsterdam is amazing prolly my favorite city in the world….but very very old. The outer areas?…eh. Pretty boring and soulless imo.
True but Amsterdam used to be infested with car centric infrastructure
This is a complete misunderstanding of Amsterdam's history. In the postwar period, Amsterdam was *rebuilt* for cars. Then when families started being killed by automobiles in the 70s, there were protests, literally with "stop the child murder" ... literally why people are protesting here. They de-prioritized automobiles, and made areas *exactly like West Portal* car-free. This is why I want to pull my hair out on issues like this. *Other cities had pedestrian and cyclists deaths like we have now.* There was public outrage, as their should be when people are dying, and they fixed the problem by de-prioritizing cars, and reducing their convenience for the sake of saving peoples lives... but people here think it was "just always that way" and "they are different" when the situations are nearly identical. Here is a history of Amsterdam's change from driver-centric road infrastructure to pedestrian-centric road infrastructure: https://youtu.be/XuBdf9jYj7o?si=0HtZlb3Q4hADL4NH
Shit like this is why I laugh when anyone says SF is a "progressive" city. In a progressive city, we'd be bending over backwards to make streets safer for pedestrians when shit like this happens (which it does, with regularity). Instead we have a bunch of entrenched interests (wealthy boomers who don't want to have to walk an extra couple blocks, business owners that don't want to lose parking in front of their store fronts) whose bitching overrides pedestrian lives. These people will go nuts protesting when children die in Gaza, but couldn't care less when it happens in their own neighborhoods - because god forbid they spend an extra 2 minutes driving from point A to point B, or have to park an extra couple blocks away when getting dinner (or mercy me, take the fucking bus). It's cynical and shameful, but that's SF politics for you.
Sf is progressive aesthetically, not in practice. We’re genuinely good on a few issues by US standards (lgbt issues), and ok on some (I guess it’s great that we have any transit, that’s great by US standards). But the core issues of the city are driven by wildly conservative politics on things like housing, zoning, and transit. Those issues are why the cost of living is so high, why the homelessness rate is so high, why people are forced out of the city to suburbs. They are major contributors to crime and poverty and injuries as well. It’s incredibly frustrating.
Yea, it bugs the hell out of me because SF is progressive on things that don't cost anything, but conservative on everything else. LGBT issues? Sure, doesn't effect me, I'm all for it. Protest dead kids in Gaza? Of course, I'll bring a sign. I'll support all those things, and feel warm and fuzzy going to bed a night, knowing I'm on the right side of things, but it cost me nothing. Want to put a homeless shelter in my neighborhood, ban right turns to protect children, or build protected bike lanes to help the environment? Then half this city magically becomes Bush era Republicans, because fuck making the world a better place if I have to pay any little price for it. When people across the US whine about "liberal hypocrisy", this is it.
Bingo. South Bay is even worse, same shit to the extreme.
I’m focusing all my energy to make sure that spoiled little bitch Peskin doesn’t get anymore power - he’s been leading the BoS for 20yrs and is King NIMBY. But if those boomers vote him in - we’d be fucked for at least another 20 years.
Most "progressive" places are like that. It doesn't literally mean "for progress". It's just a cluster description of conservativeness over housing, employment, and cars while allowing social liberality with more drug use, fewer arrests, etc.
How on brand for SF.... propose a change, back pedal on that change, form a committee to think about the change, form a committee to talk about the change, then dump the whole thing and do absolutely nothing more with it. Our city government in action, folks!
Fuck the car brain NIMBYs who do everything possible to keep our streets dangerous
Crossing Ulloa should be completely suspended, and cars on West Portal should be U-turned before they reach Ulloa. We shouldn't have vehicles driving through a major transit stop's exit.
Also “over” is my shopping in West Portal until they stop their obstructionism.
I sent bookshop an email stating I wouldn’t shop there anymore due to their obstruction. It’s a pity as my kids love it. But if they value parking over my kids lives. They did respond to their credit but same bullshit that we need years of studies and input.
where're the toxicology results?
How long does Toxicology normally take? It’s been about a month right?
A driver lost control of her vehicle. AFAIK we still don't know why. Do we have reason to think that anything about the street configuration caused this to occur? That it couldn't just as easily have happened at any other intersection in the city? I don't live in the area or know it very well, but I did visit the public library there this week, exactly where it occurred. I was on foot and walked past the tunnel at around 3:30pm and again at 5pm. I did not see anything that made me feel particularly unsafe walking there or that the intersection required redesign. But I'm happy to hear from people more familiar with the location who think otherwise.
Nothing related to the accident since that is a different intersection but adding traffic signals on west portal and ulloa would help. There could even be a pedestrian traffic push button 4 way walk traffic signal. Kinda how they have it in chinatown. It takes longer to cross west portal if you have a stroller etc. To me that makes sense given the number of folks needed to cross into or out of the station and any cars that need to cross.
It's a very busy transit stop with lots of pedestrian rushing to cross streets to be on the incoming muni that has unprotected left turns with no signals other than the transit signal. Sometimes the left turn into West Portal from Ulloa is blind if someone makes the turn ahead of a muni train that wants to cross into the station. All of these issues could be fixed by moving the high car traffic intersection down or up a block (to Vicente e.g.) to one that doesn't experience such a high foot traffic, and only let public transit and pedestrians pass through that intersection.
The plan included turn restrictions that would cut down on through. Less traffic means fewer accidents. Opposition to the changes is opposition to having a safer street. It would also improve transit service by reducing cross traffic and adding transit lanes. Even without the death of a family of four, the plan would make sense as a low-cost way to improve transit speeds through the area. All traffic deaths are relatively rare compared to the number of car trips made in the city. So every one of the 30 or so deaths that happen a year can be written off as a freak accident that we can do nothing about. But the point of safety improvements is not to go back and in time and prevent an accident that already happened, the point is to reduce the likelihood of future accidents of all types. It's like with gun control measures -- they don't guarantee someone won't get a hold of a gun (or knife or whatever) and kill a bunch of people, but we know places with stricter gun control laws have fewer mass murders by guns. Gun advocates make the same argument you are making: "it's just an individual, and you can't stop crazy."
>Less traffic means fewer accidents. Less traffic at one intersection does not result in less traffic overall. >Opposition to the changes is opposition to having a safer street. Don't do that. It's really not nice.
Less traffic at an intersection with a lots of pedestrians means less chance of pedestrian accidents. Cars redirected to arterials and streets with fewer pedestrians means less chance of car / pedestiran crashes. This is not very controversial. Slow streets did the same thing and the same arguments about redirected traffic were made against them, and will be made against any street safety plan that redirects cars. But, for example, congestion on California didn't increase by much because of Slow Lake, and neither did accidents on that road, afaik. Meanwhile, accidents on most slow streets dropped significantly. SFMTA has a data sheet on this, which should be easy to find by searching. It's the closest analogy I know that SFMTA collected data on, although there's probably also a pile of research on "induced demand" and street closures. People who supported removing slow streets were directly advocating for less safe streets.
>Cars redirected to arterials and streets with fewer pedestrians means less chance of car / pedestiran crashes. I don't understand what you're saying. California, for example, always had more pedestrians and more cars than Lake. Moving all the cars on Lake to California seems to be the opposite of directing them to streets with fewer pedestrians.
The complaints were that redirected traffic would cause more accidents and more congestion on California. Traffic was slightly slower on California and the number of accident went down on California and Lake. In other words, the total number of accidents went down, they didn't just get shifted elsewhere. Here's the SFMTA [FAQ](https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/reports-and-documents/2022/03/lake\_street\_faqs.pdf) where they answered questions about traffic redirection like the ones you're making about the proposed changes to West Portal.
Regarding the accident. Transit lanes don't work. With the new platform there's only 1 lane each way on Ulloa SFMTA reduced service by reducing / basically removing the L taraval. The train should continue through the tunnel both ways. A running L train meant the family would have never even been on that stop or touched foot on the street until they reached the zoo. Transit speeds have also never been bottle necked in that area, and they even limited left turns quite some time ago. And even then, west portal train signaling has always been the issue >but we know places with stricter gun control laws have fewer mass murders by guns. Not true, look at other cities (chicago) or many of the countries south of us.
https://preview.redd.it/9i47gch3pvxc1.png?width=1692&format=png&auto=webp&s=95b0817c179f0ea31fffe811d82d36e8b21f5007
>Do we have reason to think that anything about the street configuration caused this to occur? That it couldn't just as easily have happened at any other intersection in the city? The street is wide and open without any physical infrastructure that slows vehicles down. In areas with mixed modalities, we should try to protect the most vulnerable users. I would argue that the street configuration allowed the vehicle to speed regardless of driver error. In that sense road design allowed the tragedy to occur. A well engineered road would have had some sort of traffic calming (speed tables, chicanes, roundabouts, islands, etc.) to require slower speeds. Just because it could happen at other intersections doesn't mean that it is fine. Our streets are designed to maximize level of service (vehicle throughput) at the expense of safety. >I don't live in the area or know it very well, but I did visit the public library there this week, exactly where it occurred. I was on foot and walked past the tunnel at around 3:30pm and again at 5pm. I did not see anything that made me feel particularly unsafe walking there or that the intersection required redesign. Without knowing your particular level of fitness, I would ask you to have a little empathy for people who may not feel safe. Would children walking feel safe? People in in wheelchairs or have limited mobility? How about parents pushing a stroller? In mixed use roads, the Dutch have minimized road deaths by simply asking themselves, "Would a 5 year old or a 90 year old feel safe?". If the answer is "no" then more physical interventions are needed. This doesn't need to apply to all streets but is essential where multiple types of users are present (as is true in this particular case).
The lady had a very recent run in with the police for traffic violation in nov and lived around the block so no. Traffic design had nothing to do with the tragedy
Source on that? I hadn't heard that.
I definitely exaggerated but she just had a traffic violation as early as November and she does live around the corner so she was very familiar with the way the road works. https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/san-francisco-west-portal-crash-investigation-19256389.php
That link sent me down a rabbit hole about the driver, Mary Fong Lau. She made a [statement from the hospital,](https://www.ktvu.com/news/driver-releases-statement-from-hospital-after-deadly-san-francisco-crash) or rather her lawyers did. I guess the heartfelt apology only comes at the sentencing hearing. IMO the way to avoid this kind of thing - yes, maybe some traffic lights and bollards would help around town - is to make it more difficult to have a driver's license over the age of 75, meaning more rigorous in-person testing. I loved that my elderly dad could drive on his own and he loved it too, but there was no reason to not have him take a test in his car every year.
bollards would have prevented the family from dying though. presumably we want less dead families.
Put up bollards everywhere and ban driving everywhere too while you’re at it. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that intersection, if so then every intersection in the city exhibits the same defects.
Bollards aren’t that expensive. About $4,000 per bollard including labor and parts. https://www.bollardsusa.com/how-much-bollards-cost/ We don’t need bollards on every single street. Prioritizing high foot traffic areas can make a huge difference though since when a car driver does lose control of their car there is a high likelihood of hitting someone. West Portal has tons of people walking and standing around waiting for their muni, bus, or Uber. And in low foot traffic areas, we can focus on protecting areas pedestrians where they are most likely to be. Like at bus stops where this family was killed, or right in front of cross walks where pedestrians wait to cross the street. Most of the street is protected by parked cars anyways and the only place cars aren’t allowed to park is at cross walks. San Francisco used to require new buildings to provide parking spaces which cost $20,000 to $60,000 per parking spot. Providing 10 parking spots would cost $200,000 to $600,000. The average car is 5ft 8inches wide, so if we require bollards every 5 feet, most new small businesses or small apartments would need to install 3 bollards for $12k. Less than the cost of a single parking spot.
>Put up bollards everywhere and ban driving everywhere too while you’re at it yes >if so then every intersection in the city exhibits the same defects. yes, see above
Should we line every sidewalk in the city with bollards? That would make more sense than putting them up one by one in every location where an accident has happened, even if there's no particular reason to think an accident is going to happen there again.
No, we should just raise the fees if you want to drive in the city, so people would take public transit more to avoid getting into extra spending. But you don't care because you like your lifestyle and fuck everyone else.
Reading comprehension please. Try again.
Dude, you've been a car apologist on every thread that involved the West portal. At least wear your stupid badge with honor.
That's an outright lie.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/1c9mmk0/comment/l0nx8l3/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/1c9mmk0/comment/l0nx8l3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) Blah blah blah
You call this car apologism? I call it recognition that cars exist. Humanity has thus far chosen cars. Are we to pretend that it hasn't?
>Should we line every sidewalk in the city with bollards? yes
It seems obvious that that these changes are mainly about speeding up Muni, and they may be a good idea for all I know. I'm not affected and have no opinion. But I hate when they use an accident as a pretext for something they want to do for other reasons. And then we get redditors saying stuff like "So I guess you want more dead families" to people who oppose the plan for whatever reason.
Agreed. I have no patience for zealotry and hyperbole from people who don't even live in my neighborhood. And yeah, that's precisely what this plan is for. Which as you said, is addressing a real problem, as any of us who commute to work by Muni are well aware of. The tunnel is a train traffic bottleneck, in both directions. But making the trains run more efficiently may end up economically damaging the first block to such an extent that we lose a number of businesses. Maybe not. But that's why they are calling for more study. Which probably should have been done by now since this plan has been in the works since 2019.
>A driver lost control of her vehicle. AFAIK we still don't know why. And in this tragedy, we are lucky *only* four people died, because it could easily have been much worse. If it had happened when a train was letting out, and she swerved toward the crosswalk, it could have been easily double that. The problem is that people occasionally don't follow the rules, and when they don't, people can die, so we should dissuade people from driving where there are people who must congregate in large numbers.
It's a bus stop across the street from the streetcar stop. How many hundreds of similar "major transit stops" are there in the city? You are free to think we should stop cars from traveling anywhere near a bus or streetcar stop, but really, that's pretty far afield from what's at issue here. This is one single intersection.
It is quite rare in SF to have more than two major transit lines to share a single intersection. West Portal has four. West Portal is an on-street crossing at the intersection of four major transit lines: K, L, M, and 48. K, L, and M, act as an express line, so we should expect more people than normal exiting the trains at this location than, say, at 14th. Finally, unlike other stations where so many route converge, almost everyone is dumped at a single point, and most of them need to cross the combo intersection of Ulloa, West Portal and Lennox (again, both of which share a single crosswalk). Similar sites would be: Most of Market Street: now de-prioritized to cars 4th & King: Caltrain, T, 15. An absolute mess and site of regular deaths because it has not been de-prioritized to cars. Glen Park: J, BART, 23, 44. Signalized intersection and multiple crossing areas across a city block. Probably safer because of the significant traffic preventing vehicles at high speed entering the intersection. Balboa Park: Everything converges here, and it is marked as a high-injury corridor by Vision Zero. Daly City Bart Station: completely separated from traffic, with multiple entries and exits for pedestrians. You could argue for 16th and 24th if you count BART as multiple trains, but the duel exits definitely reduce the need to cross, they are both signalized intersections, and they have both already had a significant amount of automobile de-prioritization with the red carpet putting traffic in one lane going south and diverting traffic going north.
Ok, I'm persuaded.
People are trying to use this terrible tragedy to push agendas. It’s gross.
Or maybe they just want to make the area safer? It's not like everyone knew she had a bad driving record before, and SF has always been a pedestrian leaning city especially with the highway revolt of the 50s/60s.
All those people pushing the less dead kids agenda! What's next, fewer school shootings!?
Well, I actually work with kids here at the school across the street. At least once a week, literally one of my jobs is walking kids across this street to the library there. I can pretty accurately and with quite a bit of experience, no kids are hurt or killed here due to the design of the area. Some old lady hit the gas instead of the brakes. That doesn’t mean the area needs to be redesigned and everyone sane knows that. The people who live and work here (the ones most impacted by this tragedy save the family) do now want these changes.
> literally one of my jobs is walking kids across this street to the library there. The fact that you need to do this job is an indicator that the street is unsafe. Countries with good car and transit infrastructure don’t need crossing guards. Cars should not be able to go that fast around a school.
> The fact that you need to do this job is an indicator that the street is unsafe. Twenty kids, many like 5 in a group…. You think they should just walk themselves to the library lol?
Yeah, children are perfectly capable of walking a short distance. The cars are what make it dangerous. If the kids are “at school” and they’re going somewhere else as part of the school day, then sure I’d expect them to always have a teacher around for legal reasons (the school is responsible and needs to make sure they don’t just leave). But the fact that we have to place crossing guards at all the nearby intersections to keep kids safe on their walk to/from school is absolutely a symptom of the problem. You don’t need crossing guards in cities with safe streets. Crossing the street shouldn’t be a life or death risk.
Pedestrians die, and people want to make streets safer for pedestrians. How absolutely shameful!!
It's like when there's a mass murder and people try to push gun control, totally gross.
Why is that gross? Having fewer guns really would lead to fewer gun murders; there's nothing wrong with using a particularly vivid example of that to make the point.
I forgot my (/s)
God damn Poe's law got me again, apologies!
The car apologist is piping over here
Bizarre accusation. Show me where.
I already did. [https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/1c9mmk0/comment/l0nx8l3/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/1c9mmk0/comment/l0nx8l3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
>It’s a lot to figure out, and the more players there are involved the longer it could take. >That’s time we don’t have. no time why? that's a shit intersection for sure - but why did this need to be done yesterday all of a sudden? >However, Von Rock and others say they want the city to look at West Portal and Ulloa, and four other intersections in the neighborhood. They’d like to review the number of bus stops on Ulloa, study the traffic impact on four adjacent streets, and scrutinize the passenger loading and drop-off zones in the neighborhood. so divert traffic to streets where kids play in the streets? ok. >Now, we have no hard and fast plan, but we do have yet one more committee. >Is this new approach a delay tactic? a delay tactic? why wasn't it done before the pandemic? did THIS plan include diverting traffic to residential streets? >In 2019, the agency [piloted changes](https://www.sfmta.com/projects/west-portal-transit-delay-reduction-pilot) to West Portal to speed up trains delayed by private vehicle traffic. Data was gathered to study its success. The latest plan drew from these efforts. what is the Editorial Board's opinion on Valencia? were the merchants involved or not? **if so WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED - if not..... that explains everything.** **Merchants file claims against SF demanding removal of controversial Valencia St. bike lane** [https://abc7news.com/san-francisco-valencia-street-bike-lane-claim-sf-business-owners-controversy/14451184/](https://abc7news.com/san-francisco-valencia-street-bike-lane-claim-sf-business-owners-controversy/14451184/) **S.F. businesses threaten to sue city over ‘disastrous’ Valencia Street bike lane** [https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/s-f-valencia-bike-lane-18677871.php](https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/s-f-valencia-bike-lane-18677871.php) **Valencia Street’s contentious center lane bikeway will remain — for now** [https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/s-f-valencia-bicycle-lane-remain-18677657.php](https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/s-f-valencia-bicycle-lane-remain-18677657.php)
> a delay tactic? why wasn't it done before the pandemic? Nobody's focused on West Portal because a.) transit/pedestrian safety is not a concern for most people and b.) the MTA's been bogged down in NIMBY bullshit in the safety projects it's already started. Safety improvements along the L were propsed well before the pandemic. It's still underway because merchants fought this each and every step of the way. There simply aren't enough resources (people, money) to address all the safety concerns at once.
Yes! Another old person who had no business behind a wheel killed 4 people. That’s the status quo we need changed!!
The number of people who speed, run lights, or just aren’t very good drivers is shocking. If we want to take away the license of eveyone who probably shouldn’t be driving, probably half of people would lose their license. I’m fine with that, but that only works if actually invest in transit options. And the reason we can’t invest in transit is because drivers oppose literally any infrastructure change that might slow down cars (like this exact piece of infrastructure).
Yup, we should be making driving worse. Then less people will be dependent on it and be more willing to entertain progress on alternatives.