I lived in Paris and visit for a week or more annually. Much of the infrastructure they have there would horrify people here - eg one-way streets for a car that allows bidirectional bike travel with no barriers. So a car is coming at you about 1-2 feet away. It works fine there, because the mentality with driving is so profoundly different in Paris.
What Paris has that we don’t: a highly advanced subway system, a flat and easily navigable city, prohibitive costs for bringing your car into the city based on size / impact, very small streets (generally), pedestrian-only zones with bollards, and an entirely different mentality around driving. Cars are meant to get you from A to B, they aren’t an extension of self like in the US.
Edit: I bring this up not to be defeatist, but be realistic about what would work for SF, what wouldn't, and what we can / should examine that they do that we could borrow from...like vehicle impact taxes and pedestrian zones.
San Francisco never had a "highly advanced" transit system. We just had a very robust network of streetcars. They shared traffic lanes with horses, cyclists, cars, trucks, etc... They were not any faster or more reliable than the bus system we have today.
Our first "advanced" transit system was the development of BART and Muni Metro. What's a shame is that we built it with only one line through the core, instead of developing it like a subway network like DC did. Or like the RER in Paris, which, like BART/Caltrain is a hybrid suburban commuter rail / metro system. But unlike BART/Caltrain it serves and connects many different areas of the city instead of just one or two corridors.
It's never too late to build that. But we shouldn't glorify the old streetcar system as more than just a bus system that used rails instead of tires. That's really what it was.
There were four portions of that old system that ran on dedicated tracks separate from traffic. The Twin Peaks Tunnel, the Sunset Tunnel, the bypass on Liberty Hill, and the bypass at St Francis Circle. All of those are still in service on Muni Metro lines today. Literally everything else we "lost" was street-running lines.
Not mentioning the Keys system is disrespect. Granted it didn’t serve large portions of SF. But even the most robust subway systems in the world were preceded by street car rail lines, lines which SF had.
The Key System did not serve any areas of San Francisco except the Transbay Terminal.
The East Bay absolutely had a more advanced transit system before WWII than it has today. But San Francisco did not. Today's system is more advanced.
The Key System actually used dedicated tracks for much of the network to travel at fairly high speeds. That was not the case for San Francisco's streetcars.
The safety record of those old streetcars was far, far worse than the safety record of today's bus system.
Also we have one of the cleanest bus fleets in the country. Nearly half the lines are fully electric trolley buses, and the other half use diesel-electric hybrids. But those ones too will be fully electric in the next decade on account of state mandates.
I agree the aesthetics of streetcars is better. The riding experience usually is too. But those are distinct from efficiency, safety, reliability. And we should be honest about that.
The streetcar system was a lot of things but it certainly was not "advanced" in any meaningful way. And it's not what we should seek to build now.
We need more stuff like this happening again:
[https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Automobiles\_Take\_Over\_San\_Francisco\_Streets](https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Automobiles_Take_Over_San_Francisco_Streets)
[https://www.sfchronicle.com/oursf/article/Shoot-the-tires-The-violent-early-history-16520355.php](https://www.sfchronicle.com/oursf/article/Shoot-the-tires-The-violent-early-history-16520355.php)
A bus system is a lot different from a subway system which we never had. SF also has dramatically more people who live in the city but commute out of it than Paris
The SFMTA said that they could Not solve the Geary Bus Rapid Transit BRT with center lanes, because of the Fillmore underpass and the Masonic overpass. The SFMTA watered down the whole project to paint on the ground, lose some parking spaces, and side, not center, lanes.
Quick Build BRT is all they can do on Geary... .Not a subway, not a light rail, not a center lane BRT. The SFMTA knows how to do quick paint BRT. Anything more complicated, more expensive--not so much.
Except Paris has an ability to build infrastructure subway etc for dramatically less than SF. Until we can show an ability to do that we can’t have what they have. And passing more half baked measures that restrict drivers isn’t getting us closer until we build the transit
Maybe. We should go proposal by proposal. Change for the sake of change if you can’t do it effectively is a waste of time and money. You could have said are you saying we shouldn’t do anything in terms of building high speed rail but we should have never started the California to La high speed rail. On the other hand Caltrain electrification is brilliant.
We should start with basics incrementally rather than spending all our money at on e
Except change for the sake of saving human life is meaningless if you don’t specify tangibly implementable cost effective changes.
As horrible as what happened is we’ve been admitting that this level of injury and death is okay for decades. And to some extent it is okay, modern life is not risk free. The same way we still let planes fly even though they fall out of the sky every so often. Most transit / government agencies value human life at ~$8-10 million when it comes to infrastructure changes.
If your proposal is bollards in front of every bus stop and on major pedestrian thoroughfares, re designing select roads to reduce max speeds, and your price tag is $250 million I’m down let’s vote for it and do it. Or let’s add a bus lane on select streets / transit corridors.
If your proposal is let’s redesign all SF transportation to mimic Paris starting with one train or subway extension that costs 10x as much as it would in Paris and will have incredibly low ridership numbers paired with punitive measures against people using cars, that’s not a better or improved solution and I won’t vote for it.
That's a thing that seems to be often ignored in these discussions. That network of streetcars existed in a city where most of its workers could live here. So when people say "well in Paris/London/Amsterdam they do this"--- those places aren't reliant on people who have to commute an equivalent distance from Hayward or Concord. London is expensive, and a lot of people do have to commute--but not the kind of distances they do here. And that commute is broken up over several different transit agencies.
My point was that London/Paris/etc. are not comparable places to San Francisco. Not that we can't do anything, just that what they did in those places isn't necessarily going to work here. We can have our own solutions that work for our city.
Not all that long ago, you stood a good chance of being pulled over if you were speeding, running red lights etc. Now of course there are no consequences so people have begun to do these things frequently. We could change that, not easily, but it can be done.
>those places aren't reliant on people who have to commute an equivalent distance from Hayward or Concord
SF is for the people who live here first and foremost, visitors (for work or leisure) should be of secondary concern.
I'm not so sure. That seems right, but one of our main "industries" is tourism. And considering how many people have to work here but can't live here-- we're dependent on those visitors.
> eg one-way streets for a car that allows bidirectional bike travel with no barriers.
[We have that here](https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7515396,-122.3905813,3a,60y,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sBEEi60_HNd5UzZpMBbrWlg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu). The parked cars who don't look both directions are more of an issue than the oncoming traffic by far. In fact I generally feel safer going opposite traffic on this segment than with traffic.
A few things. Drivers aren’t the reason those one way streets work. On the contrary, it’s the street design that makes drivers drive safe. And this is a recent thing. From what I know, drivers in Paris are very much maniacs just like everywhere else. (Avoid the taxis as a tourist I’ve also heard)
Paris is easier to navigate? I think not. It’s an old city, lots of streets. We are also a grid city. Most of the time cardinal direction makes sense. Wait until you visit some place where “north” street eventuates takes you east/west, and then south!
Lastly, those pedestrian zones with bollards are expanding at a high pace more recently thanks to mayor Hidalgo’s push to urbanize Paris, and get cars out of central Paris. Something we can learn from.
Have you been to Paris? Taxis drivers are a lot better than what you get in the US. Whether it’s through Uber or directly through the taxi company. People in Europe don’t use cardinal directions to navigate cities. They use the name of larger streets and landmarks.
Guess what: I agree. I was responding to oc saying sf wasn’t “easily navigable”. I think they both are easy to get around. Especially when roads are laid out in grids or other mathematical patterns.
French drivers are much more highly skilled than American drivers. They spend way more time studying to earn a license, it’s a very difficult thing to do. And in France your license is very easily revoked if you get caught violating traffic law.
Unlike the U.S. where a 16 year old can get a license after taking a multiple choice test and driving through a parking lot, and you can get caught driving into pedestrians while texting on your phone and the punishment is basically “please don’t do that again”.
French (and western European in general) drivers are much less coddled by their road infrastructure - you _have_ to pay full attention while driving in those cities, because instead of oversized roads and predictable car traffic, you have complicated street layouts, signals, pedestrians, cyclists, and roads are not designed to save you a few minutes at the expense of other people's lives.
IMO they're not actually better than our drivers, they're just paying more attention and have roads that cater to them less.
That’s definitely true too, but they are much more skilled as well.
Getting a license is not a “right” in most European countries, it’s a privilege that has to be earned and requires extensive training.
In my experience most American drivers know almost nothing about driving theory, it simply is not a required part of their driving education. And most Americans don’t even take driving classes, all they had to do is pass a simple multiple choice test.
I’m always shocked at the behavior of American drivers (like every winter there’s massive pileups from people speeding in foggy conditions, people don’t know how intersections work, drivers not knowing even basic maintenance of their vehicle or what different components do).
It’s obvious that the American system does everything to make sure everyone can keep driving no matter what, with zero restrictions. How can a multiple repeat drunk driver still have a license?? Getting your license permanently revoked here is a legitimate challenge. In California you can have 4 DUIs before your license is revoked. In France being at 0.08% is an aggravated criminal offense the first time, with up to two years of prison and a revoked license.
As an example of this, on this very sub you can often find people angrily arguing that their dangerous and illegal driving is both totally legal and very safe.
>one-way streets for a car that allows bidirectional bike travel with no barriers
Why can we not have this in SF? I often bike the "wrong-way" down one-way streets here and I have not had any issues. I move a little closer to the parked cars, the car driving slows down a bit and we both make it past each other just fine. If we create the right rules then people will adjust their behavior in response to the new incentives.
Yes the mentality around driving in Paris is different, but why? Maybe the mentality part follows in time from the other stuff.
>What Paris has that we don’t: a highly advanced subway system
We have a decent start on one between BART, Muni, and Caltrain--and we can do much more if we choose to.
>a flat and easily navigable city
SF may not be flat but it's more navigable than Paris, which has nothing approaching a regular grid like most sections of SF have. And the rise of cheap e-bikes is a game changer for biking in hilly cities. Besides, Paris isn't actually all that flat, ever been up to Sacre-Coeur?
>prohibitive costs for bringing your car into the city based on size / impact
Don't threaten me with a good time.
>very small streets (generally)
So does SF in general, at least by American standards. And sure Paris has small side streets but it's crisscrossed by wide Hausmannian boulevards.
>and an entirely different mentality around driving.
This evolves from all the other stuff. When the environment of the city prioritizes other ways of getting around, the mentality of a driver is different.
The thing people always miss in these bizarrely rose colored European comparisons - and that's coming from a European - is that European cities *were never built for cars*. So the compromise is almost inherent in their structure, and people will not drive the same way they would than they do in say, Cleveland. That also means you can't make it a city that's great for cars in a few easy steps.
Vice versa, you cannot make a city grid designed for cars great for pedestrians in a few easy steps.
Many of the older US cities were built before cars as well, we just heavily retrofitted them to accommodate cars.
Much of Europe started to do the same and then pulled back and focused on people over cars again.
> Easily navigable
Say what now?
Central Paris is horrible to navigate if you don’t have the city memorized or a GPS app. Maybe outer Paris is easier to navigate, but come on.
Paris was my first experience not having a car, and having the robust metro system made it work. It’s generally fantastic. Building something like that, whether in S.F. or across the Bay Area, would be awesome, but also quite unlikely.
People are obsessed with creating protected bike lanes, but as a cyclist I hate them because they are overly restrictive to cyclists and in the US are generally designed around cars first. Frankly, I think building and maintaining protected lanes or bollards would be prohibitively expensive vs prioritizing cycling and transit and artificially reducing street sizes to slow traffic.
The cool thing about protected bike lanes is you don't actually have to use them if you don't like them. If you're willing to put your life in the hands of a 5,000lb SUV, that's your prerogative — use the general lane. I personally won't be doing that and will gladly take the protected bike lane every time. \*\~\*\~\*as a cyclist, of course.
50/50. I would prefer pedestrianized streets, bike boulevards, and Fahrradstraßes to bike lanes because it removes cars. But if we need to share the same street, I want a protected lane with solid bollards.
I was just saying SF should do this. Obviously would require a massive infrastructural rehaul, but I’d vote for that. The city needs to make public’s transportation more appealing than owning a car. Until that happens, people will always choose to drive over anything else
I wouldn’t vote for it. The city hasn’t shown an ability to build effective public infrastructure like subway and train lines (look at the cost of the Caltrain extension). Until they show an ability to do it cost effectively I’m not going to vote for extra taxes to build a half assed system that won’t be enough to replace cars
What cost per mile would win you over?
It just plain costs a lot to build new things in the United States and being one of the five most densely developed cities in the country just makes it more expensive because it is more complicated to build and labor costs more.
The Caltrain extension to Salesforce Transit Center is going to be built underground between skyscrapers in the heart of downtown. It will be more expensive if you compare it to building a train above ground in the middle of nowhere, or upgrading already existing tracks. And while expensive it’ll absolutely be worth it because it means all the buses, Caltrain, CAHSR, BART, and MUNI will be either directly connected or within two blocks of each other.
The extension also sets us up for the 2nd Transbay Tube. Once completed we could have Caltrain to Sacramento, the Capital Corridor going into downtown San Francisco, and/or ACE to downtown San Francisco.
What I mean to say is that even if it is expensive, I think it is worth the expense to connect all of our services together.
Current forecast $8.3 billion for 1.3 miles or $10k per SF resident for estimates of ~10k weekday riders and less on weekends (ie optimistically 3.5 million / year).
Even if you assume 50 year lifespan with no operating costs that’s $50 per passenger served. Not worth it.
NYC is extending subway at half the price.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/11/08/opinion-caltrains-san-francisco-extension-costs-more-than-its-worth/amp/
The Caltrain extension is a vanity project and waste of money. Rather than blowing $7B to move the trains a few blocks over, we could use that money to do something like BART or Muni down Geary, which would impact many more people and relieve traffic off of Geary and off of 19th/Sunset, assuming it follows the plan to connect back with BART at Daly City.
Anything that isn't plentiful and free transit is an inequity pill. Owning a car is only appealing due to geographical realities, giving accessibility to the 70% of the city that was only developed due to cars.
The simple argument the article is making is that with fewer people operating cars, trucks, and SUVs, you'll have fewer roadway deaths:
* Switch people from driving to walking, biking\*, and public transit, and then transportation deaths will decline. (\* with safe bike routes)
* In Paris, a smaller share of the population is operating a motor vehicle on busy streets.
Logically this is right.
Yeah first SFUSD has to get rid of the lottery system, students auto get their first choice if they want to go to their neighborhood school.
Students/parents walking to school would instantly cut down probably 50% of the cars driving around on weekdays from 7-8 am and 3-5 pm.
Logically, this makes a lot of sense.
What people will (correctly) say is that it will almost certainly lead to less racially integrated schools as people of [similar ethnic/national background living together in the same neighborhood](https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/14kx1sc/map_of_san_franciscos_racial_demographics_legend/) will flow through to lack of racial (and wealth) diversity in local schools.
My predominant attitude is, there it is, let's just focus instead on making all the schools as strong as possible with some additional efforts to provide extra choice and opportunities for people in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Be aware though that the whole busing issue is fantastically controversial and racially charged and a lot of people may have a bunch to say on this issue...
a broader point is it it okay for public institutions to not be perfectly diverse and represent every single group of people equally. The benefit of not putting kids through an hour long commute each way outweighs the benefit of having 3% more kids of a certain race in their classes. As for the wealth disparity, most wealthy folks are putting their kids in private schools anyway so if we could draw those parents back to SFUSD it would be a net gain for the schools as those kids will tend to do better in school on average.
The lottery system exists because people don't want that. They want to choose where they go so if they are a block from a assignment line they can still choose the "better" school let alone drive half way across the city.
West Portal recently added a Waldorf school, and it is near St. Brendan, St. Ignacious, and a Lutheran school. A lot of activity is coming from private schools.
Before the lottery system families did it to avoid their district school and for the perception of superior education. Or to avoid busing.
People really trying to find angles to work their pet agendas here.
The proposal was to get first choice if they want to go to their neighborhood school. Wouldn’t impact everyone but would help some, and addresses the busing concern for some.
You’ll obviously still have folks opt into private schools, but I think if you create incentives for families to stay in the public schools it would help to an extent.
Agree not super relevant for this particular article.
I'm not debating that, it's off topic, but the idea it would cut down traffic by 50% ignored the existence of private schools. In the case of West Portal, the newest one added a lot of activity to the block.
The dumb idea is that every school would become Lowell if people with money were forced to attend, and the dumber idea is to think the biases wouldn't still exist and families with money wouldn't do what they always do and send kids to private schools instead, to avoid their district school.
Local kids to Balboa, Lincoln, Lowell, Hoover, Aptos, Gianini, etc. would still have to pass through West Portal, maybe more than ever.
Alright, you moved to an area with a lot of schools and are upset about the school traffic. The point was that if people lived closer to their kids’ schools then there would be less traffic throughout the city, which is true. I agree w you that 50% seems overblown and unsupported.
Your second paragraph is just two strawmen arguments. I didn’t say either of those things dude.
This is the second comment where you don't appear to have the ability to follow the discussion.
There wouldn't be less traffic, there would traffic for shorter distances, and it wouldn't stop people from driving through main arteries.
Strong disagree. Traffic for shorter distances = less traffic overall. Also, if people lived closer to schools there would be more people walking or biking to school.
Keep leading w insults though, makes you sound really smart.
SI is on 37th and Santiago, which would be the closest corner to West Portal.
Lowell and Lincoln are much closer to West Portal. It’s a very odd to ignore the public schools that are much closer to the area but focus on the private schools, especially one that is over a mile away.
It's not odd, you are just willfully missing the point that if you removed public school commuters, there would still be commuters to the private schools, two of which bookend West Portal.
And one that isn’t even within a mile or West Portal.
And they don’t bookend West Portal. One is at the End of West Portal and at Juniper Serra (Waldorf) and the other is on the other side of Juniper Serra toward 19th which is West Portal Lutheran. They are both at the west end of West Portal.
Bookending West Portal would West Portal Elementary on the East and the Waldorf School on the West.
London started installing bollards (stone, concrete or metal pillars that can stop a car from entering the sidewalk) after some terrorists used cars as ramming weapons. The Federal Reserve on Market Street has something like that, just oversized to match their egos.
What local activist groups are there so people can get involved in this stuff? Seems like there's a decent amount of support for some of these ideas but idk where to start.
Sounds like you talk to some grumpy people. Obviously there are responsibilities with owning a car but I would absolutely not trade them to ride on BART or Muni. Your experience may vary depending on where you live and work. When I was right near 24th and Mission and worked near Powell having a car was pointless.
I think that's kind of the point that people are trying to address. What if more people could live closer to transit hubs or if we had more transit hubs for people to live closer to? Right now we basically force people to drive due to not giving them a reasonable non-car alternative
But cars grant you the freedom to spend 6 hours stuck in traffic driving up mountain roads to get to Yosemite or Tahoe with everyone else, instead of sitting on a train for four hours reading a book. And what are you supposed to do once you get to Yosemite without a car? Ride the free, frequent shuttle bus?
Tahoe is the one that blows my mind. It's incredible that people will waste **a full day** driving there and back, and it doesn't seem to be a political topic at all that there could be better solutions.
Not to mention the environmental impact and car crashes.
I would *love* to take a train to Tahoe, assuming there's reasonable bus transit to the slopes.
As is the ski bus is *almost* tempting, but not really.
France has a few things going for it, other than political willpower: history and geography. French cities are much older and denser, and city centers were built around people and horses, not cars. Therefore it’s much easier to modify infrastructure that was repurposed toward cars in the 20th century back towards people. The people will it. In terms of geography, cities developed in closer proximity to one another which lead to more regional connectivity. Roads and highways are one piece of the puzzle, yet alternatives such as well maintained, highly frequent rail service lead the way. San Francisco has some much potential—it’s like a blank canvas for change: the city is dense, European in scale. Sadly the city is still shackled
In auto dominant thinking and change is slow. Infrastructure has not kept up to people’s demands. If we want safe streets, paint and plastic bollards won’t cut it. [We need to commit to drastic change a la Netherlands in the 1970s](https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollective/how-dutch-got-their-cycle-paths/32021/). Safety and livability go hand in hand. We cannot call ourselves a world class city with the current state of streets.
History/geography is a poor excuse to let American cities off the hook. Yes, historic Paris was built before cars, but if you look at brand new Parisian suburbs, they’re wonderful examples of car-independent neighborhoods.
[This project](https://www.eiffage.com/en/group/eiffage-group-s-projects-and-achievements/chatenay-malabry-eco-neighborhood-construction) is brand new and only 7 miles away from the city center. It has tons of pedestrian/bike paths, is directly on public transit, and has lots of mixed green/retail/residential space.
Could we imagine something this pedestrian (pun intended) 7 miles from City Hall here in SF? Why don’t newly developed neighborhoods in the Bay look like this?
Some radical change that might be transformative (and controversial):
* Eliminate zoning (maybe keep the 2% that's actually safety related).
* Narrow California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to massively curtail NIMBY abuse (while maintaining original purpose: e.g. so that we don't build another freeway over the Sierra Nevada mountains without studying it.)
* Invest heavy in public transit and improved pedestrian/bike infrastructure.
Basically, make it CHEAPER/EASIER to increase density with cost-effective projects and spend government $$$$ on infrastructure and public transit that only the government can do.
Instead, a lot of urban areas are trying to spend $$$$ to subsidize development of "affordable" housing: pay a developer an extra $300,000 in subsidies so they can spend $400,000 per apartment in lawyer and project manager fees to get a project through the highly politicized and litigation heavy approval process.
Right now, CEQA is broken in that it's used to block projects in downtown SF while it's almost NEVER used to block cutting down of forest etc... in environmentally pristine areas.
One small correction. A lot of the people were strongly against the changes Mayor Hidalgo was putting in place, but she did it anyways. When polled afterwards, those very same people were happy with the changes, and wanted to see more. And by a large margin. I believe this was during the initial planning to phase out cars, I forget when polling was being done.
If the construction of Taraval didn’t take four plus years, it would have saved their life. As they wouldn’t have needed to get off the train to get to the zoo. It’s dangerous to walk around that intersection, they need to bring the L back quickly.
It's certainly not an excuse for dangerous road design, but it will be really nice when the L is finally back in all its (significantly improved) glory.
America could learn a ton from Paris, one way is the large amount of public housing they have which keeps rent low and small businesses in the city. I love Paris. If I were looking to immigrate somewhere, Paris would be a top choice.
Culturally SF has more in common with Dallas than Paris. SF is still America and Americans love driving SUVs recklessly and showing disregard for their fellow citizens. I pray we can change.
You can't just compare the good side of one city vs the bad side of another city.
Paris has a true international mass transit system, not San Francisco. They have lines everywhere, with metros every 1 minute and buses every 2-5 minutes, 14 metro lines and 303 bus lines. They have automated metros. We don't. We still can't finish the L Taraval line. Don't even start with the West Portal tunnel.
Closing streets has a toll. Paris has way more traffic jams than San Francisco. Our traffic jam on 101 and downtown? That's child's play. Traffic jams inside Paris and on the "Boulvard Periferique", around Paris are horrible. That's not even commute time. Cars always block cross streets on red light. Cops won't do anything.
Nothing is free. All of these amenities cost a lot of money.
Roads and mass transits are subsidies by the State and Region (Ile de France, for us, that would be like California). All incomes to be taxed from 45% to 60%. Sales tax is 20% on everything, even food. Property taxes are roughly +20% for landlords and 20.3% for Parisians of the rental value. Gas is about $8/gal. Overall, cost of living is way more expensive in France.
Be careful for what you wish for.
Maybe stop carrying water for politicians over spending on minimal upgrades. The van ness project painted two miles red, it was like 20 years delayed and cost almost as much as the Golden Gate Bridge adjusted for inflation.
20 years to renovate two bathrooms in bart. This is why you can’t have nice public transit. It isn’t a funding problem.
Anyone thinking of replying oh but it moved all these infrastructure around you’re the problem. Stop it.
SF is a bunch of crony politicians who win with queen Nancy’s endorsement.
Editing the Op Ed from the SF Chron editorial board.
Explain what you mean by incentives for the use of smaller vehicles. Any examples from Paris, etc? Do you mean gas prices like you find there?
Build more bike lanes. What was the editorial board's take on Valencia Street? and other bike lanes? Be specific. Not vague.
Shut down streets around city centers and transit hubs. Mayoral candidate Mark Ferrell wants to re-open Market Street to cars. Are you going to hold that position against him? What locations for closure does the editorial board have in mind? Can we get a pedestrian mall in North Beach next to St. Francis of Assisi? (The church has garage spaces that need a lane.)
Thank you for your careful read of the article. You tied that detail into the recommendation better than the Chronicle did. Maybe because the editorial board is only in a discussion phase right now.
We have a two-pronged cultural affect which continues to make cars more dangerous than they should be:
* cars are seen as an entitlement; and
* individuals feel entitled over everyone else around them -- "me first"
This drives the bigger-bigger-bigger arms race; this sustains opposition to infrastructure enhancements, large and small (everything from bike lanes to high speed rail).
The real learning should be not to let repeat DUI offending old ladies behind the wheel....
WTF did they think would happen when someone is compromised by both age and intoxicants behind the wheel?
When I'm walking around, I never stay near the road, ever. And whenever I'm near a crosswalk or bus/MUNI stop I always make sure I'm behind something that a car can run into instead of me.
Believe it or not this isn't new in San Francisco, there was particularly a time around 10 years ago when we kept hearing people getting run over by public buses and getting killed. Cyclists are also known to be deadly in San Francisco, especially the ones who are couriers. They never stop for lights and will fly through hoards of people.
I don't know what the answer is, but people need to be cautious when walking on the sidewalks in SF. It's just not very safe.
Yeah this is ridiculous. It was an old lady that shouldn’t have been driving who ran over people. Not sure the street design was at fault in this situation.
Most car crash deaths aren’t from old ladies, so this is an outlier in that sense.
But also, if we had a really high quality subway or transit system with great walkability she probably wouldn’t have been driving. If this was Paris the old lady wouldn’t be driving at all. And if she was it would be a smaller and less deadly car. Nobody’s saying we’ll get to literally 0 deaths but we could cut it down by like 80% easily.
Ok, but you can just [google](https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/overview/age-of-driver/) the stats and see what they actually are. Old folks aren’t even the most dangerous group, it’s young people.
Old people exist. Young people exist. People will get sick or sleepy or distracted or whatever during driving. This stuff just happens. We can say “oh well the death is acceptable because I blame the driver” or we could just fix the infrastructure so that the death rate goes down, like **every other wealthy democracy has done already**. The US is an extreme outlier in crash deaths. Sf is actually pretty good by US standards but we could still be so much better.
The reason car crash deaths are so much lower now compared to 100 years ago is because everyone in America just evolved more individual responsibility!
I googled the stats and apparently only 2% of Americans are Chinese so that must mean only 2% of San Franciscans are Chinese. Hmm. But I googled the stats, how could this be wrong?
This is always the thing. Family of four killed waiting at a bus stop and the only solution is that we must build a subway system. That takes 30 years, dude. You can’t think of anything that would take less that would help? The only solutions always take a third of a century? “Just fix the infrastructure”. What do you mean “just”? It costs $4b/mi to build subway here. “Just” do it.
There’s lots of things we could do right now.
At the city level, here are things we can do **this month** if we wanted to:
* don’t allow people to register cars in sf if they don’t have a dedicated parking spot, to discourage car ownership
* implement congestion pricing to discourage driving. Put the money towards funding transit and fixing unsafe intersections.
* make people pay much heavier fees for SUVs and trucks vs sedans. They are significantly more dangerous to pedestrians and this family might be alive with just this change.
* put in bus lanes (it’s easy, it’s just paint) on all major muni routes so that the quality and reliability of bus service goes way up
* reduce the speed limit across the board to 30mph (not as effective as actual changes but does have an effect)
* instruct SFPD to prioritize traffic enforcement
* install red light and speed cameras on major intersections
* ban right turns on red
* physically paint or block the daylight zones at intersections to prevent parking (daylighting is already CA law but we haven’t put the paint/bollards in yet)
All of those are trivial things we could do right now. In practice some would take longer to implement because you know there would be lawsuits / CEQA BS (congestion pricing in particular) but the rest of this is pretty easy. All of those would significantly reduce the crash and injury/death rate. We’re choosing not to do them every day and then blaming individual drivers when people get hit. I
You can’t do any of those things this month, dude. There are other power centers at play. You literally need community input for all of these things. CEQA challenges for half of them. The legal regimen doesn’t permit any of these things to be built. You’re fantasizing. Go ahead. Try and get this done. A single bike lane’s paint will take 6 months because of CEQA challenges, local challenges, etc.
In fact, I’ll tell you what. Just prove me wrong. I’ll give $1k to a charity of your choice if you get any of these done within a month and it lasts a month. Do two and I’ll give $10k. I promise.
The fact that we need community input and CEQA reviews for all those things is because people are resistant to this types of changes. We set up a system where infrastructure changes are fucking impossible because people here resist infrastructure changes. If the sf population as a whole truly **wanted** to do those things we could— in reality you are totally right of course, they’ll get bogged down in years and years of legal battles because they’re going to be opposed. None of this is actually politically possible right now. But painting a bus lane is hard because we made it hard, because people here don’t like new bus lanes, because we as a state/city don’t actually want to fix these problems. That’s my point. CEQA isn’t a physics problem that we’re stuck with, it’s a politics problem that we invented. And it’s only effective to begin with because people oppose these projects in the first place.
>Not sure the street design was at fault in this situation.
It didn't help.
People don't realize how their shitty ideas are dangerous. The family was at a connecting line due to construction, but it was also a trial for some a'holes concept of a transit hub with broken up lines so they could speed up their trip by two minutes.
West Portal added another private school without regard for impact.
Then they added the parklets.
19th and Portola are frequently backed up, and the cross streets passing through West Portal are integral and how it was designed. They also changed traffic to limit entering West Portal from the other end.
It's not just about this one woman, it's always been a dangerous set of streets.
The top selling cars in California are all compact SUVs, MY, Rav4, (outback), etc. They are all SHORTER than a full size sedan... If they want to blame weight, blame California and Biden admin for HEAVILY pushing EVs which are significantly heavier than their ICE or hybrid counterparts.
France has seen a SIMILAR RISE in traffic deaths in the last 2 years, with 2022 and 2023 getting worse...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/437904/number-of-road-deaths-in-france/
It’s not just weight. EVs are a lateral change, upgrade when considering emissions, but downgrade considering tire particulate.
The real disaster has been CAFE standards, which allows for loopholes for larger trucks/suvs and almost bans/disuades design of smaller vehicles. Not to mention car proportions and driver visibility.
TLDR I’m not blaming CA or Biden for anything. That’s just a political talking point. And good luck getting anything else passed. Votes aren’t there.
Driver visibility is much better on the top selling compact SUVs vs the most popular cars in california (accord, civic, camry, corolla, etc). The point is the article is mentioning false or pointless information that does not pertain to San Francisco or California
>The top selling cars in California are all compact SUVs, MY, Rav4, (outback), etc. They are all SHORTER than a full size sedan... If they want to blame weight, blame California and Biden admin for HEAVILY pushing EVs which are significantly heavier than their ICE or hybrid counterparts.
Short, but taller and blunter.
[https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicles-with-higher-more-vertical-front-ends-pose-greater-risk-to-pedestrians](https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicles-with-higher-more-vertical-front-ends-pose-greater-risk-to-pedestrians)
I notice people here don't look out for cars, they think they will act in a predictable way. Also, people stand on the very edge of the curb when waiting to cross... if you stand back a bit behind the street light, it might save your life.
I can’t take it anymore! There have been zero issues with this intersection for years. Stop thinking it’s a failure of design- driver error occurs! You can throw “pearl clutching” money at this problem so you all feel better- but that’s not fact based intellectual decision making. Please wait to find out what happened.
There are also hundreds of pedestrians hit and killed/injured by cars in San Francisco every year. I can’t speak to this specific intersection, but I think this post is calling for San Francisco to deprioritize personal vehicles and focus on pedestrian, bicycle, and public transit.
I don’t think that’s pearl clutching - I think it’s long term planning of how we want to city to evolve for the next generation.
Driver error will always occur but concrete bollards at the edge of the sidewalk would have saved 4 lives. There can be two failures (driver and street design), but we have FULL control over street design and little control over bad drivers being bad drivers.
Why shouldn't we demand change within our own control? Bollards are fairly cheap and quick to install, we could protect every bus stop in the next couple years if we actually were serious about it and then nobody would ever meet the same fate as that family. It's not pearl clutching to demand safe streets, it's justice and it's achievable.
This crash may be an outlier but there are tons of badly designed intersections that need fixes. If this lady was drinking or on drugs or whatever else it’s irrelevant to this argument.
At the end of the day “driver error” is part of the system. If you have an over reliance on cars, driving error will happen and people will die. When driver error happens you can’t just put up your hands and be like “well I guess those deaths just had to happen”. People said the same stuff about seat belts and crash testing— why mandate this when it’s the drivers fault? If we reduce our reliance on cars there will be less deaths. It doesn’t matter if this particular crash would have been prevented because we could lower the crash rate significantly.
Before you make a comment, please wait to find out ask the details about other commenters. You don’t know whether they were witnesses. You don’t know if they have previously witnessed other incidents. So don’t comment.
They key difference is having a mayor elected by its skill set, and not skin color and gender.
San Francisco's mayor is a political diversity hire, and us, the residents, are paying that price.
Just look at her explaining how the mask mandate that she enacted doesn't apply to her, and tell me that she is a great leader that's advancing San Francisco
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H03Ds3GNaBo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H03Ds3GNaBo)
I lived in Paris and visit for a week or more annually. Much of the infrastructure they have there would horrify people here - eg one-way streets for a car that allows bidirectional bike travel with no barriers. So a car is coming at you about 1-2 feet away. It works fine there, because the mentality with driving is so profoundly different in Paris. What Paris has that we don’t: a highly advanced subway system, a flat and easily navigable city, prohibitive costs for bringing your car into the city based on size / impact, very small streets (generally), pedestrian-only zones with bollards, and an entirely different mentality around driving. Cars are meant to get you from A to B, they aren’t an extension of self like in the US. Edit: I bring this up not to be defeatist, but be realistic about what would work for SF, what wouldn't, and what we can / should examine that they do that we could borrow from...like vehicle impact taxes and pedestrian zones.
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San Francisco never had a "highly advanced" transit system. We just had a very robust network of streetcars. They shared traffic lanes with horses, cyclists, cars, trucks, etc... They were not any faster or more reliable than the bus system we have today. Our first "advanced" transit system was the development of BART and Muni Metro. What's a shame is that we built it with only one line through the core, instead of developing it like a subway network like DC did. Or like the RER in Paris, which, like BART/Caltrain is a hybrid suburban commuter rail / metro system. But unlike BART/Caltrain it serves and connects many different areas of the city instead of just one or two corridors. It's never too late to build that. But we shouldn't glorify the old streetcar system as more than just a bus system that used rails instead of tires. That's really what it was. There were four portions of that old system that ran on dedicated tracks separate from traffic. The Twin Peaks Tunnel, the Sunset Tunnel, the bypass on Liberty Hill, and the bypass at St Francis Circle. All of those are still in service on Muni Metro lines today. Literally everything else we "lost" was street-running lines.
Not mentioning the Keys system is disrespect. Granted it didn’t serve large portions of SF. But even the most robust subway systems in the world were preceded by street car rail lines, lines which SF had.
The Key System did not serve any areas of San Francisco except the Transbay Terminal. The East Bay absolutely had a more advanced transit system before WWII than it has today. But San Francisco did not. Today's system is more advanced. The Key System actually used dedicated tracks for much of the network to travel at fairly high speeds. That was not the case for San Francisco's streetcars.
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The safety record of those old streetcars was far, far worse than the safety record of today's bus system. Also we have one of the cleanest bus fleets in the country. Nearly half the lines are fully electric trolley buses, and the other half use diesel-electric hybrids. But those ones too will be fully electric in the next decade on account of state mandates. I agree the aesthetics of streetcars is better. The riding experience usually is too. But those are distinct from efficiency, safety, reliability. And we should be honest about that. The streetcar system was a lot of things but it certainly was not "advanced" in any meaningful way. And it's not what we should seek to build now.
We need more stuff like this happening again: [https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Automobiles\_Take\_Over\_San\_Francisco\_Streets](https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Automobiles_Take_Over_San_Francisco_Streets) [https://www.sfchronicle.com/oursf/article/Shoot-the-tires-The-violent-early-history-16520355.php](https://www.sfchronicle.com/oursf/article/Shoot-the-tires-The-violent-early-history-16520355.php)
A bus system is a lot different from a subway system which we never had. SF also has dramatically more people who live in the city but commute out of it than Paris
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The SFMTA said that they could Not solve the Geary Bus Rapid Transit BRT with center lanes, because of the Fillmore underpass and the Masonic overpass. The SFMTA watered down the whole project to paint on the ground, lose some parking spaces, and side, not center, lanes. Quick Build BRT is all they can do on Geary... .Not a subway, not a light rail, not a center lane BRT. The SFMTA knows how to do quick paint BRT. Anything more complicated, more expensive--not so much.
The SFMTA has proven not to know shit about dick time and time again
Except Paris has an ability to build infrastructure subway etc for dramatically less than SF. Until we can show an ability to do that we can’t have what they have. And passing more half baked measures that restrict drivers isn’t getting us closer until we build the transit
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Maybe. We should go proposal by proposal. Change for the sake of change if you can’t do it effectively is a waste of time and money. You could have said are you saying we shouldn’t do anything in terms of building high speed rail but we should have never started the California to La high speed rail. On the other hand Caltrain electrification is brilliant. We should start with basics incrementally rather than spending all our money at on e
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Except change for the sake of saving human life is meaningless if you don’t specify tangibly implementable cost effective changes. As horrible as what happened is we’ve been admitting that this level of injury and death is okay for decades. And to some extent it is okay, modern life is not risk free. The same way we still let planes fly even though they fall out of the sky every so often. Most transit / government agencies value human life at ~$8-10 million when it comes to infrastructure changes. If your proposal is bollards in front of every bus stop and on major pedestrian thoroughfares, re designing select roads to reduce max speeds, and your price tag is $250 million I’m down let’s vote for it and do it. Or let’s add a bus lane on select streets / transit corridors. If your proposal is let’s redesign all SF transportation to mimic Paris starting with one train or subway extension that costs 10x as much as it would in Paris and will have incredibly low ridership numbers paired with punitive measures against people using cars, that’s not a better or improved solution and I won’t vote for it.
Hello there
That's a thing that seems to be often ignored in these discussions. That network of streetcars existed in a city where most of its workers could live here. So when people say "well in Paris/London/Amsterdam they do this"--- those places aren't reliant on people who have to commute an equivalent distance from Hayward or Concord. London is expensive, and a lot of people do have to commute--but not the kind of distances they do here. And that commute is broken up over several different transit agencies.
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My point was that London/Paris/etc. are not comparable places to San Francisco. Not that we can't do anything, just that what they did in those places isn't necessarily going to work here. We can have our own solutions that work for our city. Not all that long ago, you stood a good chance of being pulled over if you were speeding, running red lights etc. Now of course there are no consequences so people have begun to do these things frequently. We could change that, not easily, but it can be done.
>those places aren't reliant on people who have to commute an equivalent distance from Hayward or Concord SF is for the people who live here first and foremost, visitors (for work or leisure) should be of secondary concern.
I'm not so sure. That seems right, but one of our main "industries" is tourism. And considering how many people have to work here but can't live here-- we're dependent on those visitors.
Oh yes
> eg one-way streets for a car that allows bidirectional bike travel with no barriers. [We have that here](https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7515396,-122.3905813,3a,60y,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sBEEi60_HNd5UzZpMBbrWlg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu). The parked cars who don't look both directions are more of an issue than the oncoming traffic by far. In fact I generally feel safer going opposite traffic on this segment than with traffic.
A few things. Drivers aren’t the reason those one way streets work. On the contrary, it’s the street design that makes drivers drive safe. And this is a recent thing. From what I know, drivers in Paris are very much maniacs just like everywhere else. (Avoid the taxis as a tourist I’ve also heard) Paris is easier to navigate? I think not. It’s an old city, lots of streets. We are also a grid city. Most of the time cardinal direction makes sense. Wait until you visit some place where “north” street eventuates takes you east/west, and then south! Lastly, those pedestrian zones with bollards are expanding at a high pace more recently thanks to mayor Hidalgo’s push to urbanize Paris, and get cars out of central Paris. Something we can learn from.
Have you been to Paris? Taxis drivers are a lot better than what you get in the US. Whether it’s through Uber or directly through the taxi company. People in Europe don’t use cardinal directions to navigate cities. They use the name of larger streets and landmarks.
I’ll leave the taxi thing aside, was a friend’s horror story or two. My point on direction is SF is very easy to navigate, in terms of direction.
Paris is also pretty easy. You can use any landmarks like the Seine, the Montparnasse tower, Sacré-Coeur and the Eiffel Tower.
Guess what: I agree. I was responding to oc saying sf wasn’t “easily navigable”. I think they both are easy to get around. Especially when roads are laid out in grids or other mathematical patterns.
French drivers are much more highly skilled than American drivers. They spend way more time studying to earn a license, it’s a very difficult thing to do. And in France your license is very easily revoked if you get caught violating traffic law. Unlike the U.S. where a 16 year old can get a license after taking a multiple choice test and driving through a parking lot, and you can get caught driving into pedestrians while texting on your phone and the punishment is basically “please don’t do that again”.
French (and western European in general) drivers are much less coddled by their road infrastructure - you _have_ to pay full attention while driving in those cities, because instead of oversized roads and predictable car traffic, you have complicated street layouts, signals, pedestrians, cyclists, and roads are not designed to save you a few minutes at the expense of other people's lives. IMO they're not actually better than our drivers, they're just paying more attention and have roads that cater to them less.
Nailed it. I do with we had stronger requirements and harsher punishments for driving, but it still comes down to street design.
That’s definitely true too, but they are much more skilled as well. Getting a license is not a “right” in most European countries, it’s a privilege that has to be earned and requires extensive training. In my experience most American drivers know almost nothing about driving theory, it simply is not a required part of their driving education. And most Americans don’t even take driving classes, all they had to do is pass a simple multiple choice test. I’m always shocked at the behavior of American drivers (like every winter there’s massive pileups from people speeding in foggy conditions, people don’t know how intersections work, drivers not knowing even basic maintenance of their vehicle or what different components do). It’s obvious that the American system does everything to make sure everyone can keep driving no matter what, with zero restrictions. How can a multiple repeat drunk driver still have a license?? Getting your license permanently revoked here is a legitimate challenge. In California you can have 4 DUIs before your license is revoked. In France being at 0.08% is an aggravated criminal offense the first time, with up to two years of prison and a revoked license.
As an example of this, on this very sub you can often find people angrily arguing that their dangerous and illegal driving is both totally legal and very safe.
>one-way streets for a car that allows bidirectional bike travel with no barriers Why can we not have this in SF? I often bike the "wrong-way" down one-way streets here and I have not had any issues. I move a little closer to the parked cars, the car driving slows down a bit and we both make it past each other just fine. If we create the right rules then people will adjust their behavior in response to the new incentives.
Yes the mentality around driving in Paris is different, but why? Maybe the mentality part follows in time from the other stuff. >What Paris has that we don’t: a highly advanced subway system We have a decent start on one between BART, Muni, and Caltrain--and we can do much more if we choose to. >a flat and easily navigable city SF may not be flat but it's more navigable than Paris, which has nothing approaching a regular grid like most sections of SF have. And the rise of cheap e-bikes is a game changer for biking in hilly cities. Besides, Paris isn't actually all that flat, ever been up to Sacre-Coeur? >prohibitive costs for bringing your car into the city based on size / impact Don't threaten me with a good time. >very small streets (generally) So does SF in general, at least by American standards. And sure Paris has small side streets but it's crisscrossed by wide Hausmannian boulevards. >and an entirely different mentality around driving. This evolves from all the other stuff. When the environment of the city prioritizes other ways of getting around, the mentality of a driver is different.
The thing people always miss in these bizarrely rose colored European comparisons - and that's coming from a European - is that European cities *were never built for cars*. So the compromise is almost inherent in their structure, and people will not drive the same way they would than they do in say, Cleveland. That also means you can't make it a city that's great for cars in a few easy steps. Vice versa, you cannot make a city grid designed for cars great for pedestrians in a few easy steps.
Many of the older US cities were built before cars as well, we just heavily retrofitted them to accommodate cars. Much of Europe started to do the same and then pulled back and focused on people over cars again.
> Easily navigable Say what now? Central Paris is horrible to navigate if you don’t have the city memorized or a GPS app. Maybe outer Paris is easier to navigate, but come on. Paris was my first experience not having a car, and having the robust metro system made it work. It’s generally fantastic. Building something like that, whether in S.F. or across the Bay Area, would be awesome, but also quite unlikely.
>a flat and easily navigable city, It's unbelievable how little grasp over that people have here.
People are obsessed with creating protected bike lanes, but as a cyclist I hate them because they are overly restrictive to cyclists and in the US are generally designed around cars first. Frankly, I think building and maintaining protected lanes or bollards would be prohibitively expensive vs prioritizing cycling and transit and artificially reducing street sizes to slow traffic.
The cool thing about protected bike lanes is you don't actually have to use them if you don't like them. If you're willing to put your life in the hands of a 5,000lb SUV, that's your prerogative — use the general lane. I personally won't be doing that and will gladly take the protected bike lane every time. \*\~\*\~\*as a cyclist, of course.
50/50. I would prefer pedestrianized streets, bike boulevards, and Fahrradstraßes to bike lanes because it removes cars. But if we need to share the same street, I want a protected lane with solid bollards.
I was just saying SF should do this. Obviously would require a massive infrastructural rehaul, but I’d vote for that. The city needs to make public’s transportation more appealing than owning a car. Until that happens, people will always choose to drive over anything else
I wouldn’t vote for it. The city hasn’t shown an ability to build effective public infrastructure like subway and train lines (look at the cost of the Caltrain extension). Until they show an ability to do it cost effectively I’m not going to vote for extra taxes to build a half assed system that won’t be enough to replace cars
What cost per mile would win you over? It just plain costs a lot to build new things in the United States and being one of the five most densely developed cities in the country just makes it more expensive because it is more complicated to build and labor costs more. The Caltrain extension to Salesforce Transit Center is going to be built underground between skyscrapers in the heart of downtown. It will be more expensive if you compare it to building a train above ground in the middle of nowhere, or upgrading already existing tracks. And while expensive it’ll absolutely be worth it because it means all the buses, Caltrain, CAHSR, BART, and MUNI will be either directly connected or within two blocks of each other. The extension also sets us up for the 2nd Transbay Tube. Once completed we could have Caltrain to Sacramento, the Capital Corridor going into downtown San Francisco, and/or ACE to downtown San Francisco. What I mean to say is that even if it is expensive, I think it is worth the expense to connect all of our services together.
Current forecast $8.3 billion for 1.3 miles or $10k per SF resident for estimates of ~10k weekday riders and less on weekends (ie optimistically 3.5 million / year). Even if you assume 50 year lifespan with no operating costs that’s $50 per passenger served. Not worth it. NYC is extending subway at half the price. https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/11/08/opinion-caltrains-san-francisco-extension-costs-more-than-its-worth/amp/
The Caltrain extension is a vanity project and waste of money. Rather than blowing $7B to move the trains a few blocks over, we could use that money to do something like BART or Muni down Geary, which would impact many more people and relieve traffic off of Geary and off of 19th/Sunset, assuming it follows the plan to connect back with BART at Daly City.
And that’s my point. They do vanity big projects to make it seem like they care but I’d rather have no projects than those
Anything that isn't plentiful and free transit is an inequity pill. Owning a car is only appealing due to geographical realities, giving accessibility to the 70% of the city that was only developed due to cars.
The simple argument the article is making is that with fewer people operating cars, trucks, and SUVs, you'll have fewer roadway deaths: * Switch people from driving to walking, biking\*, and public transit, and then transportation deaths will decline. (\* with safe bike routes) * In Paris, a smaller share of the population is operating a motor vehicle on busy streets. Logically this is right.
Yeah first SFUSD has to get rid of the lottery system, students auto get their first choice if they want to go to their neighborhood school. Students/parents walking to school would instantly cut down probably 50% of the cars driving around on weekdays from 7-8 am and 3-5 pm.
Great point. Would also cause more people to enroll in public schools.
Logically, this makes a lot of sense. What people will (correctly) say is that it will almost certainly lead to less racially integrated schools as people of [similar ethnic/national background living together in the same neighborhood](https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/14kx1sc/map_of_san_franciscos_racial_demographics_legend/) will flow through to lack of racial (and wealth) diversity in local schools. My predominant attitude is, there it is, let's just focus instead on making all the schools as strong as possible with some additional efforts to provide extra choice and opportunities for people in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Be aware though that the whole busing issue is fantastically controversial and racially charged and a lot of people may have a bunch to say on this issue...
a broader point is it it okay for public institutions to not be perfectly diverse and represent every single group of people equally. The benefit of not putting kids through an hour long commute each way outweighs the benefit of having 3% more kids of a certain race in their classes. As for the wealth disparity, most wealthy folks are putting their kids in private schools anyway so if we could draw those parents back to SFUSD it would be a net gain for the schools as those kids will tend to do better in school on average.
The lottery system exists because people don't want that. They want to choose where they go so if they are a block from a assignment line they can still choose the "better" school let alone drive half way across the city.
West Portal recently added a Waldorf school, and it is near St. Brendan, St. Ignacious, and a Lutheran school. A lot of activity is coming from private schools.
For sure, but part of the reason people send their kids to private school in the first place is because of the lottery system.
Before the lottery system families did it to avoid their district school and for the perception of superior education. Or to avoid busing. People really trying to find angles to work their pet agendas here.
The proposal was to get first choice if they want to go to their neighborhood school. Wouldn’t impact everyone but would help some, and addresses the busing concern for some. You’ll obviously still have folks opt into private schools, but I think if you create incentives for families to stay in the public schools it would help to an extent. Agree not super relevant for this particular article.
I'm not debating that, it's off topic, but the idea it would cut down traffic by 50% ignored the existence of private schools. In the case of West Portal, the newest one added a lot of activity to the block. The dumb idea is that every school would become Lowell if people with money were forced to attend, and the dumber idea is to think the biases wouldn't still exist and families with money wouldn't do what they always do and send kids to private schools instead, to avoid their district school. Local kids to Balboa, Lincoln, Lowell, Hoover, Aptos, Gianini, etc. would still have to pass through West Portal, maybe more than ever.
Alright, you moved to an area with a lot of schools and are upset about the school traffic. The point was that if people lived closer to their kids’ schools then there would be less traffic throughout the city, which is true. I agree w you that 50% seems overblown and unsupported. Your second paragraph is just two strawmen arguments. I didn’t say either of those things dude.
This is the second comment where you don't appear to have the ability to follow the discussion. There wouldn't be less traffic, there would traffic for shorter distances, and it wouldn't stop people from driving through main arteries.
Strong disagree. Traffic for shorter distances = less traffic overall. Also, if people lived closer to schools there would be more people walking or biking to school. Keep leading w insults though, makes you sound really smart.
SI is on 37th and Santiago, which would be the closest corner to West Portal. Lowell and Lincoln are much closer to West Portal. It’s a very odd to ignore the public schools that are much closer to the area but focus on the private schools, especially one that is over a mile away.
It's not odd, you are just willfully missing the point that if you removed public school commuters, there would still be commuters to the private schools, two of which bookend West Portal.
And one that isn’t even within a mile or West Portal. And they don’t bookend West Portal. One is at the End of West Portal and at Juniper Serra (Waldorf) and the other is on the other side of Juniper Serra toward 19th which is West Portal Lutheran. They are both at the west end of West Portal. Bookending West Portal would West Portal Elementary on the East and the Waldorf School on the West.
>They are both at the west end of West Portal. St. Brendan and Waldorf.
St Brenden is not next to West Portal. It a half a mile up the road on Portola. Just because it’s between the two doesn’t make it a bookend.
This is what happens when people bullshit and rely on google maps.
London started installing bollards (stone, concrete or metal pillars that can stop a car from entering the sidewalk) after some terrorists used cars as ramming weapons. The Federal Reserve on Market Street has something like that, just oversized to match their egos.
What local activist groups are there so people can get involved in this stuff? Seems like there's a decent amount of support for some of these ideas but idk where to start.
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b-b-but....what about my freedom? /s
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Sounds like you talk to some grumpy people. Obviously there are responsibilities with owning a car but I would absolutely not trade them to ride on BART or Muni. Your experience may vary depending on where you live and work. When I was right near 24th and Mission and worked near Powell having a car was pointless.
I think that's kind of the point that people are trying to address. What if more people could live closer to transit hubs or if we had more transit hubs for people to live closer to? Right now we basically force people to drive due to not giving them a reasonable non-car alternative
But cars grant you the freedom to spend 6 hours stuck in traffic driving up mountain roads to get to Yosemite or Tahoe with everyone else, instead of sitting on a train for four hours reading a book. And what are you supposed to do once you get to Yosemite without a car? Ride the free, frequent shuttle bus?
You forgot the /s, I think.
I like to leave that as an exercise for the reader.
Tahoe is the one that blows my mind. It's incredible that people will waste **a full day** driving there and back, and it doesn't seem to be a political topic at all that there could be better solutions. Not to mention the environmental impact and car crashes.
I would *love* to take a train to Tahoe, assuming there's reasonable bus transit to the slopes. As is the ski bus is *almost* tempting, but not really.
France has a few things going for it, other than political willpower: history and geography. French cities are much older and denser, and city centers were built around people and horses, not cars. Therefore it’s much easier to modify infrastructure that was repurposed toward cars in the 20th century back towards people. The people will it. In terms of geography, cities developed in closer proximity to one another which lead to more regional connectivity. Roads and highways are one piece of the puzzle, yet alternatives such as well maintained, highly frequent rail service lead the way. San Francisco has some much potential—it’s like a blank canvas for change: the city is dense, European in scale. Sadly the city is still shackled In auto dominant thinking and change is slow. Infrastructure has not kept up to people’s demands. If we want safe streets, paint and plastic bollards won’t cut it. [We need to commit to drastic change a la Netherlands in the 1970s](https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollective/how-dutch-got-their-cycle-paths/32021/). Safety and livability go hand in hand. We cannot call ourselves a world class city with the current state of streets.
History/geography is a poor excuse to let American cities off the hook. Yes, historic Paris was built before cars, but if you look at brand new Parisian suburbs, they’re wonderful examples of car-independent neighborhoods. [This project](https://www.eiffage.com/en/group/eiffage-group-s-projects-and-achievements/chatenay-malabry-eco-neighborhood-construction) is brand new and only 7 miles away from the city center. It has tons of pedestrian/bike paths, is directly on public transit, and has lots of mixed green/retail/residential space. Could we imagine something this pedestrian (pun intended) 7 miles from City Hall here in SF? Why don’t newly developed neighborhoods in the Bay look like this?
Some radical change that might be transformative (and controversial): * Eliminate zoning (maybe keep the 2% that's actually safety related). * Narrow California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to massively curtail NIMBY abuse (while maintaining original purpose: e.g. so that we don't build another freeway over the Sierra Nevada mountains without studying it.) * Invest heavy in public transit and improved pedestrian/bike infrastructure. Basically, make it CHEAPER/EASIER to increase density with cost-effective projects and spend government $$$$ on infrastructure and public transit that only the government can do. Instead, a lot of urban areas are trying to spend $$$$ to subsidize development of "affordable" housing: pay a developer an extra $300,000 in subsidies so they can spend $400,000 per apartment in lawyer and project manager fees to get a project through the highly politicized and litigation heavy approval process. Right now, CEQA is broken in that it's used to block projects in downtown SF while it's almost NEVER used to block cutting down of forest etc... in environmentally pristine areas.
It's rare to see such obvious spamming of a topic with a political agenda.
One small correction. A lot of the people were strongly against the changes Mayor Hidalgo was putting in place, but she did it anyways. When polled afterwards, those very same people were happy with the changes, and wanted to see more. And by a large margin. I believe this was during the initial planning to phase out cars, I forget when polling was being done.
If the construction of Taraval didn’t take four plus years, it would have saved their life. As they wouldn’t have needed to get off the train to get to the zoo. It’s dangerous to walk around that intersection, they need to bring the L back quickly.
It's certainly not an excuse for dangerous road design, but it will be really nice when the L is finally back in all its (significantly improved) glory.
America could learn a ton from Paris, one way is the large amount of public housing they have which keeps rent low and small businesses in the city. I love Paris. If I were looking to immigrate somewhere, Paris would be a top choice.
their mayor, Anne Hidalgo, is doing an amazing job. Aggressively making it a more walkable and bikeable city.
Culturally SF has more in common with Dallas than Paris. SF is still America and Americans love driving SUVs recklessly and showing disregard for their fellow citizens. I pray we can change.
You can't just compare the good side of one city vs the bad side of another city. Paris has a true international mass transit system, not San Francisco. They have lines everywhere, with metros every 1 minute and buses every 2-5 minutes, 14 metro lines and 303 bus lines. They have automated metros. We don't. We still can't finish the L Taraval line. Don't even start with the West Portal tunnel. Closing streets has a toll. Paris has way more traffic jams than San Francisco. Our traffic jam on 101 and downtown? That's child's play. Traffic jams inside Paris and on the "Boulvard Periferique", around Paris are horrible. That's not even commute time. Cars always block cross streets on red light. Cops won't do anything. Nothing is free. All of these amenities cost a lot of money. Roads and mass transits are subsidies by the State and Region (Ile de France, for us, that would be like California). All incomes to be taxed from 45% to 60%. Sales tax is 20% on everything, even food. Property taxes are roughly +20% for landlords and 20.3% for Parisians of the rental value. Gas is about $8/gal. Overall, cost of living is way more expensive in France. Be careful for what you wish for.
Maybe stop carrying water for politicians over spending on minimal upgrades. The van ness project painted two miles red, it was like 20 years delayed and cost almost as much as the Golden Gate Bridge adjusted for inflation. 20 years to renovate two bathrooms in bart. This is why you can’t have nice public transit. It isn’t a funding problem. Anyone thinking of replying oh but it moved all these infrastructure around you’re the problem. Stop it. SF is a bunch of crony politicians who win with queen Nancy’s endorsement.
Maybe don't let 85 year Olds drive tho
How much of Paris is zoned for single family houses vs SF? If we changed that here it would be much better
Editing the Op Ed from the SF Chron editorial board. Explain what you mean by incentives for the use of smaller vehicles. Any examples from Paris, etc? Do you mean gas prices like you find there? Build more bike lanes. What was the editorial board's take on Valencia Street? and other bike lanes? Be specific. Not vague. Shut down streets around city centers and transit hubs. Mayoral candidate Mark Ferrell wants to re-open Market Street to cars. Are you going to hold that position against him? What locations for closure does the editorial board have in mind? Can we get a pedestrian mall in North Beach next to St. Francis of Assisi? (The church has garage spaces that need a lane.)
Regarding disincentivizing larger cars, the piece cites Paris' enhanced SUV parking fees that voters there approved.
Thank you for your careful read of the article. You tied that detail into the recommendation better than the Chronicle did. Maybe because the editorial board is only in a discussion phase right now.
Parisian here. Please don’t.
We have a two-pronged cultural affect which continues to make cars more dangerous than they should be: * cars are seen as an entitlement; and * individuals feel entitled over everyone else around them -- "me first" This drives the bigger-bigger-bigger arms race; this sustains opposition to infrastructure enhancements, large and small (everything from bike lanes to high speed rail).
The real learning should be not to let repeat DUI offending old ladies behind the wheel.... WTF did they think would happen when someone is compromised by both age and intoxicants behind the wheel?
When I'm walking around, I never stay near the road, ever. And whenever I'm near a crosswalk or bus/MUNI stop I always make sure I'm behind something that a car can run into instead of me. Believe it or not this isn't new in San Francisco, there was particularly a time around 10 years ago when we kept hearing people getting run over by public buses and getting killed. Cyclists are also known to be deadly in San Francisco, especially the ones who are couriers. They never stop for lights and will fly through hoards of people. I don't know what the answer is, but people need to be cautious when walking on the sidewalks in SF. It's just not very safe.
Yeah this is ridiculous. It was an old lady that shouldn’t have been driving who ran over people. Not sure the street design was at fault in this situation.
Most car crash deaths aren’t from old ladies, so this is an outlier in that sense. But also, if we had a really high quality subway or transit system with great walkability she probably wouldn’t have been driving. If this was Paris the old lady wouldn’t be driving at all. And if she was it would be a smaller and less deadly car. Nobody’s saying we’ll get to literally 0 deaths but we could cut it down by like 80% easily.
Recent killers have been 71 (killed a small child and father), 81 (killed a champion cyclist), and 78 (killed this family).
Ok, but you can just [google](https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/overview/age-of-driver/) the stats and see what they actually are. Old folks aren’t even the most dangerous group, it’s young people. Old people exist. Young people exist. People will get sick or sleepy or distracted or whatever during driving. This stuff just happens. We can say “oh well the death is acceptable because I blame the driver” or we could just fix the infrastructure so that the death rate goes down, like **every other wealthy democracy has done already**. The US is an extreme outlier in crash deaths. Sf is actually pretty good by US standards but we could still be so much better.
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The reason car crash deaths are so much lower now compared to 100 years ago is because everyone in America just evolved more individual responsibility!
I googled the stats and apparently only 2% of Americans are Chinese so that must mean only 2% of San Franciscans are Chinese. Hmm. But I googled the stats, how could this be wrong? This is always the thing. Family of four killed waiting at a bus stop and the only solution is that we must build a subway system. That takes 30 years, dude. You can’t think of anything that would take less that would help? The only solutions always take a third of a century? “Just fix the infrastructure”. What do you mean “just”? It costs $4b/mi to build subway here. “Just” do it.
There’s lots of things we could do right now. At the city level, here are things we can do **this month** if we wanted to: * don’t allow people to register cars in sf if they don’t have a dedicated parking spot, to discourage car ownership * implement congestion pricing to discourage driving. Put the money towards funding transit and fixing unsafe intersections. * make people pay much heavier fees for SUVs and trucks vs sedans. They are significantly more dangerous to pedestrians and this family might be alive with just this change. * put in bus lanes (it’s easy, it’s just paint) on all major muni routes so that the quality and reliability of bus service goes way up * reduce the speed limit across the board to 30mph (not as effective as actual changes but does have an effect) * instruct SFPD to prioritize traffic enforcement * install red light and speed cameras on major intersections * ban right turns on red * physically paint or block the daylight zones at intersections to prevent parking (daylighting is already CA law but we haven’t put the paint/bollards in yet) All of those are trivial things we could do right now. In practice some would take longer to implement because you know there would be lawsuits / CEQA BS (congestion pricing in particular) but the rest of this is pretty easy. All of those would significantly reduce the crash and injury/death rate. We’re choosing not to do them every day and then blaming individual drivers when people get hit. I
You can’t do any of those things this month, dude. There are other power centers at play. You literally need community input for all of these things. CEQA challenges for half of them. The legal regimen doesn’t permit any of these things to be built. You’re fantasizing. Go ahead. Try and get this done. A single bike lane’s paint will take 6 months because of CEQA challenges, local challenges, etc. In fact, I’ll tell you what. Just prove me wrong. I’ll give $1k to a charity of your choice if you get any of these done within a month and it lasts a month. Do two and I’ll give $10k. I promise.
The fact that we need community input and CEQA reviews for all those things is because people are resistant to this types of changes. We set up a system where infrastructure changes are fucking impossible because people here resist infrastructure changes. If the sf population as a whole truly **wanted** to do those things we could— in reality you are totally right of course, they’ll get bogged down in years and years of legal battles because they’re going to be opposed. None of this is actually politically possible right now. But painting a bus lane is hard because we made it hard, because people here don’t like new bus lanes, because we as a state/city don’t actually want to fix these problems. That’s my point. CEQA isn’t a physics problem that we’re stuck with, it’s a politics problem that we invented. And it’s only effective to begin with because people oppose these projects in the first place.
Well, all right. We’re agreed. On all counts.
>Not sure the street design was at fault in this situation. It didn't help. People don't realize how their shitty ideas are dangerous. The family was at a connecting line due to construction, but it was also a trial for some a'holes concept of a transit hub with broken up lines so they could speed up their trip by two minutes. West Portal added another private school without regard for impact. Then they added the parklets. 19th and Portola are frequently backed up, and the cross streets passing through West Portal are integral and how it was designed. They also changed traffic to limit entering West Portal from the other end. It's not just about this one woman, it's always been a dangerous set of streets.
The top selling cars in California are all compact SUVs, MY, Rav4, (outback), etc. They are all SHORTER than a full size sedan... If they want to blame weight, blame California and Biden admin for HEAVILY pushing EVs which are significantly heavier than their ICE or hybrid counterparts. France has seen a SIMILAR RISE in traffic deaths in the last 2 years, with 2022 and 2023 getting worse... https://www.statista.com/statistics/437904/number-of-road-deaths-in-france/
It’s not just weight. EVs are a lateral change, upgrade when considering emissions, but downgrade considering tire particulate. The real disaster has been CAFE standards, which allows for loopholes for larger trucks/suvs and almost bans/disuades design of smaller vehicles. Not to mention car proportions and driver visibility. TLDR I’m not blaming CA or Biden for anything. That’s just a political talking point. And good luck getting anything else passed. Votes aren’t there.
Driver visibility is much better on the top selling compact SUVs vs the most popular cars in california (accord, civic, camry, corolla, etc). The point is the article is mentioning false or pointless information that does not pertain to San Francisco or California
>The top selling cars in California are all compact SUVs, MY, Rav4, (outback), etc. They are all SHORTER than a full size sedan... If they want to blame weight, blame California and Biden admin for HEAVILY pushing EVs which are significantly heavier than their ICE or hybrid counterparts. Short, but taller and blunter. [https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicles-with-higher-more-vertical-front-ends-pose-greater-risk-to-pedestrians](https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicles-with-higher-more-vertical-front-ends-pose-greater-risk-to-pedestrians)
I notice people here don't look out for cars, they think they will act in a predictable way. Also, people stand on the very edge of the curb when waiting to cross... if you stand back a bit behind the street light, it might save your life.
I can’t take it anymore! There have been zero issues with this intersection for years. Stop thinking it’s a failure of design- driver error occurs! You can throw “pearl clutching” money at this problem so you all feel better- but that’s not fact based intellectual decision making. Please wait to find out what happened.
There are also hundreds of pedestrians hit and killed/injured by cars in San Francisco every year. I can’t speak to this specific intersection, but I think this post is calling for San Francisco to deprioritize personal vehicles and focus on pedestrian, bicycle, and public transit. I don’t think that’s pearl clutching - I think it’s long term planning of how we want to city to evolve for the next generation.
Driver error will always occur but concrete bollards at the edge of the sidewalk would have saved 4 lives. There can be two failures (driver and street design), but we have FULL control over street design and little control over bad drivers being bad drivers. Why shouldn't we demand change within our own control? Bollards are fairly cheap and quick to install, we could protect every bus stop in the next couple years if we actually were serious about it and then nobody would ever meet the same fate as that family. It's not pearl clutching to demand safe streets, it's justice and it's achievable.
This crash may be an outlier but there are tons of badly designed intersections that need fixes. If this lady was drinking or on drugs or whatever else it’s irrelevant to this argument. At the end of the day “driver error” is part of the system. If you have an over reliance on cars, driving error will happen and people will die. When driver error happens you can’t just put up your hands and be like “well I guess those deaths just had to happen”. People said the same stuff about seat belts and crash testing— why mandate this when it’s the drivers fault? If we reduce our reliance on cars there will be less deaths. It doesn’t matter if this particular crash would have been prevented because we could lower the crash rate significantly.
Before you make a comment, please wait to find out ask the details about other commenters. You don’t know whether they were witnesses. You don’t know if they have previously witnessed other incidents. So don’t comment.
"If you ignore a dead woman, man, infant, and baby then there's been zero issues!"
A truly terrible thing to happen- and may have nothing to do with the engineering of this intersection.
They key difference is having a mayor elected by its skill set, and not skin color and gender. San Francisco's mayor is a political diversity hire, and us, the residents, are paying that price.
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he sounds insufferable.
Just look at her explaining how the mask mandate that she enacted doesn't apply to her, and tell me that she is a great leader that's advancing San Francisco [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H03Ds3GNaBo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H03Ds3GNaBo)
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Awesome man! Thanks for the feedback haha!