Walk SF 2016 Street Score Report

STREET SCORE 2016

Annual Report on the State of Walking in San Francisco December 2016

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Report Snapshot................................................................................................................................................................................ ii Introduction........................................................................................................................................................................................ 1 The State of Our Streets................................................................................................................................................................. 2 How to Reach Vision Zero and Walkability Goals.................................................................................................................. 6 STRATEGY 1 Put Equity Front and Center......................................................................................................................... 7 STRATEGY 2 Focus on Proven Approaches....................................................................................................................10 STRATEGY 3 Build Comprehensive and Robust Projects and Treatments.........................................................14 STRATEGY 4 Identify and Overcome Obstacles to Building the Safest Streets...............................................18 STRATEGY 5 Encourage Walking and Placemaking Projects..................................................................................20 Conclusion and Next Steps..........................................................................................................................................................21 Appendix A: The City of San Francisco’s Pedestrian-Related Vision Zero and Walkability Goals....................22

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REPORT SNAPSHOT

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Put Equity Front and Center All communities deserve safe streets, but improvements must not be implemented without regard to potential unintended consequences.

Focus on Proven Approaches Focusing on proven treatments, and winding down approaches that are not as effective, will free up funds and staff time to deliver more effective, life-saving solutions.

Build Comprehensive and Robust Projects and Treatments

The City must leverage every opportunity to transform our high-injury corridors into safe corridors, not corridors that have some safe intersections.

Identify and Overcome Obstacles to Building the Safest Streets

Lack of funding, lack of innovation in design, and pushback from various sectors continue to compromise the quality and swift delivery of safety improvements on our streets.

Encourage Walking and Placemaking Projects The City should develop a comprehensive pedestrian wayfinding system for use throughout the city and start immediately with pedestrian-focused wayfinding along the Green Connections network.

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INTRODUCTION

SAN FRANCISCO should, and can, be the safest,

most walkable city in the United States.

The data from 2015 show that more people than ever are walking in San Francisco.

Unfortunately, the data also show that since the 2014 adoption of Vision Zero, the goal to end all severe and fatal traffic crashes by 2024, there has not been a reduction in crashes for people walking.

With both limited resources and time, the City must be strategic in its Vision Zero and walkability work to reach its goals. The update of the City’s Vision Zero Two-Year Action Strategy provides the perfect opportunity for the City to reassess its efforts and to change course to ensure success.

Walk SF’s annual Street Score Report on the State of Walking in San Francisco was written to guide the City in reaching its pedestrianrelated Vision Zero and walkability goals.

Street Score provides an examination of the City’s actions to date, whether those actions are the most appropriate (i.e., the ones that will deliver the best safety and walkability outcomes), and whether the City is taking the smartest approach in executing the actions needed to reach the goals it has so proudly adopted.

By evaluating the City’s efforts, Street Score has identified five key strategies the City must adopt to reach its Vision Zero and walkability goals: ▶▶ Put Equity Front and Center ▶▶ Focus on Proven Approaches ▶▶ Build Comprehensive and Robust Projects and Treatments ▶▶ Identify and Overcome Obstacles to Building the Safest Streets ▶▶ Encourage Walking and Placemaking Projects On behalf of the 837,000 residents, 162,000 weekday commuters, and 16.5 million visitors who walk in San Francisco each year, Walk SF urges the City to adopt these strategies in its 2017–2018 Vision Zero Two-Year Action Strategy and throughout all its work that relates to walking in San Francisco.

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THE STATE OF OUR STREETS The City has made substantial progress meeting many of its pedestrian-related Vision Zero and walkability goals, as shown in Appendix A. Nevertheless, the ultimate measure of success is progress toward the two main intended outcomes: a decrease in severe and fatal crashes and an increase in walking.

PROGRESS ON OUTCOMES FOR PEOPLE WALKING The good news is that the City has met and exceeded its goals of getting more people walking. The bad news is that severe and fatal crashes are not declining quickly enough for the City to reach its 2024 Vision Zero goal.

While it’s encouraging that fatal crashes involving people walking have not increased as walking has increased, the goal of Vision Increase Walk Trips as % of Work Trips

11%—12% 2015 GOAL

11.2%

2015 ACTUAL Number of Pedestrian Fatalities

21

2014 ACTUAL

20

2015 ACTUAL

Zero is not a reduction in the rate of severe and fatal crashes—the goal is zero severe and fatal crashes, regardless of the number of people walking. Considering that the City is behind on meetings its goal, it must be much more focused and quickly implement comprehensive projects in order to reach zero by 2024.

Increase Walk Trips as % of All Trips

21%—22% 2015 GOAL

25%

2015 ACTUAL Number of Severe and Fatal Pedestrian Crashes

82 (or less) 2015 GOAL

99

2015 ACTUAL

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THE NEED TO PRIORITIZE PEOPLE WALKING

THE TOP CRASH FACTORS

Not only is the number of crashes not decreasing, but the number of crashes that involve people walking—especially seniors—still disproportionately forces pedestrians to bear the greatest burden of traffic violence.

In San Francisco, speed and failure to yield are the most common violations that result in traffic injuries and death for all people, whether walking, driving, or biking. Together, they account for 29% of all traffic injuries.1 In 2015, the City exceeded its goals to increase citations for driving at unsafe speeds and failure to yield.

Pedestrian Risk

14%

NATIONAL AVERAGE 65%

% OF 2015 SF TRAFFIC DEATHS INVOLVING PEOPLE WALKING

Senior Risk

This substantial increase demonstrates the prioritization of Vision Zero by the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD). Unfortunately, we are not seeing comparable decreases in severe and fatal injuries for people walking.

The remainder of this report explores why the City’s various Vision Zero efforts are not having an impact on severe and fatal crashes and outlines what the City can do to change that.

Speed and Failure to Yield Citations

14.5%

SF POPULATION OVER 64 45% % OF PEDESTRIANS OVER 64 KILLED IN SF IN 2015

1 San Francisco 2012–2015 Collision Report, November 2016, San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA).

15% INCREASE 147% INCREASE 2015 GOAL

2015 ACTUAL

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By adopting proven measures to reduce speeds on city streets, like traffic calming treatments and automated speed enforcement, the City can meet their stated Vision Zero goal by 2024.

In addition, reducing speeds will create a more pleasant environment for people walking.

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THE RISK OF INJURY AND DEATH INCREASE EXPONENTIALLY AS SPEED INCREASES

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STOPPING DISTANCE EXPONENTIALLY INCREASES AS SPEED INCREASES

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Speed is the top factor in all traffic crashes in San Francisco. Reducing speeds is vital because speed is a triple threat.

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FIELD OF VISION NARROWS AS SPEED INCREASES

SPEED IS A TRIPLE THREAT

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HOW TO REACH VISION ZERO AND WALKABILITY GOALS

(Photo by Darryl Jones)

The clock is ticking, yet the City is getting no closer to its Vision Zero goal of ending fatal traffic crashes by 2024. With limited resources and limited time, the City must be strategic in all of its streetscape and transportation improvements.

The following key strategies should be included in the 2017–2018 Vision Zero Two-Year Action Strategy Strategy and throughout all the City’s work that relates to walking in San Francisco.

2 http://fresc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/BestPractices-for-Community-Engagement.pdf

All communities deserve safe streets, but improvements must not be implemented without regard to potential unintended consequences. Following are several recommendations to ensure equity is integrated consistently throughout all of San Francisco’s Vision Zero work.

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The City should meaningfully engage San Francisco’s low-income communities and communities of color in Vision Zero projects.

It doesn’t come as a surprise that communities facing rampant displacement are wary about potential impacts to their neighborhoods, including projects that include safety and walkability improvements. Historically, these same communities have suffered from a lack of needed infrastructure investment.

While the City is now working to achieve more equitable streets by focusing additional resources in these communities, to do this well, the City must put more time and

Working with the community can also result in more innovative solutions that marry quantitative data from the City with qualitative data from the people who walk their streets every day. The City also must understand that community-based organizations (CBOs) don’t have endless capacity to engage in this

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Put Equity Front and Center In San Francisco, traffic crashes do not affect all communities equally. Crashes are concentrated in low-income communities, communities of color, and areas with high numbers of seniors and people who rely on walking and transit as their primary means of transportation. These same communities are two times more likely than other San Franciscans to live on high-injury corridors, streets where crashes are more frequent.

Clearly, the problem of preventing traffic injuries is a social justice issue, and the solutions that arise from the City’s approach— Vision Zero—must be grounded in principles that advance and support social justice on San Francisco’s streets.

effort into “meeting people where they are,” developing transparent relationships with groups in neighborhoods most affected by traffic violence, and ensuring that these groups and their communities have input on Vision Zero projects and programs from the outset. For guidance on how to effectively engage communities, a recommended resource is “Best Practices for Meaningful Community Engagement.”2 Engaging the community early and comprehensively can also help the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) build a more trusted reputation, resulting in stronger projects and projects that can hit the ground more quickly. In fact, ineffective community engagement has repeatedly led to costly project delays. For example, community dissatisfaction with the outreach process for the L Taraval Muni Forward Project led not only to extensive project delays, but it also resulted in negative press for the SFMTA , giving individuals in other neighborhoods ammunition in their pushback against important safety projects where they live. Allowing the community to help shape projects from the outset, with the shared goal of safety, can help avoid these negative consequences and lead to better outcomes.

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The City should prioritize engineering improvements in low-income communities and communities of color. As Communities of Concern (as defined by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission3) are two times more likely to contain a high-injury corridor than other San Francisco communities, Vision Zero projects in Communities of Concern should have the highest priority.

Specifically, the Vision Zero Coalition has consistently advocated for at least 75% of all Vision Zero capital projects to be built in these communities, and as previously described, community members must be partners in developing solutions.

Before implementing Vision Zero enforcement efforts, the City should engage communities. Building safe streets that prioritize safety in the first place is critical, but there must also be repercussions for behaviors that put others’ lives at risk. There are ways to ensure that penalties aren’t biased and don’t disproportionately burden low-income communities and communities of color. Employing these techniques is critical, because two recent reports assessing the practices of the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) found racial and ethnic disparities in traffic stops, searches, and arrests.4 Ways to prevent biases in traffic stops include: ▶▶ Monitoring and presenting race and ethnicity data related to Vision Zero traffic stops, including pedestrian violations, as part of the San Francisco Police Commission

▶▶ Engaging communities in informing enforcement efforts by educating community members about dangerous driver behaviors in their neighborhood and getting the community’s input on the best way to address these behaviors. ▶▶ Increasing transparency of planned enforcement efforts beforehand through community meetings, via social media, and other visible strategies. This type of “high-visibility enforcement” has also been found to be more effective than traditional enforcement, as explored in the following section, Focus on Proven Approaches. ▶▶ Focusing on specific traffic violations that lead to death and serious injury; research on police enforcement has found that targeting specific behaviors, rather than enforcing any traffic violation witnessed, can reduce occurrences of implicit bias. ▶▶ Implementing Automated Speed Enforcement (ASE), which only captures evidence of speeding vehicles’ license plates, eliminates the opportunity for racial biases.

Other equity aspects being considered in the drafting of ASE legislation include ensuring that ASE does not contribute to racial profiling through careful selection and monitoring of camera locations, as well as ensuring there aren’t disproportionate impacts on low-income drivers by keeping ticket costs low and providing citation diversion programs. SFPD’s official support of ASE has been a crucial component of the campaign to legalize ASE at the state level.

To win state approval, however, the City will need active leadership from SFPD and other law enforcement practitioners.

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A great example of the City successfully taking this approach is with the upcoming Taylor Street Streetscape Project, located in the Tenderloin. The City received a grant to engage community residents and community organizations in the planning process to redesign this high-injury corridor into a safe street for all users. Organizations are being compensated for their participation, which enables them to engage in the project.

Vision Zero updates, and holding station captains responsible for preventing and/or addressing any racial profiling detected in their reports.

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work and should consider compensating CBO staff for their time, which demonstrates that the City values and respects their constituents’ time and perspectives.

ANNUAL REPORT ON THE STATE OF WALKING IN SAN FRANCISCO 9 | STREET SCORE 2016 Seniors are five times more likely to be killed in traffic crashes than younger adults in San Francisco.

(Photo by Bryan Goebel)

3 MTC defines Communities of Concern as those with large concentrations of “minority residents, low-income households, limited English-proficient households, zerovehicle households, seniors age 75 or older, residents with a disability, single-parent families, and rent-burdened households.� See http://mtc.ca.gov/our-work/invest-protect/ investment-strategies-commitments/protect-our-climate/ active-transportation.

4 Report of the Blue Ribbon Panel on Transparency, Accountability, and Fairness in Law Enforcement, July 2016 (www.SFBlueRibbonPanel.com); An Assessment of the San Francisco Police Department by the Collaborative Reform Initiative, October 2016 (https://ric-zai-inc.com/ Publications/cops-w0817-pub.pdf).

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City staff recently published an article of Vision Zero approaches used across the world,5 which included a list of treatments with their respective effectiveness rating for reducing injury, both directly or indirectly, ranging from proven, recommended, to unknown.

Proven approaches have been found to be effective based on multiple evaluations with consistent results, whereas recommended approaches have been demonstrated to be effective in certain situations or are generally accepted to be effective “based on a balance of evidence.” 6 Table 1 lists the Vision Zero approaches the City currently uses, categorized according to the above ratings. With limited time and money, the City must focus on the PROVEN strategies listed in the gray column.

5 Arielle Fleisher, Megan L. Wier, and Mari Hunter, “A Vision for Transportation Safety: Framework for identifying Best practice Strategies to advance Vision Zero,” Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2582, Transportation Research Board, Washington, D.C., 2016, pp. 72–86.

6 Fleisher, Wier, and Hunter, “A Vision for Transportation Safety,” ” Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board (TRB), Table 1, p. 74.

7 Fleisher, Wier, and Hunter, “A Vision for Transportation Safety.”

8 “Proven” approaches have been found effective based on multiple evaluations with consistent results.

9 “Recommended” approaches have been demonstrated to be effective in certain situations or are generally accepted to be effective based on a balance of evidence.

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Focus on Proven Approaches

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TABLE 1. Efficacy of Vision Zero Approaches Currently Used by the City of San Francisco

RATE OF EFFECTIVENESS AT REDUCING INJURY 7 PROVEN EFFECTIVE8 ENGINEERING

Pedestrian countdown signals

Informative signage

General traffic calming, like speed humps, raised crosswalks, chicanes, bulb-outs

Protected turns (turn pocket, signal phasing)

Road diets High-visibility crosswalks Daylighting Roundabouts

ENFORCEMENT

RECOMMENDED9

High-visibility enforcement Automated speed enforcement

Rapid flashing beacons Leading pedestrian interval Advance stop/yield lines Lane narrowing Pedestrian refuge islands

Standard enforcement against dangerous moving violations

Red light cameras DUI checkpoints

EDUCATION/ COMMUNICATION

[no proven approaches]

Mass media education campaign focused on pedestrian awareness, bike safety, and speeding Targeted education/outreach to high priority areas Police trainings on safety priorities Large vehicle driver education on pedestrian/bicyclist safety

MONITORING & EVALUATION

Public health surveillance of traffic-related hospitalizations and fatalities Comparative data system linking social and environment factors with injury data

Interagency sharing of collision and other key data Publish city-wide collision report Routine evaluation of effectiveness of traffic safety interventions Website with relevant safety data collected in a timely manner

VEHICLE TECHNOLOGY

Telematics (limited use by City) Crossover mirrors, side guards, etc. (limited use by City)

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slow zones

▶▶ VEHICLE TECHNOLOGY: speed adaptation technologies that alert or slow vehicles if speeding, alcohol interlocks in vehicles The City should focus its limited resources on proven strategies, such as those outlined above and in the gray column of Table 1.

Focusing on proven treatments, and winding down approaches that are not as effective, will free up funds and staff time to deliver more effective, life-saving solutions.

Strategies that should be refocused:

▶▶ ENGINEERING The most effective engineering treatments are comprehensive, meaning that they combine multiple tools to transform streets into slow, safe places. This is what the City must build more of, especially along high-injury corridors. A great example is the MinnaNatoma Home Zone Project implemented adjacent to Marshall Elementary School, which included speed humps, bulb-outs, edge lines, and raised crosswalks. After project implementation, vehicle speeds decreased to below 20 miles per hour, walking increased 20%, and biking increased 6% . The City should develop more Home Zones and similar slow zones around areas with high concentrations of seniors.

▶▶ ENFORCEMENT The SFPD and the SFMTA have dedicated significant time and resources to the “Focus on the Five” effort to ensure that 50% of traffic citations are given to the top five traffic violations that lead to injury crashes. Since highvisibility enforcement is more effective than standard enforcement, it should be built into all Focus on the Five enforcement efforts. It not only demonstrates to the community that traffic safety is important, it also provides transparency.

Along with high-visibility enforcement, other enforcement strategies that have

▶▶ COMMUNICATIONS AND EDUCATION Education focused on changing individual behavior isn’t a strategic approach for multiple reasons: research has not consistently proven its effectiveness, and the cost required to reach the many people who make up San Francisco’s daily population—if it’s even possible to do— is exorbitant.

For these reasons, the City should stop dedicating taxpayer dollars and staff resources to this approach, and instead should use education to support proven engineering and enforcement approaches. Specifically, the City’s communications work should focus on building widespread awareness for Vision Zero, and it should help educate the public on not only how certain treatments address safety needs, but also which treatments are the most effective in reducing crashes and crash severity.

Additionally, collaborating with SFPD by providing the education component of high-visibility enforcement would be a smart focus of Vision Zero education efforts, since high-visibility enforcement is more effective than standard enforcement without education.

▶▶ MONITORING AND EVALUATION The City does not have to rely solely on national and international data to learn what Vision Zero approaches are effective. By evaluating its own treatments and projects, the City can learn what is working in San Francisco, which may have conditions that differ from other cities. Evaluation alone is not enough, though. To make sure it is implementing the most effective approaches, the City must use its evaluation findings to inform future design and implementation.

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▶▶ ENGINEERING: school slow zones, senior

been proven effective include ASE and red light cameras. Enforcement resources should focus on these proven strategies, which can target the same dangerous behaviors—especially speed and failure to yield.10

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The study of Vision Zero approaches also highlights several proven strategies that are not currently being used by the City:

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▶▶ VEHICLE TECHNOLOGY The Bay Area is the

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technology capital of the world, but there is a missed opportunity when it comes to leveraging technology to address public health issues—including the adoption of widely available tools and proven solutions that can prevent traffic crashes. In the short term, front and side mirrors, as well as side guards, should be standard on all

large City vehicles and large contractor vehicles (including paratransit), and telematics should be expanded to the entire City fleet. In the next two years, the City of San Francisco’s fleet should be equipped with robust crash prevention and speed adaptation tools; these shouldn’t just be reserved for luxury vehicles.

Building on the success of the Minna-Natoma Home Zone, the City should continue to implement these comprehensive traffic-calming projects nears schools and areas with many seniors. (Graphic from San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency)

10 A resource that will help the City examine the role of enforcement in Vision Zero is the pending report by the San Francisco Office of the Controller. This report will analyze how the SFPD can refine its deployment of resources for Vision Zero traffic enforcement, with a focus on many of the topics discussed in this report, including equity and the use of proven methods, like high-visibility enforcement.

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While the City has implemented a number of safety improvements since adopting Vision Zero, such as leading pedestrian intervals and high-visibility crosswalks, to meet its 2024 goal, the City must begin building more comprehensive projects that push the boundaries of innovation and leverage the best available treatments to create the safest, most walkable streets in the country.

The City must build comprehensive corridor projects to achieve its Vision Zero goal.

Due in part to funding constraints, when the SFMTA chooses where to place pedestrian safety treatments along a high-injury corridor, the agency typically proposes them only at intersections where crashes have occurred in the last 5 to 10 years. The problem is, high-injury corridors are just that— corridors. They are streets with a design pattern that is dangerous. That is why crashes tend to cluster on high-injury corridors rather than occuring randomly throughout the city.

The City must integrate predictive modeling into its approach. Transportation engineers in Sweden, the home of Vision Zero, use predictive modeling when deciding where to place a constrained number of safety improvements. Predictive models identify intersection characteristics, street patterns, and sensitive land uses (e.g., libraries, senior facilities, or schools) that are more likely to lead to crashes. Using this type of predictive analysis will allow the City to design safety treatments not only where crashes have happened, but also where they are likely to happen—resulting in a more proactive and prevention-oriented approach.

For projects to be “comprehensive,” they should feature a suite of design treatments that combine to create the safest corridor possible. Comprehensive doesn’t mean that every project should contain every safety treatment or that every project should look the same. For example, the Folsom Streetscape Project—a major capital project—is a model complete street, which features a road diet, wrap-around bulb-outs at all intersections, widened sidewalks, extensive greening, and protected bike lanes. On the other hand, Phase 1 of the 7th and 8th Street Safety Projects—which mostly features quick paint treatments like daylighting, painted safety zones, and parking-protected bike lanes— can also be a comprehensive Vision Zero project, especially if vehicle lanes are narrow enough to slow cars and if the design ensures a safe route for people walking across the bike lanes.

Building comprehensive projects is especially important since, often times, major street redesigns or repaving happen only once in a lifetime without opportunities to return for improvements. Short-term decisions that compromise safety will impact the health and wellbeing of our community for years to come. The City must leverage every opportunity to transform our high-injury corridors into safe corridors, not corridors that have some safe intersections.

Projects should be as comprehensive as possible not only to prevent future crashes, but also because complete streets encourage a greater number of people to walk, bike, and take transit. People won’t walk places

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Build Comprehensive and Robust Projects and Treatments

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if they don’t feel comfortable. Not only is increasing walking a City goal, it can also increase safety. As fewer people use private vehicles on our streets—by shifting their trips to take transit, walk, and bike—safety dramatically increases. Total traffic injuries and deaths tend to decline for all street users in a community as people shift to using public transit.11 In fact, transit passengers themselves have about one-tenth the crash injury or death rate as automobile occupants.12 For these reasons, the implementation of robust transit projects that contain comprehensive pedestrian safety treatments is an important strategy for reaching the City’s Vision Zero and walkability goals.

The City should also ensure that projects planned along streets on the Green Connections13 network always include important Green Connections features, like traffic calming, wayfinding, and green infrastructure.

By including these features, the City will encourage more people to walk and bike.

as possible in meeting safety and walkability goals, the individual treatments selected must be the highest quality available, and they must include sufficient maintenance support.

Several examples of important safety treatments that shouldn’t be compromised include:

▶▶ SPEED HUMPS AND RAISED CROSSWALKS The higher a speed hump or raised crosswalk, the better it will perform its intended function to slow speeds, increase yielding, and decrease crashes and crash severity.

Recent raised crosswalks installed in the city lack the height needed to effectively slow vehicles. The photo below shows a raised crosswalk in Berkeley that is high enough to slow vehicles and that also allows for drainage, and should serve as a model of the type of treatment the City should be installing.

Projects must have the highest-quality design and maintenance standards. For the City’s corridor projects to be as effective

Raised crosswalk at Parker Street near Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, CA.

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A painted safety zone on 6th & Market designed with unnoticeable khaki-colored paint and damaged posts that don’t continue around the corner.

In these painted safety zones in Austin, the placement of posts at the bend of the curve makes it hard for drivers to turn quickly. The fun polka-dot design further demonstrates that this part of the street is not for driving.

(Photo by the City of Austin)

• The posts that line the PSZ s need to wrap around the entire intersection to effectively slow turning vehicles. The posts should also be larger and bulkier to dissuade drivers from running them over.

Which post do you think will deter drivers more? The one on the left used in Los Angeles, or the one on the right, used in San Francisco? (Left photo by Joe Linton/Streetsblog USA)

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safety zones form temporary bulb-outs that help slow turning vehicles, increase yielding, and decrease people’s exposure to fast-moving traffic when walking.

To maximize effectiveness, PSZ quality should be improved in the following ways:

• The color of PSZ s must be bright and applied with thermoplastic paint to be more visible to drivers at all hours.

Doing so will also ensure the PSZ s require less maintenance, as the current khaki paint design fades quickly, as shown in the photo below on the left.

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▶▶ PAINTED SAFETY ZONES (PSZs) Painted

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▶▶ BULB-OUTS Bulb-outs shorten crossing

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distance, increase pedestrian visibility, and slow turning vehicles. To ensure these effects are as strong as possible, bulbouts should be as wide as possible, like the one in the photo below on the left.

Adopting the highest quality standards for the projects being built on city streets will help ensure the safety of all road users.

This bulb-out at Franklin and Hayes extends the full width of the parked cars, making pedestrians more visible and causing turning cars to slow down.

11 Litman, Todd, “Safer Than You Think! Revising the Transit Safety Narrative,” August 24, 2015, Victoria Transport Policy Institute, http://www.vtpi.org/safer.pdf.

12 Litman, Todd, “Safer Than You Think! Revising the Transit Safety Narrative.”

13 Green Connections are traffic-calmed streets that connect people to parks and open space. See http://sf-planning.org/green-connections for more information.

Pedestrians standing on this small bulb-out at Franklin and Grove would be less visible to approaching vehicles, and turning vehicles don’t have to slow down as much to clear a bulb-out this size.

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The City faces several significant obstacles in reaching its walkability and Vision Zero goals. Without first clearly identifying and then effectively addressing these obstacles, the City risks significantly compromising substantive progress towards reaching its goals.

The table below highlights some of the key barriers facing the City, as well as recommendations for how to overcome these barriers.

TABLE 2. Key Barriers Facing the City of San Francisco in Reaching Vision Zero Goals

OBSTACLE

HOW TO OVERCOME

OPPOSITION RELATED TO FIRE ACCESS

There has been pushback against effective traffic calming solutions, such as lane narrowing, speed humps, bulbouts, and traffic circles, even though a majority of emergency dispatches are related to traffic crashes and medical emergencies that safer street design could prevent.

The City should pass legislation that would change the current dynamic, which assumes street safety improvements are a hindrance to fire operations and therefore must be approved by the San Francisco Fire Department (SFFD), to the opposite: street safety improvements should be the default, and SFFD should demonstrate why improvements would cause unacceptable delays in operations; these justifications should be backed by evidence.

INSUFFICIENT FUNDING, HIGH PROJECT COSTS

The City currently does not have enough funding identified to comprehensively redesign all of the city’s high-injury corridors, especially given high project costs. As a result, the City and taxpayers are spending more money on the medical costs associated with traffic crashes than the costs of preventing them in the first place.

The City should analyze the funding needed to comprehensively redesign all high-injury corridors and then make a plan to secure said funding.

The City should use more robust low-cost treatments, like improved painted safety zones, as described above under Strategy 3.

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Identify and Overcome Obstacles to Building the Safest Streets

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OBSTACLE

COMPROMISING ON COMPLAINTS THAT AREN’T ALIGNED WITH THE CITY’S STATED GOALS

Community opposition to parking removal and circulation changes regularly leads to project delays, as well as the removal of key safety improvements.

HOW TO OVERCOME

Decision-makers need to firmly maintain the political leadership required to prevent projects from getting watered down as a result of pushback against shared goals.

Vision Zero communications should be used to help people understand the benefits of improvements and get ahead of common fears related to parking and traffic congestion.

TRADITIONAL US STREET DESIGN STANDARDS AND ENGINEERING MINDSET

For a major metropolitan city, San Francisco is traditional in its street design standards. For instance, the City regularly uses traffic signals as a safety treatment, even though roundabouts and other traffic calming treatments are used more commonly in Europe because they’re more effective at slowing speeds and reducing injury severity (in other words, they’re more effective at achieving Vision Zero).

The City must be more aggressive in promoting strategies that have worked elsewhere.

When such strategies are not completely transferrable to San Francisco streets, the City should apply promising innovative strategies that have the same effect, evaluate their impact, and ensure evaluation findings inform future design.

Leadership needs to champion these strategies, and the Mayor needs to help overcome interagency conflict that often suppresses good ideas before they see the light of day.

CONFLICT BETWEEN ACCESSIBILITY STANDARDS AND INNOVATIVE SAFETY IMPROVEMENTS

Full access to San Francisco’s streets and sidewalks for people with varying abilities is a San Francisco value that no one is willing to compromise on, which is why San Francisco has some of the most accessible streets in the world. Strict adherence to specific accessibility design standards, however, can keep the City from considering innovative street safety designs, such as shared streets or painted sidewalk extensions. The ability of innovative designs like these to slow traffic could greatly benefit seniors and people with disabilities, so not considering them is a missed opportunity.

In collaboration with the disability community, the City should investigate how to modify and pilot innovative street safety designs that reflect Universal Design so they work for everyone. Adapting designs to meet accessibility needs while also building the safest streets possible should be an achievable strategy for a city that embraces innovation.

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As a final strategy, the City should ramp up its efforts to make walking or walking plus transit a more convenient choice. The two recommendations below will help the City build more interesting, green, and safe streets for all, delivering great walkability progress with little financial investment.

The City should develop and implement wayfinding for people walking. Most people don’t realize how quickly and easily they can reach their destinations by walking.

Wayfinding signs geared toward people walking, which include destinations and time to walk there, encourage walking and exploration. The San Francisco Planning Department and the SFMTA should continue their efforts to develop and implement a comprehensive pedestrian wayfinding system for use throughout San Francisco, and start immediately with pedestrian-focused wayfinding along the Green Connections network.

The City should implement Places for People.

The City’s Pavement to Parks and related programs have challenged people to think differently and creatively about our streets.

Public space experimentation, such as parklets and plazas, has expanded due to large community demand for innovation and placemaking on our streets, but until recently, the approval process has been confusing and costly. To remedy this, the City passed Places for People legislation, which outlines a simple, standardized, and less costly permitting process, to ensure that all communities have access to placemaking. This process must be implemented as intended to ensure walkable streets for all.

STREET SCORE 2016

Encourage Walking and Placemaking Projects

ANNUAL REPORT ON THE STATE OF WALKING IN SAN FRANCISCO 21 | STREET SCORE 2016

CONCLUSION AND NEXT STEPS

The City continues to dedicate substantial human and capital resources to making San Francisco a better place for everyone who walks, but to make San Francisco the country’s safest, most walkable city, there are significant opportunities for improvement—particularly considering the lack of reduction in the number of severe and fatal traffic crashes on city streets.

The update of the City’s Vision Zero TwoYear Action Strategy provides the perfect pivot point from which to reassess the City’s efforts and to change course so it can reach its 2024 Vision Zero goal. Below are Walk SF ’s final recommendations on how the City can move its Vision Zero and walkability work forward with the greatest success.

NEXT STEPS 1. The City should adopt the strategies detailed in Street Score within the 2017–2018 Vision Zero Action Strategy and throughout all its work related to walking: ▶▶ Put Equity Front and Center ▶▶ Focus on Proven Approaches ▶▶ Build Comprehensive and Robust Projects and Treatments ▶▶ Identify and Overcome Obstacles to Building the Safest Streets ▶▶ Encourage Walking and Placemaking Projects

2. Once a strong Action Strategy is developed, a strong evaluation mechanism must be enacted. The City should have the Board of Supervisors Budget & Legislative Analyst or the Office of the Controller conduct an annual audit of the City’s Vision Zero efforts, including a published report.

3. To keep Vision Zero front and center in all the City’s work, the staff report for every relevant policy, project, and program that comes before a San Francisco policy body for approval should indicate how that project is advancing and supporting Vision Zero.

4. Finally, to ensure the City’s Vision Zero approach stays current with best practices, the City should conduct an annual public hearing to learn about best practices in other US cities. The national Vision Zero Network could likely support this effort.

With seven years remaining, the City has the tools, savvy, and support to turn up the intensity on the progress made in years one through three and reach one of the most ambitious goals it has ever adopted.

WALK SAN FRANCISCO 22 |

APPENDIX A: THE CITY OF SAN FRANCISCO’S WALKABILITY & PEDESTRIAN-RELATED VISION ZERO GOALS POLICY DOCUMENT

2015 GOAL

2015 ACTUAL

Number of severe and fatal pedestrian collisions

2013 Pedestrian Strategy

82 total severe and fatal pedestrian collisions (16 fatal, 62 severe) [15% reduction from 97 (20 fatal, 77 severe)]

99 (20 pedestrian fatalities and 79 severe collisions involving a pedestrian)

Reduce fatal and severe injuries per mile on High Injury Corridors (HICs)

2013 Pedestrian Strategy

54 (37.5% reduction from 86 severe/fatal injuries per 100 road miles annually)

75.4

Percentage of traffic fatalities that are pedestrians

N/A

National average: 14%

San Francisco: 65%

Percentage of pedestrian fatalities with victims under 16

N/A

San Francisco population under 16: 12%

5%

Percentage of pedestrian fatalities with victims over 64

N/A

San Francisco population over 64: 14.4%

45%

WalkFirst projects installed

WalkFirst planning documents

Phase 1 projects implemented

100+

Vision Zero projects installed

2015–2016 Vision Zero SF Two-Year Action Strategy

15 (24 minus 9)

20

15 MPH speed limit signs

Pedestrian Strategy

5

5

Reopen crosswalks

Pedestrian Strategy

2

2 (but 2 were closed)

Narrow lanes

Pedestrian Strategy

As needed

No data available

Pedestrian countdown signals

Pedestrian Strategy

17

50+

Flashing beacons*

Pedestrian Strategy

0

1

Extended pedestrian crossing times**

Pedestrian Strategy

160

85+

OUTCOMES

ENGINEERING

ANNUAL REPORT ON THE STATE OF WALKING IN SAN FRANCISCO 23 |

DESCRIPTION

Based on the Pedestrian Strategy, the 2015 goal for severe and fatal pedestrian crashes was 82. Tragically, there were 99 severe or fatal crashes involving pedestrians in 2015.

The 2015 severe/fatal injury collision rate of 75.4 per mile is not only significantly higher than the target rate of 54, but it is even higher than the actual rate from the previous year (71 in 2014). The fact that collision rates went up during the first full year of Vision Zero is alarming.

Pedestrians are still at the greatest risk when it comes to being killed in traffic crashes in San Francisco. With approximately 25% of trips taken by foot in SF, the proportion of pedestrian deaths is more than twice the proportion of walking trips.

No child should die getting around the streets of San Francisco. Thankfully, few youth in San Francisco are killed in traffic crashes. In 2015, only 5% of pedestrian fatalities involved youth, down slightly from 6% in 2014.

Unfortunately, seniors are disproportionately impacted by pedestrian fatalities. While seniors make up 14.4% of San Francisco’s population, seniors were 45% of the pedestrian fatalities in 2015. As our older population ages in place, the City must make sure our streets are safe for everyone.

WalkFirst is a pedestrian safety engineering plan that has earned national recognition for its strong data-driven approach. The City implemented over 100 projects in 2015, a substantial increase from the 15 projects implemented in 2014.

In January 2014, the SFMTA Board of Directors adopted Vision Zero, and as part of their commitment, they pledged to install 24 projects in 24 months. In the first 12 months, nine projects were installed. With the installation of 20 projects in 2015, SFMTA exceeded the agency’s project-related commitment.

Speed is the top cause of severe and fatal collisions in San Francisco. Placing speed limit signs in visible areas helps let drivers know what safe speeds are. This, in turn, reduces the risk of fatal injuries.

The City opened two crosswalks in 2015, while also closing two crosswalks— cancelling out the chance to make the City safer and more walkable for everyone.

Data for this metric was not available at the time of this report.

Pedestrian countdown signals have been shown to reduce injuries by 22% in San Francisco, and SFMTA exceeded its 2015 goal by 75%.

Rectangular rapid flashing beacons (RRFBs) are brighter and more visible than traditional flashing beacons. They flash only when a pedestrian is in the crosswalk, resulting in an extremely effective tool for reducing pedestrian injuries and fatalities by making it easier for people driving to see people walking. The City had no goals to install RRFBs in 2015 after installing 4 in 2014, so in essence they exceeded their 2015 goal with a single installation.

Approximately half of all pedestrian fatalities in San Francisco involve older adults who may take longer to cross the street. In order to address this, the City is actively lengthening the time that the countdown hand flashes, to let the slowest pedestrians know when it’s safe for them to cross the street. The SFMTA updated over 85 intersections to ensure that the red hand flashes with enough time for a person traveling at 3.5 feet per second.

WALK SAN FRANCISCO 24 |

APPENDIX A: THE CITY OF SAN FRANCISCO’S WALKABILITY & PEDESTRIAN-RELATED VISION ZERO GOALS POLICY DOCUMENT

2015 GOAL

2015 ACTUAL

Leading pedestrian intervals

Pedestrian Strategy

No goal

60+

Bulbouts*

Pedestrian Strategy

10

33 (25 sidewalk bulbouts, 8 planted/ painted bulbouts) (DPW)

Pedestrian refuges*

Pedestrian Strategy

10

3 (SFMTA)

Raised crosswalks*

Pedestrian Strategy

1

8

Widen sidewalks

Pedestrian Strategy

1 mile

0.1 miles (both SFMTA & DPW)

Close gaps in the pedestrian network

Pedestrian Strategy

1 to 2 closures per year, over 10 years

2

Pavement to Parks

Pedestrian Strategy

1 to 2 closures per year, over 10 years

0 (both Planning & MTA)

1 parklet RFP

1

20 parklets

4 parklets completed, 1 started

ENGINEERING CONT’D

Green Connections

Pedestrian Strategy

Installed by 2032

No progress

Create wayfinding signs with destinations and walking times

Pedestrian Strategy

Destinations established, signs designed, ready for installation in priority areas in 2016

No progress

Curb ramps

Pedestrian Strategy

1300

2038

Slow speeds

Pedestrian Strategy

Within 4.5 mph of speed limit

No speed limits lowered in 2015

Streetscape projects

(not in a specific policy document)

No goal

4 projects

ANNUAL REPORT ON THE STATE OF WALKING IN SAN FRANCISCO 25 |

DESCRIPTION

The City did a fantastic job implementing leading pedestrians intervals (LPIs) in 2015. LPIs give people a few seconds head start to cross the street before cars get a green light. This is a simple and effective way to help reduce crashes from turning vehicles, making pedestrians in the crosswalk more visible to drivers.

The City exceeded its goal of 10 bulbouts by 230%. Despite this achievement, the number of bulbouts installed in 2015 pales in comparison to the 84 bulbouts constructed the previous year.

Pedestrian refuge islands provide pedestrians with a safe place to wait in the middle of an intersection and have been effective at reducing collisions by 56%. Only three pedestrian refugees were installed in 2015, significantly lower than the City’s goal of 10.

Raised crosswalks are similar to a speed table, except that in addition to slowing traffic, they also create a safe crossing for pedestrians. To achieve its goal of three raised crosswalks in two years, the City needed to install one raised crosswalk in 2015. The City exceeded this goal by 700%, installing 8 raised crosswalks last year.

Sidewalk widening reclaims shared public space for everyone to enjoy and often has the dual benefit of calming traffic and strengthening local business. In 2015, only 0.1 mile of sidewalks was widened, which is significantly lower than the City’s 1 mile goal.

Public Works completed or required property owners to complete two closures of gaps in the pedestrian network: previously closed crosswalks on the east side of Franklin and Fell and the west side of Gough and Fell were reopened in 2015.

The Pavement to Parks program has transformed commercial and residential areas quickly with limited resources.

Persia Triangle is a prime example of how the program has transformed a dangerous intersection into a communitycentered place. Pavement to Parks met their parklet RFP goal, but did not meet their plaza goal. [see above] Only saw 4 parklets were completed in 2015, 80% lower than the goal of 20.

Green Connections is a citywide plan to connect people to parks through a network of over 115 miles of green and traffic-calmed streets. Once implemented, Green Connections will offer families a safe route to get to parks, the waterfront, and other major citywide destinations. The Green Connections Plan was adopted in 2014, but implementation has been spotty. Several 2015 projects were located on Green Connection routes, including the 2nd Street Improvement Project, but the City is not actively advancing Green Connection projects holistically with habitat upgrades, wayfinding, or other walkability features.

Wayfinding signage offers an opportunity for people walking to feel connected to the many community resources around them. The City did not make any progress in 2015 toward creating a pedestrian wayfinding system for San Francisco. The SFMTA and the Planning Department report that they will partner in 2016 to advance pedestrian wayfinding signs.

SF exceeded its 2015 curb ramp goal by 57%.

Speed is the top factor in severe and fatal collisions in San Francisco. Unfortunately, no speed limits were lowered in the city in 2015. In order to truly tackle the dangerous consequences of speeding, San Francisco will need to champion state legislation allowing the City to lower speed limits and use automated enforcement.

The City completed the Taraval Streetscape Project, the Fell & Oak Pedestrian and Bike Improvements Project, SOMA Alleyway Improvements Phase II, and the Randolph & Broad Streetscape Project.

* Metrics include only the improvements completed by the Livable Streets division of SFMTA, and the Department of Public Works. Improvements implemented by other departments or sections of SFMTA might not be included here. ** The extended crossing time metric may not include all projects installed by SFMTA, and the effort to upgrade 71 intersections to be 3.5 feet/second compliant extended the red flashing hand time, but might not have extended the full crossing time

WALK SAN FRANCISCO 26 |

APPENDIX A: THE CITY OF SAN FRANCISCO’S WALKABILITY & PEDESTRIAN-RELATED VISION ZERO GOALS POLICY DOCUMENT

2015 GOAL

2015 ACTUAL

LIDAR speed guns

Pedestrian Strategy

No specific goal

51 LIDAR units acquired

Increase enforcement focused on speeding and failure to yield on High-Injury Corridors

Pedestrian Strategy

15% increase

147% increase from 2014

Percent of citations going to speeding

Not in specific policy doc, but related to metric above

5% in 2014

9%

Percent of citations going to failure to yield

Pedestrian Strategy

4% in 2014

9.9%

Percent of citations going to pedestrians

Pedestrian Strategy

5% in 2014

2.4%

Special events (e.g.

Sunday Streets, PARK(ing) day)

Pedestrian Strategy

11

11

Walking and safety outreach campaign

Pedestrian Strategy

Continual

moderate progress

Website with strategy information and Click It, Fix It

Pedestrian Strategy

Continual

significant progress

Enhance pedestrian safety information in DMV Manual

Pedestrian Strategy

N/A

little progress

Expand Safe Routes to School

Pedestrian Strategy

Continual

significant progress

Pursue top legislative priorities (e.g., ASE)

Pedestrian Strategy

N/A

moderate progress

Put the Complete Streets policy into practice

Pedestrian Strategy

9 departments developed and using the Complete Streets Checklist

little progress

ENFORCEMENT

EDUCATION

LEGISLATION & POLICY

ANNUAL REPORT ON THE STATE OF WALKING IN SAN FRANCISCO 27 |

DESCRIPTION

With this substantial increase in LIDAR units, the San Francisco Police Department should be able to significantly increase its enforcement of speed. LIDAR is a more accurate and effective technology than RADAR enforcement.

SFPD is doing a great job increasing their citations on speeding and failure to yield. From 2014 to 2015, there was a 147% increase in the number of citations given for speeding and failure to yield to pedestrians (9,135 citations in 2014, and 22,536 citations in 2015). From 2013 to 2015, there was a 336% increase (5174 citations in 2013, and 22,536 citations in 2015).

Unfortunately, data on where citations are given will not be available until SFPD’s e-citation program is launched citywide in 2017. Until then, there is no reliable way to track whether citations were given on high-injury corridors.

Not only did the number of citations for speeding and failure to yield increase dramatically in 2015, but so did the overall proportion of these citations relative to other violation types.

Raised crosswalks are similar to a speed table, except that in addition to slowing traffic, they also create a safe crossing for pedestrians. To achieve its goal of three raised crosswalks in two years, the City needed to install one raised crosswalk in 2015. The City exceeded this goal by 700%, installing 8 raised crosswalks last year.

Sidewalk widening reclaims shared public space for everyone to enjoy and often has the dual benefit of calming traffic and strengthening local business. In 2015, only 0.1 mile of sidewalks was widened, which is significantly lower than the City’s 1 mile goal.

The City and nonprofit organizations held multiple special events in 2015, including eight Sunday Streets events, one Park[ing] Day, one Walk to and Roll to School Day, and one Walk to Work Day, meeting the Pedestrian Strategy goal exactly. One hundred and fifteen (115) block parties and 21 street fairs were also held in San Francisco in 2015.

The City completed two driver safety training videos—for taxi drivers and large vehicle drivers—and disseminated these important videos. The City also continued its Vision Zero media campaigns, including It Stops Here campaign and a bicycle safety campaign.

The Vision Zero SF website launched in 2015 and included Vision Zero planning documents, a Vision Zero Projects map, collision maps, fatality reports, meeting information, as well as other resources.

The SFMTA submitted suggested information to include in the California Drivers Manual, including emphasizing and diagramming how speed leads to more severe crashes, as well as adding a section about protected intersections.

As a result of successful fundraising by the City of San Francisco, the Safe Routes to Schools program grew by 10 elementary schools in 2015, with 35 elementary schools actively participating in the program.

The City has made Automated Speed Enforcement a top legislative priority and spent 2015 working to secure a sponsor. Speed exponentially increases the likelihood of death when in a collision, especially for seniors and children, and is not compatible with San Francisco’s urban streets.

The City is no longer using the Complete Streets checklist, so the 2015 goal does not apply. However, the City made progress towards putting the Complete Streets Policy into practice by transitioning to a new project management tool. This tool, called Envista, is shared by City agencies as well as key external partners, including BART, PG&E, and AT&T, to track projects through the various stages. SFMTA added the high-injury network so that project managers know if their project overlays a high-injury corridor or intersection. Complete Streets coordination is expected to improve with widespread use of this tool.

WALK SAN FRANCISCO 28 |

APPENDIX A: THE CITY OF SAN FRANCISCO’S WALKABILITY & PEDESTRIAN-RELATED VISION ZERO GOALS POLICY DOCUMENT

2015 GOAL

2015 ACTUAL

Multi-agency reporting, collection, and analysis, with statistics to be posted on website

Pedestrian Strategy

Developed by now and updated continually

significant progress

Update Board of Supervisors and PSAC

Pedestrian Strategy

2+ times/year

significant progress

Update Pedestrian Strategy actions on website

Pedestrian Strategy

Continual

(see note)

Percent of citations going to failure to yield

Pedestrian Strategy

Pilot/Identify funding to maintain system

moderate progress

Increase walk trips as % of work trips (2012 baseline: 9-10%)

Pedestrian Strategy

Between 11% and 12%

11.20%

Increase walk trips as % of all trips (2012 baseline: 18-20%)

Pedestrian Strategy

Between 21% and 22%

25%

Increase walk trips as % of school trips (2012 baseline: kinder–26%, 5th–23%)

Pedestrian Strategy

kinder–28%, 5th –25%

kinder–26%, 5th –24%

Reduce car trips of less than one mile (2012 baseline: 25% of car trips are less than one mile)

Pedestrian Strategy

Between 2.5% and 5%

Data unavailable

EVALUATION

MODE SHIFT

ANNUAL REPORT ON THE STATE OF WALKING IN SAN FRANCISCO 29 |

DESCRIPTION

Several City websites started to post Vision Zero data and progress in 2015. SFPD’s Compstat site started posting Focus on the Five data. The City’s Vision Zero site included a Vision Zero Projects map, as well as fatality reports from the Department of Public Health.

The Board of Supervisors and the Pedestrian Safety Advisory Committee (PSAC) were updated on Pedestrian Strategy progress quarterly and as requested in 2015. The Pedestrian Strategy lays out important actions that should be better integrated into Vision Zero pedestrian safety actions and monitoring.

No updates on Pedestrian Strategy actions were made in 2015. Note that other websites were updated with Vision Zero projects, which was the focus for SFMTA in 2015.

In September 2014, SFDPH released TransBASE, an online mapping database to understand and analyze trends across our street network and inform solutions. In December 2014, SFDPH hired an epidemiologist, funded by SFMTA, to develop the surveillance system linking police, hospital, and other injury data. SFDPH has completed data linkage for 2013 police and hospital data sources, the first year of the transportation-related surveillance system. Thorough data quality and data validation checks are underway using 2014 data sources.

Walking as a mode of transportation to work in San Francisco increased to 11.2% in 2015, up from 10% in 2012.

Walking as a general mode of transportation in San Francisco increased to 25% in 2015, a substantal increase from the 2012 rate of 18–20%.

Walking as a general mode of transportation in San Francisco increased to 25% in 2015, a substantal increase from the 2012 rate of 18–20%.

The City hopes to provide data for 2016 using updated modeling program.

Walk San Francisco makes walking in San Francisco safe for everyone, so that our community is healthier and more livable.

WalkSF.org 415.431.WALK (9255) info@walksf.org