Lake Street and other roadways in San Francisco got permanent slow status from the SF Municipal Transportation Agency last summer, marking a shift from pandemic emergency measure to a long-term change in the city streetscape. All that was left, it seemed, was to finish up the design.
But late last year, Lake became the first of these neighborhood streets to face organized opposition from neighbors who wanted the road reopened to through traffic. (This came well after fights over two bigger streets, Golden Gate Park’s JFK Drive and the Great Highway, were already at full boil.)
Opponents joined public meetings and took to social media to say that slow Lake increased traffic on parallel streets. They asserted that slow Lake was less safe. And they said slow Lake blocked people with limited mobility from getting around.
As The Frisc reported in December, SFMTA data did not support these claims. But under pressure, the agency opened a new neighbor survey and began new traffic studies on Lake and nearby Richmond district streets California and Clement. Last week, SFMTA published the new results. They still don’t support opponents’ claims.
By the numbers
Here’s what the new survey and traffic studies show.
A majority of people who live on and around Lake Street — 83.5 percent and 53.4 percent respectively — want to keep the street slow. Only 16.5 percent of surveyed Lake Street residents and 46.1 percent of respondents who live on adjacent roads are in favor of restoring the road’s pre-pandemic status. SFMTA is proposing three slow street designs, and more than two-thirds of Lake Street residents are in favor of proposal No. 2.
As one might expect, a slow Lake Street, with reduced vehicle traffic and slower speeds, has become safer, not less so. In the three years before the pandemic, there was an average of 5.3 collisions per year, according to SFMTA data. During the “slow” era, from March 2020 to the end of 2021, Lake Street saw three collisions total.
The SFMTA report also refutes claims of parallel streets choked with traffic. According to the data, vehicle speeds have not changed on California or Clement during the pandemic, which indicates that traffic has not increased.
The agency provided detailed measurements of several key segments of California Street, one block over from Lake. There was no indication of congestion problems due to diversion of traffic from Lake Street, even as major safety-related changes on California, known as a “road diet,” went into effect as part of a separate project.
Resident response
James Le lives in the Richmond district near Lake Street, and he says the new reports are cause for celebration: “It shows that there is strong support, and that the community needs and wants a safe street for kids, families, and neighbors over a street that will be used to save a few seconds from a cut-through driver’s commute,” Le wrote via email.
Retired attorney Barry Reder, who wrote an open letter to SFMTA in December, takes the opposite view. Reder says he does not trust anything from SFMTA, and that his experience driving on California Street does not match the new data. (He also says that he and his wife walk on Lake multiple times per week, but they find the sidewalks “quite adequate.”) SFMTA has an agenda, he adds: “It’s obvious to anyone who looks at it that they would really prefer that everybody walked. It would be their preference that no one had a car.”
Eillie Anzilotti, an SFMTA public relations staffer, tells The Frisc that’s not true. “People also need to understand that encouraging other modes frees up the road, so if you do drive, you’re less likely to be stuck in traffic, you’re less likely to be enraged, and to be in a situation that compromises folks’ safety,” Anzilotti says. “It’s really this idea of collective benefit.”
Anzilotti also counters the frequent complaint from Reder and others that slow streets block access to seniors and the disabled. Slow streets are not closed roads; cars can still drive on slow streets if their destination is on the street, so long as they go slowly and don’t travel multiple blocks. (Delivery vehicles are allowed too.) And, she notes, anyone with limited mobility who wants to enjoy slow Lake is welcome to park on the road and walk or roll directly from their car.
Behavior change
The Slow Streets program was primarily intended to create more car-free space for people to move around during the lockdown period, but residents have also praised the program for encouraging non-motorized travel — like better commute options for cyclists and scooter riders, for example.
According to Anzilotti, SFMTA has not yet collected data on “behavior change” — whether people near slow streets have actually started driving less. Anecdotally, she has spoken with families who have either moved from two cars to one, or gone car-free because a slow street has made it easier to get around, but she acknowledges it’s something to study.
Like the outdoor dining parklets made possible by the Shared Spaces program, slow streets are also part of a broader reimagining of how San Francisco can use its public space. “For the past 50 to 75 years, our cities have been primarily designed to facilitate vehicle traffic,” Anzilotti says. “While there’s an idea to shift away from that, we’re not anywhere near that — and it’s still very easy to get around San Francisco in a car.”
Next steps
More relevant data should be coming soon. A second traffic and safety study on California Street, part of the “road diet” project, is expected in the coming weeks according to SFMTA spokesman Stephen Chun. (Preliminary findings showed no significant changes in traffic and a decrease in injury collisions, Chun said.)
On Lake, the Slow Streets team now has to settle on a design and present it to the city traffic engineer. (Anzilotti says she hopes the team can give their presentation this spring.) Since the SFMTA board approved permanent slow status for Lake Street in August, the city traffic engineer’s approval may well be the last hurdle to clear.
If the design sticks to proposal No. 2, which was the most popular in the new survey, Lake could see its roadway stripes removed and speed humps added, maybe even in time for neighbors to get out and enjoy the summer fog.
Max Harrison-Caldwell is a staff writer for The Frisc.
