Earlier this week, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s board of directors met to discuss, among other items, the 2021 Vision Zero Action Strategy.
San Francisco adopted Vision Zero in 2014, pledging to end traffic deaths within 10 years. That deadline is about two years away, but the city seems no closer to its goal.
Last year, we suffered 30 traffic fatalities, just one less than the total for 2014. That’s not to say the streets haven’t changed.
SF has completed a variety of projects in the last six years, including barring private cars from a two-mile stretch of Market Street; converting JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park (a street formerly on the High Injury Network) into a 24/7 promenade for cyclists and pedestrians; and implementing new bike lanes across the city.
One approach that has been especially successful is the SFMTA’s Quick Build program: simple, reversible, and fast improvements (such as putting down plastic bollards and coats of paint) to address safety issues on city streets.
In fact, such projects have increased reliability for Muni lines including the 19 Polk, the 38 Geary, and the T Third light rail, and decreased speeding on Taylor, Seventh, and Eighth streets, according to SFMTA spokesperson Erica Kato.
SFMTA transportation director Jeffrey Tumlin tells The Frisc that the agency can complete a Quick Build project in six months that otherwise would take five to 10 years via the conventional planning process. What’s more, it’s not a huge commitment: “Because the Quick Build projects are so cheap and reversible, we can take any feedback and make adjustments,” he says. “If it really doesn’t work, then we can rip it out, no harm no foul, and it will have cost us less than the environmental documents on a bigger project.”
In early 2019, Mayor London Breed directed the SFMTA to speed up traffic improvements. The agency rolled out Quick Build later that year, just months before COVID hit and sent the city into lockdown. Since then, San Francisco has introduced a slew of street changes that would have seemed impossible beforehand: Slow Streets, Shared Spaces, safe sleep sites, and more.
SFMTA director Manny Yekutiel said in Monday’s board meeting that these changes prove the city can do the impossible in two years: “I don’t want us to need a tragedy to do something truly transformational to our city.”
The board unanimously adopted a resolution to endorse the updated Vision Zero strategy, which includes a commitment to 20 Quick Build projects per year on the High Injury Network.
Cutting through
The main reason Quick Build works is because the projects are not subject to the city’s typical plodding bureaucracy. As of February 2020, the city traffic engineer can unilaterally authorize Quick Builds. A public hearing is still required, but most community engagement takes place after the project is complete.
Street-level projects must be ‘shovel-ready’ to be eligible for federal funds. That’s good news because Quick Builds don’t even require a shovel.
“For almost all of our Quick Build projects, our intention is to tinker around until we get it right,” Tumlin says. “Then that becomes the blueprint for a later, much more expensive construction project that will involve concrete and curb work and streetscaping.”
He adds that city workers regularly alter Quick Builds in response to public feedback, like one on Golden Gate Avenue in the Tenderloin, and another on Hunters Point Boulevard in the Bayview. Residents seem more inclined to push for changes on a completed improvement than to provide input at a public meeting over an engineer’s rendering.
Two state laws, 2013’s SB 743 and last year’s SB 288, have also helped SFMTA eliminate time-sucking bureaucratic hurdles, according to Tumlin. SB 288 exempts projects in the public right of way that do not increase vehicle miles traveled from the California Environmental Quality Act, known as CEQA. (CEQA, the proverbial “ring to rule them all” among antigrowth and anti-transit advocates, has been used to thwart improvements such as SFMTA’s bike plan.)
In other words, Quick Build projects route around NIMBYism and provide proof of concept for more permanent projects. Tumlin points out how the Quick Builds at Folsom and Howard Streets have led to increased community support and funding for the larger Folsom-Howard Streetscape project, on which construction is scheduled to begin next year.
Budget and staffing
There are some challenges for the program, particularly in terms of funding. When asked how much money the more than 80 planned Quick Builds would cost, Tumlin says it’s “far more money than we have.” (SFMTA balanced its budget for this year and the next, but that’s “not financially sustainable.”) The transit agency is aiming to renew its general obligation bond before voters in June 2022, which would provide direct funding and the ability to tap into state and federal funds.
An SFMTA staff document says remaining Quick Build projects planned for the High Injury Network will require $5 million per year of extra funding. Director Amanda Eaken said at Monday’s meeting that this sum “feels like a drop in the bucket,” and that the agency could use much more: “What if we had $20 million a year?”
Another potential challenge is staffing. SFMTA paint and sign shops have been stretched thin throughout the pandemic. What will happen if they can’t keep up with the Quick Build demand? Tumlin reports that the SFMTA is “understaffed by 20% to 50%.” In the short term, the agency may need to bring in contractors, but Tumlin says his preference is to rely on the city’s workforce.
Luckily, crews have not shrunk further because of the city’s COVID vaccine mandate. Spokeswoman Kato says that only two painters remain unvaccinated among more than 60 employees in the paint and sign shops.
Tumlin is also hoping that SFMTA will be able to tap money from the federal infrastructure bill for Quick Build projects. Street-level projects must be “shovel-ready” to be eligible for those federal funds, and that’s good news because Quick Builds don’t even require a shovel. In fact, SFMTA staff recently took federal officials on a tour of a few work sites, including those at Folsom and Howard Streets and the recently completed changes to Geary Boulevard.
“We can use that federal money much more quickly on Quick Build projects,” notes Tumlin, “and deliver immediate results.”