Humps, bumps, and cushions. Oh my. If you’re in San Francisco, there’s a chance at least one of these is coming to your streets in the next few months.
The installation spree is a long time in coming. The traffic calming measures are part of a backlog of resident requests that stretches back to 2021.
In recent years, SF has watched in frustration as its 2014 traffic safety pledge, known as Vision Zero, did nothing to reduce street deaths and injuries. So far in 2025, the city’s first post-Vision Zero year, 21 people have died in traffic collisions — 14 of them pedestrians.
The rollout on 141 streets across the city starts now and goes through February, weather permitting. There are hundreds of applications in the queue; so many that SFMTA stopped accepting new ones in June.
“The program has had so much demand because people are experiencing speeding in their neighborhoods,” says Walk San Francisco communications director Marta Lindsey.
After this spate of construction, the program — formally known as Residential Traffic Calming Program — might be in for an overhaul. SFMTA has heard criticism of the residential request system from some street safety advocates, who say it favors people who have time on their hands to organize.
Coming to a street near you
In the next three months, SFMTA is installing 240 asphalt humps, cushions, and tables to deter speeding, the leading cause of SF traffic fatalities and injuries between 2020 and 2024.
SFMTA has other methods to slow down drivers, including new speed cameras at 33 locations that turned on earlier this year and dozens of streets with 20 mph speed limits.
Speed cameras are showing promise — early returns show a significant speed decrease in some locations — but SF can’t add more for some time. The program is limited to a state-authorized pilot over the next five years.
Low-tech speed bumps are faster and cheaper to install, and are quite effective. They give people control over the safety of their own streets — or at least a way to try. SFMTA program began taking requests in 2001, and during the pandemic, demand surged, resulting in the backlog the agency is now working through.
SFMTA doesn’t approve all applications. Most non-residential and heavily-trafficked streets, which the agency defines as more than 7,500 cars per day, don’t qualify. SFMTA also checks if speeding is actually an issue; the threshold is 85 percent of vehicles exceeding the speed limit by 5 mph or more on a street. Other factors that may sway in a street’s favor include whether it has a bus stop or hospital nearby.
Once a street is approved for traffic calming, engineers decide how to intervene. There are typically three options:
Speed cushions are raised sections of asphalt with a wheel slot that are usually located on the dividing line between two directions of travel. These slots allow fire engines and buses to pass without having to slow down.
Speed humps can be part of speed cushions, but they can also include raised asphalt that stretches across the entire width of the street. The most common intervention, humps help slow traffic by 15 to 20 mph, according to the National Association of City Transit Officials. But installing humps requires fire department approval because they can slow down fire engines and other emergency vehicles.
Speed tables and raised crosswalks also stretch across an entire road but have flat tops. These require SFFD approval.
(While the term speed bump is often used synonymously with speed hump, bumps are technically shorter and taller than humps.)
‘Time-consuming and unpredictable’
Nearly half the streets about to get upgrades are in SF’s western neighborhoods — the Sunset, the Richmond, and West Portal — whereas the Excelsior, SoMa, and Cow Hollow are among neighborhoods only getting one or two.
Streets for All San Francisco executive director Robin Pam says this is the result of a request-based program. “It’s not fair for the loudest, most connected people to get speed humps while others don’t,” she tells The Frisc.
(Streets for All is also providing 20 sensors to measure speeds on the upgraded streets. Residents who want to install the sensors in their homes can apply here.)
Pam would like SF to take a cue from Boston, which moved away from its resident-request program partly due to equity issues. Instead, it has focused on adding bumps to entire neighborhoods — particularly those with underserved residents. (According to recent studies, these areas suffer the most traffic injuries and fatalities.) Since the switch, Boston has added groups of speed humps on streets within zones — roughly 500 humps a year.
Similar to Boston, SF used to choose entire neighborhoods, not just go street by street, to receive speed humps. It stopped because it “was time-consuming and unpredictable, and large projects often weren’t completed,” according to the SFMTA residential traffic-calming program FAQ.
But the residential request program has been slow, too. Residents have reported waiting more than two years for an installation on their street.
In July, the SF County Transportation Authority granted SFMTA $6.9 million to power through the request backlog. With that money came some conditions, including a requirement for SFMTA to propose a new approach for the traffic-calming program by the end of this year.
(Funding for street safety programs like traffic-calming comes from a tax on ride-hail trips collected by the county authority, a parallel body to SFMTA. Its board members are the city’s 11 supervisors.)
A revamp of the program is also part of Sup. Myrna Melgar’s San Francisco Street Safety Act, which became law earlier this year. The Street Safety Act outlines to-do items for various city agencies to prioritize pedestrian and bicyclist safety, including an order for SFMTA to come up with new traffic-calming strategies by December 2026.
At an Oct. 8 meeting, SFMTA’s streets division said it would look to “peer cities” for inspiration. The agency has heard back from Portland and Seattle, but a spokesperson told The Frisc they are “focusing on delivering the already-approved locations” before they consider re-opening applications.
Correction, 11/21/25: This story initially said SF’s speed camera pilot was “state-funded.” This is incorrect. The program is authorized by the state and funded by SFMTA.