Four of San Francisco’s 31 slow streets — roadways that have been closed to through traffic during the pandemic to provide space for walking, cycling, and recreation — will remain sedate after the COVID-19 emergency ends.
On Tuesday, the SFMTA’s board of directors approved a permanent Slow Streets designation for Golden Gate Avenue, Lake, Sanchez, and Shotwell Streets.
Two days later, however, momentum to create the biggest slow street in the city hit a red light. Mayor London Breed and Sup. Gordon Mar announced a surprise deal to reopen the two-mile portion of the Great Highway along Ocean Beach that has been closed to cars since April 2020. They said it would reopen on weekdays starting Aug. 16, the first day of school.
For activists and a majority of polled residents who recently said they wanted a permanently car-free Great Highway, the news came as a blow. “Parents are pissed,” says Matt Brezina, founder of a grassroots group to make street safer for bikes and pedestrians, at a hastily called press conference.
It’s been clear for some time that changing the Great Highway permanently would be more complicated than altering many of the 31 slow streets spread across the city.
The four streets approved for change earlier this week are low-volume neighborhood corridors whose residents and neighbors support continued deceleration, Slow Streets program manager Shannon Hake said at Tuesday’s SFMTA board meeting. Their continued slow status will not disrupt other planning efforts or local traffic, she said. SFMTA will use these same criteria to determine which other slow streets to set on the “path to permanence.”
Slow streets whose slow designations are not extended will reopen to all motor vehicle traffic 120 days after the COVID state of emergency is lifted.
Vocal feedback
During public comment on the four slow streets at Tuesday’s meeting, 57 San Franciscans called in — with nearly 75 percent supporting the program. Among callers opposed were residents of Sanchez Street, who said that their quality of life had declined due to increased noise, and that they worried about cars backing out of driveways and colliding with unattended children. Another person warned of “militant bicyclists” blazing down slow streets with no regard for pedestrians: “I have been repeatedly run over by bikes and skateboards and scooters,” the caller claimed.
But the detractors weren’t the only commenters with complaints. Multiple callers who supported permanent Slow Streets voiced dissatisfaction with the recent removal of makeshift barriers — ranging from flower pots to head-high message boards — and with the new official signs on flexible bollards put in their place. The new signs, callers said, are too small and flimsy to discourage motorists. Several callers said they had seen more cars driving on Page Street since the city kicked the DIY wooden planters and other decorated delineators to the curb.
“It’s something we’ve seen happening at increasing rates,” Page Street neighbor and Kid Safe SF organizer Luke Bornheimer tells The Frisc. Bornheimer suggests a short-term infrastructure alternative — “median diverters,” or lines of posts in the middle of the street — that would be harder to drive around than the existing signs. For the long term, he’s thinking concrete barriers, planters, and short curbs. “Our current solution is not working for anyone,” Bornheimer adds.
SFMTA board member Manny Yekutiel echoed this concern, saying that a driver in a hurry could easily skirt the posts. He said New York City’s analogous “open streets” are much more difficult for cars to access, and that San Francisco “should really make people think twice about driving on these.”
Erica Kato, spokesperson for SFMTA, says the agency does not yet have data about how the removal of homemade barriers has affected non-resident driving on slow streets, but that it plans to collect extensive data this fall once school is back in session.
Targeted posts
The new posts, installed just last month, have already been subjected to vandalism. Last week, someone cut down 33 of the 36 posts installed on Hearst Avenue in Sunnyside, according to the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association. (SFMTA has since replaced them.)
The issue has drawn ire from critics of the flexible markers and came up repeatedly in Tuesday’s meeting. Hake said her team is looking into using harder materials for the posts. Meanwhile on Twitter, Slow Streets advocates fired off ideas of their own.
The city removed the flower boxes and other unofficial adornments on Page at the request of the San Francisco Fire Department, which cited the need for emergency access. According to the language of the resolution, SFMTA can revoke Slow Street status “based on consultation with the San Francisco Fire Chief,” including for the “permanent” slow streets. The challenge for SFMTA is to implement signage and barriers robust enough to curb through traffic, but flexible enough to allow emergency vehicles to pass.
The city says that in the future, homemade decorations could coexist with official signage, at least on Page: “The [Slow Streets] team will continue actively engaging with community members on Page Street, including some of the ‘mayors’ of each block, to work toward a long-term solution,” Kato writes in an email.
But according to Bornheimer, the priorities are “disproportionally swung toward the fire department,” he says, citing the statistic that over the last 18 years, there have been 18 times as many traffic deaths as fire deaths. “In terms of a public health crisis, traffic violence and the unsafe design of our streets is desperately underprioritized.”
Back to the beach
For Golden Gate, Lake, Sanchez, and Shotwell, there are still a few steps to go. Golden Gate and Lake need outreach to neighbors, which starts in September, and all four final designs will need approval from the city traffic engineer, according to SFMTA.
The path for the Great Highway is more muddled. In June, a majority of SFMTA board members and Recreation and Park commissioners voiced support for a pilot project to keep the Great Highway off-limits to cars and study the effects on surrounding Outer Sunset streets. However, the pilot cannot start until it receives approval from the full Board of Supervisors; a vote could come later this year.
According to a statement by the mayor, posted Thursday afternoon, the Great Highway’s new car-friendly weekdays will remain until the Board of Supervisors vote. “The timing of this new operational plan is to combine with the first day of school to support students and families getting to and from school, as well as people returning to getting to and from work during the week.”
The Great Highway compromise comes amid plenty of friction. The neighborhood slow streets have also seen their share of antagonism, prompting multiple members of SFMTA’s board asking neighbors on Tuesday not to demonize each other. The streets, after all, are meant to be shared.