After nearly six hours of passionate public comment, San Francisco’s seven transit board commissioners unanimously approved late Tuesday night a permanent Slow Streets program that includes Lake Street — the source of much of the meeting’s heat.
It was a watershed moment in the city’s attempt to translate emergency pandemic measures into momentum toward long-standing official promises of fewer car trips, safer streets, and cleaner air.
The board approved all 15 streets that SF Municipal Transportation Agency staff had recommended for the first batch of permanently slow streets. The staff had no recommendation about Lake, preferring to toss the hot potato of a topic to the board. Despite a highly organized “Open Lake Street” effort — with testimony that pandemic-era slow Lake Street created “chaos and mayhem” among neighbors and even “a Jan. 6 situation,” one commenter said — the commissioners added Lake to the new network.
They were driven by SFMTA and public health data that show a slow Lake has not worsened traffic congestion or safety in the neighborhood.
“Last night’s vote was incredible,” said Jodie Medeiros, executive director of WalkSF. “I’m excited to work with the board and have their leadership to help push the cultural shift needed to make our streets safer.” (Editor’s note: The Frisc tweeted a live thread of the full meeting, here.)
Unlike the SFMTA board’s vote to ban cars from Golden Gate Park’s JFK Drive, this decision is final and, because of state law, cannot be appealed to the city’s Board of Supervisors, according to an aide to Sup. Dean Preston.
The board also targeted a set of conditions — maximum speeds and daily traffic volumes — that street designers must account for in coming months as they change each street’s physical layout.
What’s more, the board also told SFMTA planners to report back early next year with plans to expand the network. In effect, last night’s vote for 16 slow streets was a down payment toward a citywide grid of streets that people can safely use on foot, bike, and other modes of people-powered transit.
Despite 15 other streets on the agenda, public comment was dominated by both sides of the Lake Street divide. The rancor will likely make the Richmond district street one of the most difficult to design and transform, as a pro-slow Lake group acknowledged in a tweet late last night.
The Frisc reached out to opponents of slow Lake Street for comment but did not receive a response.
What’s next
Residents and users of the now-permanent 16 slow streets will soon see changes that could include traffic diverters such as planters, turn restrictions, stop signs, and speed humps, speed cushions, and chicanes to help slow vehicles. There will be signs and pavement markings as well to call out that a street is a slow street.
Residents, visitors, emergency workers, package deliverers, and other drivers that need to use the streets will still have access, but cars will no longer have priority.
‘No one is saying you have to get rid of your car, but with a record number of pedestrian deaths and accidents, we need to slow things down.’ — SFMTA board chair Gwyneth Borden
Acknowledging that some drivers have encountered hostility on slow streets, SFMTA commissioners said the program needs an education process so everyone will understand the rules. Board chairman Gwyneth Borden, who mostly commutes via Muni, voiced concern that residents had been taking it upon themselves to enforce slow streets.
The bottom line, Borden said, is that “no one is saying you have to get rid of your car, but with a record number of pedestrian deaths and accidents, we need to slow things down.” (In 2014, SF pledged to eliminate traffic deaths by 2024.)
The new goal for slow streets is an average volume of 1,000 cars per day, with 50 percent of them traveling no faster than 15 MPH, the current limit on streets near schools. SFMTA staff said they would periodically monitor streets and add diverters and other measures to streets that fall short of these goals.
SFMTA has also established a parallel program, Play Streets, to streamline permits for closing down a slow street for special events.
Slow street deserts
The current slate leaves out entire neighborhoods, including the Sunset, the Marina, Chinatown, and much of the underserved south and southeastern city.
The 16 streets also don’t connect to one another, but the board approved Commissioner Manny Yekutiel’s amendment last night to craft a citywide network plan. SFMTA staff must present the plan to the board by March 31. The citywide plan is a victory for a coalition of advocates who earlier this year created a “people’s plan” with 100 miles of connected, bike-friendly streets. It remains to be seen how closely the official plan hews to the grassroots plan.
There’s urgency to include the city’s more working-class neighborhoods like the Bayview and Excelsior. The Excelsior had a pandemic slow street, but it carried too much traffic and was discontinued, Mel Flores, director of the Excelsior District Improvement Association, told The Frisc.
Flores was among the authors of the “people’s plan,” and he says community talks should start next month to hash out what works for the district. He pointed to the Mission Terrace neighborhood, where residents stumped successfully for Cayuga Street, which was not “slow” during the pandemic, to be added to last night’s slow street roster.
In a district with many families and small children, Flores said, slow streets should be an easy sell. To teach his kids to ride, he recalled, he had to load bikes into his car and drive to Golden Gate Park and other safe spaces.
For current families, Flores said, “we can get them to see the value in spaces like slow streets.”
This type of outreach will be happening across the city over the next several months, as advocates like WalkSF’s Medeiros push for a broader transformation.
“This is where the real work begins,” said Medeiros.
Kristi Coale covers streets, transit, and open spaces for The Frisc.