Latest news with #CountyTransportationAuthority
San Francisco Chronicle
25-06-2025
- Automotive
- San Francisco Chronicle
S.F. to end program that allows residents to request ‘traffic calming' tactics on city streets
When San Francisco transportation officials began taking requests for 'traffic calming' designs on residential streets, the projects piled up quickly. That was in 2013, and city leaders were just starting to elevate road safety as a priority — it would take another year to adopt Vision Zero, the initiative to end traffic fatalities within a decade. But people already grasped the idea that subtle changes to a street could reduce the risk of crashes, while making the environment quieter and more liveable. Applications poured in for speed bumps and raised crosswalks, concrete islands and rubber road cushions, durable posts and new markings to make lanes wider or narrower. Now, with a looming budget crisis and a backlog of about 300 resident proposals, leaders of San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency decided it's time to suspend the program. Many factors played into that decision, said Viktoriya Wise, the agency's director of streets. Chief among them was trust. SFMTA staff want to assure the public that they're committed to safety and can deliver on any application the agency has approved, even if the demand is overwhelming. 'If I told you I'm going to do something, I'm actually going to do it,' Wise said. At the same time, she noted, construction costs are rising, and SFMTA is confronting a $322 million deficit expected for next year. The Residential Traffic Calming Program is among the first services to evaporate as officials try to align their ambitions with their resources. Wise acknowledged the financial strain. But she largely characterized the traffic calming program as a victim of its own popularity, especially after SFMTA lowered the entry barrier. What had been a steady flow of roughly a hundred projects a year suddenly spiked during the pandemic, when officials dropped a requirement for applicants to gather signatures from the majority of residents on their block. Thus, in fiscal year 2021, the agency accepted 110 applications. That number rose to 215 the following fiscal year. 'We saw an explosion,' Wise said, conceding that the number of requests exceeded her team's capacity. Separately, SFMTA was pursuing dozens of car-slowing interventions that staff had planned and engineered without any prompting from constituents. Among them: the controversial 'neck-down' to narrow two lanes of traffic on Kirkham Street, and speed bumps along Eighth Avenue in the Inner Richmond. While Wise mostly attributes the increase to a streamlined process, she also wonders whether people became more conscientious about driving speeds when they were forced to work from home. Perhaps, Wise suggested, residents looked out their windows all day, and witnessed a lot more reckless driving. Currently SFMTA is working with the County Transportation Authority to rally funding for all the new infrastructure, and Wise has left open the possibility of one day reviving the residential traffic calming program. For now, the agency will stop taking applications on July 1.
San Francisco Chronicle
17-05-2025
- Automotive
- San Francisco Chronicle
Downtown S.F. rush hour traffic at pre-pandemic levels despite tepid return to office
San Francisco may be a transit-first city, but driving is the main way to get downtown, according to a new study by the County Transportation Authority. The primacy of automobiles was among several sobering findings in the Downtown Travel Study published this week, which was first reported by the Frisc. Focusing on the period between 2019 and 2023 that includes the COVID-19 lockdowns and nascent economic recovery, the study provides a window into how travel patterns are evolving — and how much people love their cars. While downtown trips declined 69% overall, with more people working remotely and fewer leaving their homes to shop or eat out, the share made by private automobiles grew from 24% to 37%. Walking and biking are still preferred modes for people zipping through the city, but by a narrowing margin. In 2019, pedestrians and cyclists made 43.4% of weekday trips to, from or within San Francisco's metropolitan center — which in the study extends from the waterfront to Van Ness Avenue on the north side, 11th Street in SoMa and 17th Street in the Mission and Dogpatch neighborhoods. By 2023, the share of trips made by foot or bike had dropped to just under 40%. At the same time, traffic has rebounded to pre-pandemic levels during evening rush hour, even as the return to offices has stagnated. Despite fervent efforts to lure workers back, workplace attendance at the end of 2024 was about 45% of what it had been prior to COVID, the study said. It attributed much of the current freeway congestion to workers driving from the East Bay to the Peninsula or South Bay. For a city and region where political leaders have long tried to wean people off cars, the results of the study may seem dispiriting. But the key points did not surprise Supervisor Myrna Melgar, who chairs the San Francisco County Transportation Authority. 'I'm grateful that the TA did this, and that it gave us a temperature check on where we're at,' Melgar told the Chronicle, noting that the data helped corroborate San Franciscans' day-to-day observations. Anyone who is out on the roads experiences the misery of downtown traffic and knows it is getting worse, she said. Melgar also views the study as a potential roadmap for city and regional policy. It shows the need, she said, to create incentives for people to walk, bike or take the bus. 'I'm afraid that the increasing traffic situation is going to deter people from coming to work in person, or going out after work with their friends, because they know that getting back in the car is going to suck,' she said.
San Francisco Chronicle
24-04-2025
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
This S.F. district has $700K for traffic safety. What's on the wish list?
Take a walk through San Francisco's District 5 — from the Tenderloin to the edge of Golden Gate Park — and you'll see a galling illustration of the city's challenges with road safety. Drivers barrel down one-way arterials. Cyclists and scooter riders swerve to avoid collisions. People enter crosswalks warily, as though preparing to dodge enemy fire. City leaders have worked for years to reimagine the street design in these neighborhoods, a project that now falls, at least partly, on Supervisor Bilal Mahmood. Shortly after taking office in January, Mahmood scoured the ledger books and found he had inherited $700,000 to spend on small capital projects for roads or intersections. The money stemmed from a grant that the County Transportation Authority dispenses every five years, to each district supervisor, for its Neighborhood Transportation Program. Mahmood opted to set aside $100,000 of the program money to paint no-parking zones on the 'approach' side of crosswalks, in compliance with the state's daylighting law. Beyond that, he put the question to constituents: If you had $600,000 to spend on traffic safety, in one of the highest-collision areas of the city, what would be on your wish list? 'We wanted to raise awareness that this money exists, and let the community know they have influence over it,' Mahmood said. 'We wanted to show that, yes, we're facing a budget deficit. But there are available pots of money to make progress on Vision Zero,' the citywide goal to alleviate traffic deaths. To kick-start the work, Mahmood will post a survey for District 5 residents on Thursday, asking them to choose among three types of traffic-calming infrastructure: speed humps, raised crosswalks and additional marking for the daylighted buffers (in the form of flexible posts or bollards, and tan paint on the pavement). Respondents will cast their votes for what's needed most, and suggest where to put it. Ultimately, the County Transportation Authority board will approve the plans, and the Municipal Transportation Authority will determine whether they are feasible. Crowd-sourcing such decisions isn't a new idea in San Francisco. Supervisor Myrna Melgar has long used a participatory budgeting process in District 7, including for projects related to Vision Zero. Even so, pedestrian safety advocate Jodie Medeiros praised Mahmood's approach, particularly his efforts to accelerate daylighting. While the city has advanced its Vision Zero goals in some parts of District 5, largely by daylighting intersections and lowering speed limits in the Tenderloin, residents in other areas still grapple with dangerous roads. 'Fell, Oak, Gough and Franklin streets all definitely need attention,' said Medeiros, who is the executive director of the group Walk San Francisco. 'It's something we heard about consistently during the campaign and in town halls, in every neighborhood from the Tenderloin, to Alamo Square, to North of the Panhandle, to Western Addition,' he said.
