City makes effort to protect pedestrians
SF Examiner, 8/7/05
By Marisa Lagos
Despite the number of pedestrians still killed or injured here every year, The City has taken some leaps and bounds toward making its streets safer, as has the Bay Area region as a whole.
According to the Surface Transportation Policy Project’s study, “Mean Streets, 2004” report, the Bay Area as a region ranks 37th on a list of the 50 most dangerous large cities, but also came in eighth on a list of 10 metropolitan areas where pedestrian safety is improving.
“Our injuries are actually decreasing, while the state’s overall numbers are going up,” said Department of Parking and Traffic spokeswoman Maggie Lynch, citing state figures that show a 31 percent reduction in nonfatal injury collisions between 1995 and 2002 in The City.
“One of our guiding principles is that we can’t reduce vehicle capacity – we have to make sure the streets can handle the same amount of traffic and maintain the speed limit,” Lynch explained. “We need to strike a balance between pedestrians and vehicles.”
In Sacramento, Assemblyman Leland Yee is also pushing a bill that died last year in committee but may succeed the second time around. The law would establish double fine zones on 19th Avenue, and will be heard in a state Senate committee on Aug. 15.
“Nineteenth Avenue has become a deathtrap for many residents in the Sunset area,” Yee said. He concedes the bill will not eliminate accidents, but said it is part of a larger traffic-calming effort that includes better-marked crosswalks and more countdown signals.
The Police Department is also hard at work – at least with the resources they have. The number of traffic officers on the street at any given time is usually no more than six, in a city with an estimated 900,000 cars on the street daily and hundreds of people on foot. Sgt. Bob Guinan works in the Traffic Division, where the department has begun initiating sting operations on particularly dangerous streets. The stings often use plainclothes officers as decoy pedestrians, and focus on both pedestrians who are crossing streets illegally and drivers who do not yield to walkers.
Guinan said a six-officer sting operation can net more than 120 violations in a three-hour period.
“The fear of enforcement often deters people (even after the operation is over),” he said.
Enforcement is actually only one portion of a three-pronged effort by the Police Department, DPT and the Department of Public Health to increase safety in San Francisco. The other two parts are education and engineering, and are most effective in conjunction with one another, DPH injury prevention coordinator Michael Radetsky said.
And, as usual, public transit will play a part.
“Part of the solution is making public transit desirable and attractive to get people out of their cars,” Radetsky added. ”And, pedestrians are the ones who can best keep themselves safe. Being right is not a substitute for surviving.“
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