Did you see the front-page story in the New York Times on Monday, June ... Read More]]> UPDATE: Protect pedestrian funding in the transportation bill – call or email Senator Barbara Boxer and urge her not to cut funds for safe walking! You can call Senator Boxer at (415) 403-0100 or (202) 224-3553.

Did you see the front-page story in the New York Times on Monday, June 27, titled “Across Europe, Irking Drivers Is Urban Policy“? Last Friday, the Times printed Walk SF’s letter correcting the article’s claim that Market Street is “pedestrianized” (not yet!) and calling for pedestrian funding in the new federal transportation bill.

To the Editor:
San Francisco is a delight to walk in, but even here, cars rule the roads. Market Street has not yet been “pedestrianized,” and many people are hit every year on the wide, dangerous streets that cross our city’s main boulevard. We’ve ceded our public space to the private vehicle, and we’re all paying the price.

An American is struck by a car every seven minutes. What a waste. Redesigning streets would be a lot cheaper and kinder than what we’re doing now: paying emergency-room costs for tragedies that could have been prevented.

As the Zurich official in your article said about other cities’ policies, “I can’t get used to the idea that I am worth less than a car.”

Here in America, the new federal transportation bill should finance “complete streets” where everyone can walk safely and with dignity. Aren’t we worth that much?

ELIZABETH STAMPE
Exec. Dir., Walk San Francisco
San Francisco, June 27, 2011

You can ... Read More]]> Tell us about your experience with Walk San Francisco and how you’d like to be involved as we grow and get even more active in 2011. The survey is open for a limited time only, so please click on the link below and share your thoughts! It’ll just take 5 minutes.

You can win $50 from Sports Basement as well as other great prizes!

“Jaywalker killed” blared off the front page of the Dec. 15 edition of The Examiner with a photo of a grisly scene. The subhead was equally jarring: “Elderly man with walker ignored no-crossing sign.”

When you opened up the ... Read More]]> The following originally appeared in the 1/15/2009 edition of the San Francisco Examiner, Opinion section.

“Jaywalker killed” blared off the front page of the Dec. 15 edition of The Examiner with a photo of a grisly scene. The subhead was equally jarring: “Elderly man with walker ignored no-crossing sign.”

When you opened up the paper, you were treated to the headline of “Illegal shortcut claims a life,” and you also learned that The Examiner is running a poll on its Web site asking whether there should be a crackdown on jaywalkers.

Cut and dried. The pedestrian did something illegal and paid for it with his life.

But is that really the whole story? We later learned that the name of the victim was Victor Cinti. He was an 87-year-old man who used a walker to get around.

So why would an 87-year-old man in a walker decline to use a pedestrian bridge and choose to jaywalk against the light? He doesn’t exactly fit the profile of someone who would dart across traffic — damn the consequences — because he was in too much of a hurry.

The first issue is the bridge itself. The bridge was built prior to the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. As such, the bridge is considered too steep for use by people with mobility problems. It is also seismically unsafe. Furthermore, there is no good way to inform blind pedestrians about the bridge, meaning that many blind folks end up crossing the street when they hear cars moving in their direction (as they are trained to do). The irony of this pedestrian bridge is that our most vulnerable citizens can’t use it, and we’ve taken away the one option that everyone can use and from anecdotal evidence many prefer: street-level crossing.

Furthermore, Cinti was killed on the west side of the street, while the bridge is on east side. This means that in order for Cinti to have used the bridge he would have had to cross Webster Street twice just to cross Geary Boulevard on the bridge, in addition to climbing up to cross. That’s a lot of extra effort for someone using a walker.

If the intersection of Geary and Webster allowed crossing at the street level, city standards would dictate more time to cross than what is currently the case. They would also dictate pedestrian countdown signals, along with pedestrian refuge islands in the medians, so someone who couldn’t cross the entire length of the street in one light cycle could continue at the next cycle.

The solution to avoid this kind of tragedy at intersections with a pedestrian bridge is not to crack down on “jaywalkers,” but rather to allow people to cross at street level. We also need to calm the traffic in this area and make it more inviting to people walking at street level, rather than trying to separate people from the street.

Manish Champsee is the president of Walk San Francisco, a pedestrian-safety advocacy group.

Pedestrian safety

 Walking in S.F. can be dangerous.

9.4 Percent of San Francisco residents who walked to work in 2000

9.6 Percent who walked to work in ’06

726 Nonfatal pedestrian collisions in ’06

13 Fatal pedestrian collisions in ’06

Sources: San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, San Francisco Transportation Fact Sheet, October 2008