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What happened Tuesday night – and why we need your voice Tuesday, March 7

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Why isn’t the City moving faster to make our streets safe?

The City’s Vision Zero strategy made strong, doable commitments – especially when it comes to fixing the deadliest streets. But once again city agencies have fallen behind. Why?

On Tuesday, Supervisor Preston introduced a resolution at the Board of Supervisors to get to the bottom of this question – and get all city agencies refocused on Vision Zero in key ways. This includes calling for the often dormant Vision Zero Task Force to reconvene immediately, for departments to coordinate on Vision Zero, and getting back on track to complete safety fixes on the entire high-injury network by 2024.

Thanks to many of you, each Supervisor got a flood of emails leading up to the meeting asking for them to focus on Vision Zero.

And it made a difference. Supervisors Walton, Peskin, Stefani and Ronen have already signed on as cosponsors of the resolution, and our goal is for the other six to do so also.

Supervisor Preston’s legislation, which you can read here, will now be assigned to a committee before it goes to a vote with the full Board of Supervisors. We don’t know the exact timeline yet. This is tough given that every day counts with the City getting back on track with its commitments.

But that’s why we’re coming at this from a variety of angles, including at the Tuesday, March 7 SFMTA Board meeting – which is where we really need your voice.

Vision Zero is on the agenda at the meeting in a big way on Tuesday afternoon, with presentations from SFMTA, Department of Public Health, and SFPD. Most importantly, the SFMTA will release its plan to address dangerous speeds. This plan has been at the heart of our #SlowOurStreets campaign for the past year, and we’re hoping the SFMTA has taken our report, Making San Francisco a ‘Safe Speeds City’, to heart in writing their plan.

We need people to speak up to show that the public is paying attention and won’t accept delays in making our streets safe. Every person who speaks on Tuesday adds to the pressure for the City to do more now.

Please sign up for talking points and so we know we’ll have enough people. I’ll be at City Hall on Tuesday afternoon if you want to join me in-person (it goes a lot faster!), or you can call in (and we’ll alert you when the agenda item is coming up).

It’s time for answers and action – and you can help us get both. Sign up now, and thank you!

Read our February letter to the SFMTA Board of Directors, co-signed by the Vision Zero Coalition and Families for Safe Streets.

A sign on a post that says a person died due to a crash at this intersection. A man is walking on the crosswalk in foreground as the light turns green.