What we did and didn’t hear at this week’s SFMTA Board meeting

In the aftermath of the death of a four-year-old child in the crosswalk on August 15, Walk SF issued three asks of City leaders to address deadly intersections.

One of the asks was this: a detailed, public plan for how the SFMTA will meet their commitment to bring pedestrian safety improvements to 900 dangerous intersections on the ~50 miles of the high-injury network awaiting fixes by the end of 2024.

The SFMTA will have to complete about one mile per week of improvements to meet this commitment – and we’re deeply concerned the pieces aren’t in place for this to happen.

At Tuesday’s SFMTA Board meeting, we brought our request for a public plan to the SFMTA Board again – this time with a letter asking key questions we believe must be answered.

We do not feel these questions were fully answered, and will continue to push for this essential Vision Zero commitment to get the focus – and scrutiny – it deserves. We know that Mayor Breed and the SFMTA Board are eager for answers, too.

Here’s what did come out of the meeting:

• The SFMTA shared a public dashboard for tracking progress on the remaining ~50 miles. However, SFTMA staff said this will only be updated quarterly. So while the dashboard is a great step toward more accountability, it must be updated more frequently so the SFMTA and the public know if progress falling behind – and steps can be taken to speed things up. Check out the dashboard.
• A new SFMTA Board Vision Zero Subcommittee was officially created and will begin meeting next month. We will meet with the Subcommittee’s new members (Eaken, Heminger, Hinze) ASAP to talk about how they can help move our ask forward. We are enthusiastic about this Subcommittee’s potential to get to the root of what’s holding back progress and projects, and make necessary changes within the SFMTA.

We want to really thank the people who took time out of their day to give public comment on Tuesday. Your voices change the conversation, and bring these issues into a different light for leaders.

And if you haven’t emailed City leaders yet echoing our call to fix deadly intersections, take one minute to send your email now.

Banner image by Emily Huston