The Street Safety Act is passed unanimously by the Board of Supervisors!

Just minutes ago, the Board of Supervisors unanimously passed the Street Safety Act: a blueprint for getting our city to design and enforce streets that truly keep everyone safe. 

Walk SF is beyond grateful to District 7 Supervisor Melgar for authoring and championing the Street Safety Act.

The Street Safety Act lays out how traffic safety can happen systematically and at scale, with crucial commitments and accountability for City agencies to deliver results. 

It’s just what’s needed now, especially given that the City currently has no traffic safety plan.

About the Street Safety Act

The Street Safety Act recommits our city to ending severe and fatal crashes, gets agencies to collaborate and work more efficiently, and focuses on bringing the most effective solutions to scale. There are deadlines, dashboards, and some serious red tape-cutting.

You can read the full text of the Street Safety Act, but some highlights include:

• Reforming the Residential Traffic Calming Program so it takes a proactive, neighborhood-scale approach to adding speed humps, tables, and more to bring down speeds on smaller streets.
• Planning how to sufficiently redesign all high-injury streets with solutions including turn calming, signal timing, protected bike lanes, and lane reductions.
• Continue harnessing the ‘Quick Build’ program to better protect pedestrians in crosswalks, expand the Bike & Roll network, and design streets that keep drivers going at safe speeds.   
• Further embracing automated enforcement (red light and speed cameras) to address the most dangerous driving behaviors.
• Requiring the SFPD to develop a traffic enforcement plan that complements the speed camera program. 
• Adding ‘hardened’ daylighting to all high-injury streets to prevent illegal parking at the most dangerous intersections, to ensure clear sightlines.
• Adding a full suite of ‘Complete Streets’ safety improvements when repaving or conducting other street-level work on any designated high-injury network or arterial street.
• Establish street design standards and maximum review periods for approval by the Fire Department so safety projects are implemented faster.
• Holding public hearings annually for all key agencies and the Mayor’s Office to review street safety progress, challenges, and data.
• Requiring frequent updates to the high-injury network map so that projects can be prioritized based on the most current crash data. 

What today’s vote means and what’s next

Today’s unanimous support of the Street Safety Act sends a much-needed message that traffic safety must be a priority at the top, including with Mayor Lurie. But it also details a clear path to accelerate progress in ending severe and fatal traffic crashes. 

And now City leaders must deliver on it.

That’s how our work continues together – pushing for the Street Safety Act to become ACTION.

The Street Safety Act will only be words unless elected and agency leaders take the next step: legislating and holding agencies to task in doing what’s detailed in it. So stay tuned for ways you can keep the pressure on in the next phase of this campaign.

Getting around San Francisco is a source of joy and connection, not fear and stress. That’s the city I want to live in, and I’m grateful to YOU for being part of making it a reality!

Thank you to every Supervisor, and everyone who’s pushed for the Street Safety Act!

We’re grateful to the entire Board of Supervisors for their unanimous support of the Street Safety Act today. District 3 Supervisor Sauter, District 5 Supervisor Mahmood, District 6 Supervisor Dorsey, District 8 Supervisor Mandelman, and District 9 Supervisor Fielder cosponsored the Street Safety Act, and District 1 Supervisor Chan, District 2 Supervisor Sherrill, District 4 Supervisor Engardio, District 10 Supervisor Walton, and District Supervisor 11 Chen supported it. Send your thanks to your Supervisor!

Many organizations have joined Walk SF in support of the City continuing its commitment to Vision Zero and passing the Street Safety Act including: Chinatown TRIP, San Francisco Bay Area Families for Safe Streets, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, San Francisco Transit Riders, Senior & Disability Action, and Streets For All San Francisco. We’re also grateful to the 30+ groups in the Vision Zero Coalition, which have been a united voice for traffic safety for more than a decade now.

A huge shoutout to Walk SF supporters for powering this campaign! Because of you, Walk SF has led the charge for Vision Zero since 2013, and will never stop pushing for San Francisco to make Vision Zero a reality.