Our Impact
A Persistent and Effective Advocate for Safe Streets for All
Walk San Francisco was founded in 1998 by a small group of volunteers who were united by the belief that walking in San Francisco shouldn’t be life-or-death.
Today, Walk SF is known as a tireless advocate in pushing for – and winning – life-saving changes across the city. Powered by our diverse, passionate members, we want nothing less than to make San Francisco the most pedestrian-friendly city in the United States.
Explore some of our biggest wins since our founding.
In 2013, Walk SF led the successful campaign for San Francisco to be the third city in the U.S. to adopt Vision Zero, a preventative, systemic approach to end severe and fatal traffic crashes.
And we’ve been pushing ever since for the City to prioritize and accelerate Vision Zero progress. Walk SF leads the Vision Zero Coalition, united over 30 community-based organizations, nonprofits, and neighborhood groups to be a powerful and unified voice for traffic safety.
Walk San Francisco has been a leading force in historic campaigns to create safe spaces for people without the threat of dangerous traffic: the JFK Promenade campaigns, car-free Shelley Drive, permanent Slow Streets, Sunday Streets, and car-free Market Street. Walk SF is currently supporting the Ocean Beach Park campaign to create a people-first promenade and park on the Pacific coast.
Walk SF was a key force behind creating and winning 1.5-miles of safe, care-free space for people in Golden Gate Park. Read the incredible story of JFK Promenade.
In 2022, Walk SF helped bring together the People’s Slow Streets Coalition, which successfully pushed for design standards to keep traffic speeds on Slow Streets at 15 MPH and traffic volumes to 1,000 or fewer vehicles.
Walk SF has also been a strong advocate for removing private vehicles from Market Street, as well as the creation of Sunday Streets.
Speed is the #1 cause of severe and fatal traffic crashes in San Francisco. That’s why Walk SF continues to push for solutions to address dangerous speeding, including launching our ongoing #SlowOurStreets campaign in 2020. Some of highlights:
- Safer speed zones around 181 K-12 public and private schools citywide, which was implemented in 2012.
- Doing speed surveys around the city and publishing a groundbreaking report: Making San Francisco a ‘Safe Speeds City’: Solutions to Slow Our Streets and Save Lives.
- Passage of Assembly Bill 43 in 2021, which means San Francisco can now lower speed limits by 5 MPH on many types of streets.
- After six years of multiple attempts at passing speed camera legislation, we celebrated in October 2023 when Governor Newsom signed Assembly Bill 645 allowing San Francisco and five other California cities to pilot speed cameras (read more).
Every part of our city has dangerous streets, where simply crossing the street is a gamble. It shouldn’t be like that, and Walk SF works with neighborhoods and community-based groups to change this in a range of ways.
We also know that some neighborhoods have experienced decades of inequities in traffic safety, and suffer higher crash rates and significant harm to the community. That’s why Walk SF works more deeply in neighborhoods like the Tenderloin, where we’re proud of our work with the Traffic Safety Task Force to win changes to make the neighborhood a model for lower speed limits, no turn on red, and redesigning roads to bring down speeds.
In 2015, Walk SF started a local Families for Safe Streets chapter to support crash survivors and people with loved ones who were hurt or killed in crashes.
Each year, Walk SF and Families for Safe Streets host World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims event in San Francisco.
Walk SF and Families for Safe Streets also work together to bring personal stories to leaders and the media to show the true toll of traffic crashes.
Impact Reports
None of our wins would have been possible without the many members and volunteers who have donated their time and money to Walk SF’s mission.