This time the culprit was an articulated standard coach (non-trolleybus) 71-Haight/Noriega heading inbound on Market at 6th. A 77 year old female pedestrian was struck and later died at SF General.

6th and Market is a zoo of an intersection at best, made worse by Tenderloin-style pedestrians who seem to get personal satisfaction by running in front of traffic.

However, at this point in the route, the 71-Haight/Noriega has a purely straight trajectory — a path easy for both the driver and daredevil pedestrians to anticipate. Thanks to the mid-lane bus-stop islands the busses don’t even have to pull into a standard Muni bus stop. Given this simple trajectory, this vehicle should not have been turning, leaving little obvious clues as to how it managed to smush the elderly lady.

More data would be nice to enable the community to put pressure on Muni to prevent further similar incidents. Unfortunately, more data we will not have.

Link

Is this a good idea? Yes, in spirit, but no in practice.

In practice, giving up the entire Embarcadero to pedestrian use at anytime is silly. The Embarcadero already has a beautiful and expansive pedestrian sidewalk on both sides. And, the bay side of the Embarcadero is unencumbered by vehicle cross traffic, making it a fully continuous pedestrian right of way from AT&T ballpark all the way up to Fisherman’s Wharf (and even beyond to the Marina).

Furthermore, the Embarcadero on weekends is a heavily used thoroughfare connecting downtown and the Fisherman’s Wharf to the three major interstates: 101, 280 and 80. Severing this connection on weekends would make it very difficult for visitors to come to our City. I’m all for congestion pricing to control use of personal vehicles, but giving up a prime vehicle thoroughfare for questionable pedestrian need is silly. Visitors bring essential revenue to the backbone of our City’s economy: tourism.

Instead, we should give up other City streets to pedestrian use — permanently.

The City’s ‘default’ practice is to pave with cement over all City territory between private real estate holdings, regardless of actual demand for that cement by personal vehicles. Embarcadero cement has an extremely high demand for vehicle use. But, out in the deep Sunset, Parkside and Richmond districts there is no need for vehicle thoroughfares at every avenue.

These cement roads are, in effect, parking lots. Vast acres of public land in which we live is dedicated to grey car storage. What if we could accommodate vehicle storage, the low demand for vehicle thoroughfares, AND add pedestrian friendly green space? I think we can.

Check out this typical Sunset street:

(24th Avenue between Kirkham and Lawton, San Francisco, CA from Google Street View)

Cement everywhere. Low traffic volume. The cement is mostly used for parking.

Here’s a better idea: we could convert every third avenue into a linear park. Yes, you lose parking for each third avenue’s park conversion, but you can gain it back by increasing parking density along the other two avenues by converting them into one way with perpendicular or slanted parking instead of existing parallel parking.

Here’s an overhead view of a slice of the existing 24th Avenue:

(24th Avenue, San Francisco, CA from Google Maps)

If 24th Avenue was converted to a linear park, 25th and 23rd Avenues would be converted to north and south bound one-way streets respectively. Parking density could be increased to account for lost street parking on 24th Avenue, like this:

Or, instead you could close off the 24th Avenue “linear park” to through traffic, but still allow parking and access to existing vehicle garages. You can cover the entire 24th Avenue with grass and trees, and pave a smaller space with “grassblocks“, concrete with over 50% of surface as holes for dirt to hold real grass, to allow for local access and limited on-street parking while maintaining a real grass surface.

Grassblock example:

Expanding on this, you could make the linear parks have beautiful bike corridors. Integrating dedicated bike corridors would provide much needed safe, sole-priority biking space.

Linear Park Overhead Example:

(Vehicles are stationary, through traffic would be prohibited and made annoying by bumpy grass concrete.)

This would be very applicable for other City neighborhoods. The Mission comes to mind first: the large area between Mission and Potrero, 16th and Cesar Chavez (Army) is especially starved for green space.

Imagine the effect this would have on quality of life! For many residents, you could step out your door right into a park. For the rest, you could go at most 1.5 blocks to find a large park.

Example of Three Sunset Avenue Arrangements:

(Click for larger version.)

Creating a usable transit system is just the first step. Next, we need to convert our streets back into the livable spaces they once were. We need to take our streets back from the personal vehicle and put them back into the hands of the people.

I imagine your response now, dear reader, “This guy is full of crap. Sure, we all would love a park right in front of our house, but this would never work.” NO! WRONG!

Too many people think this way. They see our City as a dead, unmovable structure. They see personal vehicle priority on our roadways as an absolute GIVEN, and not a CHOICE. The final product is to recreate paradise in our own City. It can be done, it just requires a bit of imagination and some balls to make it happen. These are our streets, let’s take them back.

PS: Related, here are some cool sites about “Parking Day”, converting parking spaces into parks for a day:

• OpenPlans.org
• City of Chicago

I like good signage. Good signage is clear in communicating a simple point or set of points. Good signage is a rare find.

I was surprised to see these well-designed signs posted at the cab garage when I went into work last week. They do an efficient and effective job communicating bike safety while driving a taxi.

Oddly enough, it happened that a friend I met while volunteering for the Geary BRT EIR vote campaign helped design these signs. He agreed to send me the PDFs and let me post them on this blog. Thanks, Razzu.

Also check out the letter that will be sent to cab drivers about bike safety. Keep up the good work, Bicycle Coalition. Maybe someday we’ll get real bike lanes in the City.

• Awareness Flyer
• Welcome Letter

Just one day before, Muni Executive Director Nat Ford expressed his desire at MTA’s January 15th meeting to address the dire pedestrian problems facing Muni.

In conjunction with Local 250A we are implementing a proactive comprehensive safety educational program regarding our pedestrians and pedestrian safety throughout the City. We will leverage a host of communication outlets and we are developing specific details that will be finalized in the near future and I’ll keep you apprised as they evolve.

One of the activities which we need to have you place on your calendar is a first ever pedestrian safety summit that will be held Thursday, February 28. We are attempting to provide a forum for stakeholders, members of the community, and industry experts to examine and discuss the status of, one, our pedestrian masterplan, pedestrian safety, and recent safety incidents in and around the City as well as other programs promoting walkability in the City. So we’d like for you to please save that date and additional information on all of our programs to enhance pedestrian safety will be underway.

We have a host of capital projects to improve pedestrian signals, countdown signals that are being installed and enhanced. We have operator training that is occurring with both our bus and LRV operators, and we are coordinating all of these activities with the SFPD and there is more to come so I’ll keep you advised as that program progresses.

Municipal Transportation Agency Meeting, January 15, 2008 [21m:33s]
(Agenda) (Video) (Audio RSS)

Nat Ford is taking a step in the right direction. But, let’s hope these planned meetings will have some teeth. What is teeth?

Teeth would be changing Muni employment contracts so that there is an immediate, financial repercussion for operators involved in pedestrian injury or deaths. For example, a one-week UNPAID leave during an investigation of fault.

Teeth would be creating true transit-only lanes on our City streets so our City transit no longer has to weave in and out of pedestrian and personal vehicle traffic. Bus lanes don’t work. Grade separated lanes with curb boundaries and rumble strips, those used for true BRT implementation, DO work. Transit, pedestrian and vehicle traffic do not mix well. We need to separate them as much as possible.

Mr. Ford is taking a step in the right direction. Keep going.

UPDATE: The N-Judah Chronicles blog has good coverage and discussion as usual.

This time the N-Judah tries to slice off an old lady’s foot.

Links:

• Nice coverage in Metroblog
• SF Gate
• N-Judah Chronicles blog eats this up.

This is getting ridiculous. Rant.

Link (Examiner)
Link (SF Gate)

This time it’s the 9x Bayshore Express — articulated — tough busses to drive.

Link (Examiner)

Same rant as usual.

The Examiner reports a Muni bus hit a pedestrian Monday evening bringing the total number of “pedestrian incidents” to 20 since the start of Muni’s fiscal year on July 1.

20 incidents? Why so many? Is this excessive? Yes. Is this Muni’s fault? Yes. What causes this? Poor management and overzealous union agreements.

Muni operates a total of 1,000 vehicles during limited hours of the day. For comparison, there are 1,500 taxis in the City operating 24 hours per day. I could not find any report of pedestrians being struck by taxicabs since July 1. The most recent taxi/pedestrian incident (that I could find via Google) was in April, but the struck lady was okay in the end.

Here’s the key difference: When a bus driver hits a pedestrian, he or she continues to be paid. When a taxi driver hits a pedestrian he or she is out of a job.

Muni drivers involved in incidents such as these are shifted to ‘nondriving status‘ during the investigation. Most investigations show it was the pedestrian’s fault and the driver keeps working. The transport worker union has fought to make it onerous and slow for Muni to fire people. This is bad.

As a taxi driver, you stop working for a while, WITHOUT PAY, if you hit someone in your cab. Even if you’re not at fault, you will probably not continue driving unless your cab company is desperate for drivers. Most are not.

Driving a bus is a difficult task. A bus is an unwieldy box with horrible acceleration and braking abilities. This is not an easy job. I respect that.

But, I don’t respect a management system without effective punishment for pedestrian incidents. This management policy breeds a lackadaisical attitude.

In most cases, hitting a pedestrian should be “game over”, not a “time out”.