Improving San Francisco’s streets
By Patrick Traughber
Below is the transcript of the speech I delivered at the Bicycle Advisory Committee meeting in City Hall on August 22, 2013 during public comment. The agenda of the meeting is here. The first part of the speech is a recitation of this list, with some small modifications. If you’ve already read that, the new stuff starts halfway down the page at “These accidents are traumatic […]”.
I’d like to thank each and every one of the committee members here today for selflessly dedicating their time to making San Francisco a better place to live. Your commitment is admirable. In particular, I’d like to thank Chairman Hill for allotting me some additional time tonight to speak before you. It is great to be back in City Hall, where I worked for Mayor Newsom just two doors down this hall. I wish, though, that I was here under different circumstances.
My name is Patrick Traughber and I am a proud resident of San Francisco. I own a car, own a bike, ride MUNI, walk, and run throughout our city. I do not represent any organizations. I have no agenda beyond making San Francisco a more safe and enjoyable place to live.
What I am about to read is a list of San Franciscans who have died after being struck by a vehicle while riding a bicycle since 2006. I compiled this list 8 days ago, after hearing of Amelie’s death.
January 12th, 2006, 2am. A 26-year-old woman named Sarah Tucker was killed after being struck by a minivan on Polk at Geary. The driver was speeding through a yellow light heading westbound on Geary when he struck her. Witnesses told police that Tucker, as her friends called her, yelled at the driver just before he killed her. The driver immediately fled the scene and to my understanding, has never been caught.
Tucker worked for the California Academy of Sciences and organized a monthly dance party at Make-Out Room in the Mission. Her best friend described her as “extremely outgoing and warm and loving.”
When she was killed, Sarah was riding her bike on a street with no protected bike lanes. Seven and a half years later, there are still no protected bike lanes on Polk or Geary.
March 9th, 2008. A 27-year-old woman named Renata Gonzalez was struck by a truck on Market Street at Octavia. The driver initially fled the scene before turning himself in two hours later. The force of the collision broke 24 bones in Renata’s body, left her with permanent brain damage, and instantly killed her dog Ari, which she was carrying in her sweater. Renata’s brain injuries left her unable to speak and move on her own, and she required a ventilator to breathe. She died three years after the collision in her parent’s home.
When Renata was hit by the truck, she was riding on a street with no protected bike lanes.
May 21st, 2008. 10:55am. A 35-year-old man named Kirk Janes was killed after being struck by a pickup truck on Fulton at Steiner. Kirk had just started a company called ‘American Flyer’.
When Kirk was killed, he was riding on a street with an unprotected bike lane. The same street I ride to work on every day.
August 13th, 2010, 10:39pm. A 22-year-old man named Nils Yannick Linke was killed after being struck from behind by a car on Masonic at Turk. The driver of the car had just left Kokkari and was drunk. The driver’s girlfriend in the passenger seat saw Nils and screamed “Stop! Stop! Bike! Bike!” before they struck Nil’s from behind. The driver and his girlfriend stopped, moved Nils’ bike onto the sidewalk, and fled the scene, leaving Nils bleeding on the ground. The police found the couple later that night.
Nils was visiting from Germany and staying with his friends in San Francisco. A person who witnessed the collision said ”I’ve never seen someone bleeding so much before.”
When Nils was killed he was riding on Masonic, which despite being a popular route for riding a bicycle, has no bike lanes.
October 7th, 2010, 4:59pm. A 22-year-old man named Derek Allen was killed after being struck by a MUNI bus on 6th Avenue between Geary and Clement. Based on witness descriptions and photographs of the accident, Derek was struck from behind by a MUNI bus heading the wrong direction on 6th Avenue. The bus was apparently attempting to pass another stalled MUNI bus when it struck Derek.
On Derek’s passing, his uncle said, “Perhaps it was up to Derek to bring us all together. He was that kind of guy.”
When Derek was struck and killed while riding his bicycle to pick up dim sum, there were no sharrows or bike lanes on 6th Avenue.
July 20th, 2011, 8:04am. A 25-year-old woman named Nancy Ho was killed after being struck by a Berkeley Farms delivery truck on Mission as she was turning left onto Fremont.
Nancy was a writer and freelance web designer and had graduated from NYU. She was described as “a loving daughter, caring sister, faithful friend and devoted girlfriend”. She planned to travel the world after living in San Francisco.
When Nancy was killed, she was riding on the street and there were no bike lanes.
May 29th, 2012, 2:30pm. A 22-year-old man named Robert Yegge was killed after being struck by a truck on Oak at Franklin. Robert was making a left turn from Oak onto Franklin, and had a green light when the truck collided with him, which was making a right turn at a red light from the opposite direction. He spent several days in a coma before dying in the hospital. Robert was just one class away from graduating with a degree in biochemistry from USF. In elementary school, Robert offered to be a restroom buddy for a girl in his class. The girl told Robert, “You can’t come you’re a boy!” Robert replied, “Boys need to rest too!”
There are no bike lanes on Oak or Franklin where Robert was killed.
February 9th, 2013, 9:30am. A 48-year-old woman named Diana Carol Sullivan was killed after being struck by a concrete mixing truck on King Street near Third Street. After she was killed, her friends held a procession through the Panhandle. Dozens of people showed up.
Diana was killed while riding on a road with bike sharrows but no protected bike lane.
May 23rd, 2013, 6:45am. A 21-year-old man named Dylan Mitchell was killed after being run over by a Recology garbage truck. The driver was making a right turn onto South Van Ness from 16th Street and didn’t know he had struck Dylan until witnesses flagged him down a block away. He was on his way to his new apprenticeship at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. After his death, Dylan’s mom described him as “a light that could brighten the darkest of rooms.” Like me, Dylan’s middle name was Patrick. Like me, Dylan was avid golfer and wished to play professionally. I had my chance. Dylan did not.
Dylan was killed while riding on a street with bike sharrows but no protected bike lane.
And finally, what I suspect is the reason so many of us are here tonight, Amelie. Just 204 hours ago, on August 14th, 2013, 7:07am. A 24-year-old woman named Amelie Le Moullac was killed after being run over by a truck whose driver was making a right turn onto 6th Street from Folsom.
Amelie was a graduate of USC in 2011 and Menlo School in 2007.
She was killed while riding her bike in an unprotected bike lane.
Tucker, Renata, Kirk, Nils, Derek, Nancy, Robert, Diana, Dylan, and Amelie. Ten young, healthy San Franciscans. All gone, forever.
These accidents are traumatic for everyone involved. Families lose a loved one. Friends lose a companion. They are traumatic for the drivers who exit their vehicles after the collision and are the first to see the victims dying on the ground–a memory they will live with for the rest of their lives. It is traumatic for the policemen, firemen, and EMTs who arrive and realize there is little they can do to save the victim. It is traumatic for the witnesses and journalists on the scene. It is traumatic for the neighbors who realize this could have been them, their child, or their loved one.
But the most troubling fact about these fatalities is that they are preventable. As I’ve sifted through publicly-available transportation data for the last two weeks, I’ve discovered some troublesome numbers. I won’t have time to share everything with you tonight, but I will share some. I promise to share the rest over the coming weeks.
By my count, since 2002, 21 people have been killed after being struck by a vehicle while riding a bicycle in the city. From 2000 to 2011, we’ve had 5,023 injuries, with approximately 60% of these collisions occurring in intersections. And the number of injuries is on the rise, with 630 in 2011 alone–the highest in 10 years. We’d expect to see an increase in the number of injuries as more San Franciscans ride bicycles, but according to SFMTA, the increase in the number of collisions with bicycles is rising faster than the increase in bike counts.
According to the SFMTA’s 2012 Transportation Fact Sheet, there are 1,088 miles of paved road in San Francisco, but only 23 miles of Class I bike lanes and 60 miles of Class II bike lanes. And as I’m sure the committee is aware, even that is generous, since paved paths like the one circling the Golden Gate Park Polo Field are counted as Class I bike lanes.
Given the overwhelming number of reported collisions between bicycles and vehicles, this is not just a problem of human behavior. Sure, some drivers and cyclists will behave irresponsibly. That is inevitable. They should be cited and reprimanded. But some will continue to blame the San Franciscans riding their bicycles. Some will continue to blame the San Franciscans driving their cars and trucks. But I believe this is fundamentally a problem of design. In my opinion, San Francisco’s streets, as they exist today, are still not adequately designed to ensure the safety of those who use them.
But we can solve this problem. I know this, because other cities already have. For example, our friends in New York City solved this near Prospect Park. There, they transformed one of three car lanes into a bike lane. Since then, collisions have dropped 63%, speeding has dropped 54%, sidewalk bike riding has dropped 46%, and the community overwhelmingly supports it. To our credit, some progress in our city has been made in recent years. Since the four year injunction prohibiting the city from improving our streets was lifted in 2010, there have been bike lanes added to our streets, like those on Fell and Oak. But we must do more.
To start, I ask that we—everyone in and outside this room—do the following:
1. Request that SFMTA invest our money in our cycling infrastructure after years of gross underinvestment to make our streets safe for everyone.
2. Push for protected bike lanes on streets where the difference in speed between car traffic and bicycle traffic is unsafe. For those streets with slower traffic and too little space, cover the streets in sharrows.
3. Investigate solutions to the problem of intersections—both big and small—where 60% of collisions involving cyclists occur. These solutions include, but are not limited to, roundabouts like the new one in Supervisor Mar’s district at 23rd and Anza. These roundabouts reduce the chance of broadside collisions, allow cars and bikes to safely proceed through an intersection while preserving forward momentum, and reduce the noise and exhaust pollution from acceleration in our neighborhoods.
4. Reexamine section 49-720 of Idaho’s motor vehicle statute and its feasibility in our state. This section, known as the Idaho Stop Law, allows citizens on bicycles to treat stop signs as yield signs. Seemingly counterintuitively, this law can help reduce the frequency of collisions at intersections by clarifying the right of way at a four-way stop. Today, many drivers wave cyclists ahead at four-way intersections despite the vehicle having the right of way. But since some drivers do not, this creates ambiguity and confusion among those in cars, on bikes, and on foot.
5. Reduce the occurrence of double parking, particularly by delivery trucks blocking bicycle lanes, by requiring more space be set aside for loading and unloading. As I have discovered from a Sunshine request I made, and am sharing now for the first time, two companies alone—FedEx and UPS—were issued 20,879 tickets in our city in 2012. Enforcement does not work, as parking tickets are already factored into the business model. We need a solution for those companies. I am certain they would prefer to not break the law.
6. Create several city-length arteries both north-south and east-west for people on foot and on bikes. These arteries, well-designed and with timed traffic lights, have the potential to handle a large percentage of trips via bicycle.
7. Focus intensely on the design of our streets and think about new solutions to old problems and how smart, informed street design can solve them.
If any of these things cannot be done, and done in a timely manner, we—in the name of transparency—ought to know why.
In addition to the above, I will, for my part as a civilian, continue to collect, interpret, and share publicly-available data. For the data I cannot find or is unavailable, I have already submitted Sunshine Requests, and will continue to do so. I had to respond to these requests when I was in City Hall, and they serve an important purpose in our city. I will also organize a meetup on [date TBA] where we will use tools like Streetmix and Google Maps to reimagine the design of our city’s streets. I invite all of those in this room to join me.
And for those in the room, I ask that tomorrow morning, you email your supervisor and call our Mayor and tell them why this is important to you. Telling them that this is important to you will make it easier for them to get this done.
Since posting this list one week ago, the response has been tremendous, and sobering. My inbox was flooded with emails from close friends of the victims, roommates, strangers, supervisors, and journalists. I’ve been sent links to stories of victims I’ve missed. I’ve had people ask me to start a list for neighboring cities and cities in other states. It has been shared on Twitter to millions of people—including Evan Williams, one of Twitter’s founders. I’ve had people at work whom I’ve never met approach me and thank me for writing this. And a physical memorial was set up in a San Francisco park.
Like I said, I’ve had the privilege to work in this building and under this dome for the people of San Francisco. In my time in the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, we heard directly from the friends and families of murder victims. We saw the tragedies of unexpected deaths. And our city did something about it. With an SFPD budget of $445 million, a total Public Protection budget of over $1 billion, new technologies, smart policing, and strong leadership, the number of homicides was cut in half from an average of 93 from 2004 to 2008 to just 45 in 2009, 48 in 2010, and 50 in 2011.
And with your help and the support of everyone in this room, we can do this again.
We have an opportunity to make San Francisco a world-class city for intracity transportation. We can design the world’s safest streets for all San Franciscans to use. This is not simply a trade-off between cars and bikes. This problem affects all San Franciscans. Those in cars and those on bikes. Those walking and those running. Men and women. Young and old. Rich and poor.
An increase in the number of trips made by bicycle improves the quality of life for every San Franciscan. More bike trips means less vehicle traffic, allowing those who need to use a car or truck to do so more quickly and safely. That also means more parking for folks like me who own a car or truck. More bike trips will also reduce overcrowding on MUNI, which will make buses and trains less crowded and more comfortable, and increase MUNI’s on-time performance, which as of May 2012 was just 57.2%. More bike trips means quieter streets during the day and at night. More bike trips will also lead to fewer particulates in our air from exhaust, which is known to cause respiratory problems for humans, particularly children. It also means fewer greenhouse gas emissions from on-road traffic, which accounted for 93% of transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions for the decade ending in 2010. And for those riding a riding a bike, it means a healthier cardiovascular system and may have a positive impact on rates of obesity, one of our country’s biggest challenges. In sum, well-designed streets that are safe for cycling will improve the quality life for everyone—not just those who ride a bicycle.
I’d like to end with a quote from our Governor, Jerry Brown. This is from earlier this year at the unveiling of Tesla’s Model X, but I think it’s relevant here.
“It’s about design. Instead of fighting all the old battles, we need to imagine how we can change the design. Because we can work our way out of our mess with creativity and openness and the kind of spirit that is willing to take risks, and not get bogged down with all the garbage we talk about most of the time.”
Thank you to the Chairman Hill, thank you to the members of the committee, and thanks to everyone who has come here tonight. We’re all here because we care about our city and I’m determined that together, we can solve this problem and at some future date, we can all look back at how dangerous our streets were then and how safe they are now, for everyone. We will get better.
That’s how we roll in San Francisco.
Thank you.
