San Francisco is commemorating the 10-year anniversary of its vision zero program. It’s the city’s plan to drop pedestrian and bicyclist traffic deaths down to zero. Sergio Quintana reports.
San Francisco is commemorating the 10-year anniversary of its vision zero program. It's the city's plan to drop pedestrian and bicyclist traffic deaths down to zero.
As dozens of pedestrians and bicycle safety advocates and San Francisco leaders gathered on the steps of city hall Thursday, Jodie Medeiros with Walk SF- paid tribute to the Oliveiro-Pinto family. who were killed when a woman driving an SUV hit them as they waited for a bus to go to the zoo.
"Before I say a few words, I’d like to take a moment of silence to remember all of the victims of traffic crashes, especially our most recent in West Portal," Medeiro said
A San Francisco police spokesperson said on Thursday that there's no update on the crash report. The San Francisco District Attorney's Office has not made a decision about filing any charges against the 78-year-old driver.
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The ongoing grief of that crash hung over every speaker Thursday.
"I’m going out to West Portal next week with SFMTA director Jeffrey Tumlin to walk through some of the changes that we are making in the streets. But those changes, while important, won't take back what happened,” said San Francisco Mayor London Breed.
This was supposed to be an event to mark the achievements of the Vision Zero plan over the years. This includes efforts like the creation of miles of dedicated bike lanes, no right turn zones in entire neighborhoods, slow streets in other neighborhoods and no traffic on JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park.
The overall theme of this event and from some of the critics of city hall in the audience, is that a lot has been completed and achieved in ten years, but not enough.
"Where we have installed protected or separated bike lanes, more people bike. But we have done far too few protected bike lanes, truly protected bike lanes in the city, and the pace that they are done is incredibly too slow,” said bicycle safety advocate Luke Bornheimer. “
San Francisco city leaders acknowledged the failures to meet all the demands of the vision zero plan. All city leaders present renewed their pledge to try and make San Francisco streets safer for pedestrians and bicyclists.
