City leaders in San Francisco have been scrambling to come up with ways to improve pedestrian safety, especially after a four-year-old child was killed in a crosswalk last month. Now Supervisor Dean Preston has introduced a resolution to ban right turns on red lights citywide.  

The resolution introduced at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting calls on the Municipal Transportation Agency to ban turns on red lights at all stoplight intersections.  

Once implemented, San Francisco would join New York City in barring the turns in an effort to increase safety and save lives.   

The ban has already been in effect in the congested Tenderloin District since 2021.  

Preston shared statistics related to the changes in the Tenderloin, and they show some success.  

A 2021 SFMTA study showed that 92 percent of drivers in the Tenderloin heeded the “No Turn on Red” (NTOR)  signs, leading to an 80 percent decrease in “close calls” with pedestrians and 70 percent decrease in vehicles blocking or encroaching crosswalks during red lights. 

“We have the tools, and we should be using these tools in a coordinated way, with urgency, to ensure we are doing everything possible to prevent serious traffic injuries and fatalities.”  Supervisor Dean Preston

Citywide, turn-on-red crashes make up 20 percent of pedestrian and bicycle related injury crashes. SFMTA’s 2012-2015 numbers show that 40 percent of collisions happen when drivers fail to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks.  

“With the successful NOTR implementation in the Tenderloin, and the tragic increase citywide in traffic fatalities, we should be expanding NOTR to every neighborhood,” said Preston in a release from his office. “We have the tools, and we should be using these tools in a coordinated way, with urgency, to ensure we are doing everything possible to prevent serious traffic injuries and fatalities.” 

Whether residents will approve of the change remains to be seen, but a letter-writing campaign posted online has generated 4,599 letters of support for No Turn On Red citywide. The campaign can be found on the Action Network site and has a goal of 6,400 letters.

SFMTA has 120 days to develop and propose a NTOR plan, including how to fund it, timelines and other concerns, then it will bring its report back to the Board of Supervisors. 

Katy St. Clair got her start in journalism by working in the classifieds department at the East Bay Express during the height of alt weeklies, then sweet talked her way into becoming staff writer, submissions editor, and music editor. She has been a columnist in the East Bay Express, SF Weekly, and the San Francisco Examiner. Starting in 2015, she begrudgingly scaled the inverted pyramid at dailies such as the Vallejo Times-Herald, The Vacaville Reporter, and the Daily Republic. She has her own independent news site and blog that covers the delightfully dysfunctional town of Vallejo, California, where she also collaborates with the investigative team at Open Vallejo. A passionate advocate for people with developmental disabilities, she serves on both the Board of the Arc of Solano and the Arc of California. She lives in Vallejo.