THEY CROPPED UP — or rather underwent a visible transformation — in response to the COVID-19 outbreak and shelter-in-place orders. San Francisco residential streets became outdoor community spaces to congregate with neighbors (albeit 6 feet apart), get in some exercise and reduce stress, pandemic-related or other.
They were — and still are — known as Slow Streets, and their stewards want to continue prioritizing the safety of the many who use them.
“If you go out on Page (Street), you still see more people outside of cars than inside of cars, which is great. It feels like almost any time of day, you see lots of people biking and scooting and skateboarding. And then at certain times, it seems like there’s more runners and walkers,” says Jessica Jenkins, a Page Slow Street steward.
Page Street, as a major connector between Golden Gate Park and Market Street, sees its daily share of pedestrians and two-wheeled commuters. Its constant busyness, as Jenkins notes, is all the more reason to put in additional safety features.
“It only takes one bad actor in a car to make it feel unsafe, so we still very much want to press the city to continue to put in hard infrastructure to make it not viable to drive fast on. There’s still a lot of room to make it even safer,” she says.
Safety remains a concern
In December 2022, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors approved a permanent Slow Streets Program, including Page and 17 other SF streets, totaling over 30 miles.
In the following year, SFMTA put together the 2023 Slow Streets Evaluation Report to determine whether streets were meeting target vehicle volumes and speed and for a collision analysis. Vehicle count and speed data from 16 of the 18 Slow Streets were collected via pneumatic tube road sensors from January to April 2023; the report was made public last May.
According to the findings, the Slow Streets network had a 48 percent decrease in collisions since their designation, and all but four streets (20th Street, Minnesota Street, Noe Street and Page Street) met or were exceeding the goal of fewer than 1,000 vehicles per day. The Slow Streets saw an overall median speed decrease, but most of them (12 out of the 16) had not met the SFMTA board’s 15 mph target speed.
“This means that Slow Streets have slower-moving traffic, but not slow enough to feel safe for our most vulnerable road users,” the report concludes, mentioning the need to implement further vehicle volume and speed management tools.
Safety features of the SFMTA’s Slow Streets Program currently include purple and white “paddles” on street corners, as well as diverters, such as those where Page intersects with Divisadero Street, Masonic Avenue and Stanyan Street.
About the latter, Jenkins says, “The SFMTA has prioritized traffic diversion at the major intersections, which is fantastic and I think has really helped stymie the flow of traffic. We would like to see more diverters like that.”
“There’s still more the city could do. We see examples elsewhere in the world and in the Bay Area, so it’s something we continue to press for,” she adds.
Jenkins would like to see infrastructure similar to the city of Berkeley’s “Bike Boulevards,” a connected route of seven streets that prioritizes bicycle travel and features concrete planters to discourage cut-through vehicle traffic. The planters make it difficult for drivers to drive more than a couple of blocks in one direction, particularly at a high speed.
“We have some problems with people going faster than 20 mph [and] going too close to people who are walking and biking and honking at people. I think Lake [Street, a Slow Street in the Richmond District] has more problems with that. Page still has it occasionally, but, for the most part, the majority of people using it and driving on it are actually treating it as a Slow Street and going slow and carefully,” says Jenkins.
More traffic-calming sought
For Lake Street stewards, the focus has been on the installation of a second paddle at the street’s intersections. According to Friends of Slow Lake, the group behind the Slow Lake Street website, they’ve been in contact with the SFMTA to push for what they see as “a low cost, low effort measure to ease the traffic” on Lake; the most recent communication about the issue occurred in January. SFMTA has proposed signage and stencils, but Friends of Slow Lake say that signage is ignored by drivers.
“The only way to truly make the street safe for all is by installing the same traffic-calming measures implemented on other Slow Streets,” they convey on their site.
Friends of Slow Lake reported that as of early April, there was still no sign or news of second paddles on Lake Street, though they are continuing to push for them. They are also seeking an updated evaluation of Lake Street vehicle traffic and speed, as well as for SFMTA to use data from the street’s Telraam traffic-sensor cameras and from pneumatic road sensor tubes that residents installed. (Post-SFMTA Slow Streets evaluation in 2023, Lake Street neighbors hired the company IDAX Data Solutions to collect data from these tubes.)
Jenkins says she and fellow Page Slow Street stewards have maintained a relatively open line of communication with the SFMTA beyond their initial community outreach to gauge Slow Street public interest.
“If we see problems, we can email the project managers and they’re somewhat responsive,” she said.
For infrastructure-related concerns, stewards direct folks to the SFMTA and promote attendance at relevant hearings and SFMTA board meetings to support better infrastructure on the street.
Says Jenkins, “When the diverters were put in at Divisadero, we had a lot of people show up and say, ‘Yes, we need more. We need more traffic diversion.’”
An asphalt canvas
SFMTA safety-related plans for 2024 include a revamping of Sanchez Slow Street, which stretches from 23rd to 30th streets in Noe Valley. According to the SFMTA Slow Streets evaluation, Sanchez was the highest-performing Slow Street, meeting both speed and volume targets.
Dubbed “Next-Generation Sanchez Slow Street,” the project involves adding safety treatments such as landscaped islands and traffic circles, signage for active transportation users (e.g., bicyclists), on-street bike parking and roadway narrowing that creates more space for pedestrians and community activation efforts.
There’s also the connected Sanchez Slow Street mural project, stemming from a partnership between the San Francisco Parks Alliance and SFMTA and funded via a Bloomberg Philanthropies Asphalt Art Initiative grant.
“During this new project iteration, we will be exploring how to improve community safety and sense of place by combining roadway safety treatments with community art and placemaking efforts,” Jake Ramirez, SF Parks Alliance associate director of marketing, said in an email.
SF Parks Alliance has furthered its partnership with SFMTA for “Slow Streets, Fast Friends,” a pilot project that involves ground mural installations on 11 of the Slow Streets. The exact locations for the murals are still being determined.
On April 1, the SFMTA updated the Slow Streets Mural Pilot Project Application Guide, which will affect some Slow Streets’ participation.
“Those new guidelines are pausing mural applications on streets that have both centerlines and bike lanes, or murals in intersections due to space constraints and safety concerns — that includes Slow Lake. We hope those concerns are addressed in a future update so we can continue with this work,’ said Ramirez.
Adding personal touches
Friends of Slow Lake and Jenkins with fellow Slow Page stewards support the idea of more community-focused features on their streets — personal touches of sorts — that also function as traffic and high speed deterrents.
“We would love to, at almost every corner, try to set up a piece of art or a plant or bench or something that gives us a feel of a public space more than just a street to drive down. But the city wants a little bit more tighter control over what’s in the roadway,” says Jenkins.
“When Slow Streets first started in late 2020, people felt empowered to just go out and do stuff — it was a pretty great time. … But most of that got pulled.” Jessica Jenkins, a Page Slow Street steward
SFMTA and San Francisco Fire Department restrictions prevent the resurgence of potted trees and art pieces like those on Page in late-2020 and 2021, prior to the official SFMTA Slow Streets Program.
Jenkins says, “When Slow Streets first started in late 2020, people felt empowered to just go out and do stuff — it was a pretty great time. Lots of different little groups were putting out planters and other items, but most of that got pulled.”
“It felt safer when we were just kind of strewing plants along the street so that you had to drive even more slowly to avoid running into a tree,” she adds.
The SFMTA has painted “safety zones” on Slow Streets — designated areas along the street that invite community activation. On Page, the zones are tan-colored, with the most visible one just outside of Golden Gate Park, on the corner of Page and Stanyan.
“That little area at Stanyan is an example where we didn’t have to go through huge amounts of bureaucracy to make that happen. We just did it cheaply and got a bunch of people to show up and do some planters,” says Jenkins.
Page Slow Street stewards and members of the community also constructed a public parklet on the corner of Page and Fillmore streets. The permit-backed space includes benches, plants and small free libraries.
As Jenkins notes, a key component of Slow Streets’ safety is people’s active presence on them.
“If you look at what the city’s put there, it’s just plastic posts that are really easy to run over, so it’s not like the infrastructure is that great. But when you just have a lot of people that are on the street and activating it, that makes it feel like a safer space, so that when someone in a car starts to turn onto Page Street, they’re like, ‘Oh, wait. This block is filled with people. I’m not going to be able to ram down it’ — unless they’re really irresponsible.”