From Next Door
The week of July 14, 2021
A couple of days ago I watched as fire trucks responded to a house on fire on Page Street. One large truck came from Masonic and pulled up in front of the burning house. Another truck came down Central but was unable to turn left onto Page because of the slow street barrier. The truck had to turn in the opposite direction, then someone jumped off the truck and ran behind in order to guide the large fire truck as it backed up to thread itself between a car parked at the curb and the slow street barricade in the middle of the street. That took a couple of minutes. Fortunately the fire was not a large one. But can you imagine how precious a couple of minutes of response time could mean if the fire was larger. Then another truck came up Central but couldn’t make the turn onto Page either.
On any particular day, I have noticed that within a 45 minute time period around 20-25 cars turn onto Page despite the barrier. I know that all those cars don’t live on the block or even in the neighborhood. Isn’t it time to remove these barricades and return the streets to allow vehicles and large fire trucks to drive on them as intended?
How SFMTA confuses us all… We support Safe Streets and Shared Spaces, but it’s time for many of the Slow Streets to be re-opened!
We support!:
Safe Streets: A partnership of the SFMTA, SFPD, the Department of Public Health and Walk San Francisco, Safe Streets SF encourages people driving and walking in San Francisco to adopt safer habits to reduce the number of pedestrian collisions, injuries and deaths.
Shared Spaces: Shared Spaces is part of the City’s crisis response strategy to sustain the locally-owned small business sector in San Francisco during the COVID-19 pandemic by making it easier to use outdoor places like sidewalks, streets, and open lots for business. As of May 2021, Shared Spaces will become a permanent program.
We oppose permanent Slow Street status for Page Street:
Slow Streets: Per SFMTA The goal of the Slow Streets program is to provide more space for socially distant essential travel and exercise during the COVID-19 pandemic. The SFMTA’s Slow Streets program is designed to limit through traffic on certain residential streets by placing signage and barricades to minimize through vehicle traffic.
Untangle S.F.’s streets
Letter to the Editor SF Chronicle
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is pinching down VanNess Avenue, a construction zone for many years. Market Street is all but closed to autos and covered in unsightly and upsetting red paint. Park and city streets all over town are closed, making travel confusing. Conflicting bicycle lanes and traffic calming devices make intersections more dangerous. There are many giant barriers that are graffiti magnets blocking transportation through Golden Gate Park. High-occupancy vehicle lens will soon restrict auto traffic on already clogged 19th Avenue-Park Presidio. Extensive attempts to reduce pedestrian fatalities have changed numbers very little. Is this the urban environment we want, controlled by ideological whims of the unelected MTA?
Mayor London Breed and the Board of Supervisors need to assert the jurisdiction of local elected officials over city streets. Change to city streets must be necessary, sensible, effective, beautiful and an improvement over what has existed before.
Traffic calming? Let’s open up all closed streets to normal traffic.
– William Klingelhoffer, San Francisco
