Every year in San Francisco, traffic incidents result in unacceptable tragedies: approximately 30 deaths and hundreds of severe injuries on city streets. These incidents are not inevitable; they are preventable, and San Francisco is proactively working towards eliminating them through Vision Zero. Adopted in 2014, Vision Zero is the City and County of San Francisco’s commitment to eradicating traffic fatalities and severe injuries. This policy focuses on creating safer streets, promoting traffic safety education, rigorously enforcing traffic laws, and strategically allocating resources to implement effective, life-saving initiatives throughout the city.
13th Street has been identified as a critical area for safety improvements. It is part of San Francisco’s High-Injury Network, a network comprising just 12% of city streets but tragically accounting for 68% of all severe and fatal traffic collisions. Between 2018 and 2022, this project area on 13th Street witnessed 100 reported collisions that resulted in injuries. Alarmingly, over a third of these collisions involved vulnerable road users – bicyclists and pedestrians. Key contributing factors to these incidents were identified as red signal violations, excessive speeds, and unsafe left turns. This data firmly establishes 13th Street as a corridor with a disproportionately high number of injury-causing collisions.
The area surrounding the 13th Street corridor is experiencing continuous growth and increased utilization, solidifying its role as a vital connection in the city. This growth, however, brings the potential for heightened traffic conflicts and increased risk for all road users. To proactively address the persistent traffic safety challenges along this crucial corridor, the 13th Street Safety Project has been launched. This project will implement tangible improvements, including the installation of protected bike lanes to separate cyclists from vehicular traffic, sidewalk extensions to enhance pedestrian space and visibility, and upgrades to signal timing to optimize traffic flow and reduce conflicts. These strategic tools are designed to safely accommodate the growing number of bicyclists and pedestrians using 13th Street, while simultaneously deterring unsafe driving behaviors that contribute to collisions. Ultimately, the 13th Street Safety Project directly supports San Francisco’s overarching Vision Zero policy, working diligently towards the essential goal of significantly reducing and eventually eliminating severe and fatal traffic injuries on all city streets.
