SF Mayor Breed Advances Citywide Traffic Safety Improvements in Wake of Deadly West Portal Collision

Amid lasting grief and shock after a March 16 vehicle crash in which a driver killed a mother, father and their two young children outside Muni’s West Portal station, San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced a series of initiatives meant to prevent a recurrence of such a tragedy and to spur progress in the city’s 10-year-old Vision Zero campaign to end traffic fatalities.

The measures the mayor outlined Thursday at a midday conference outside City Hall include reducing the number of intersections where right turns are permitted on red lights, beefing up police enforcement of the most dangerous traffic infractions, and expediting the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s completion of urgent “Quick Build” safety projects.

Beyond those immediate actions and others, Breed also noted that the city’s street infrastructure is badly outdated and needs “a complete overhaul, period” to make it safe for all users.

The mayor addressed the March 16 accident at the very beginning of her remarks. The family of four was waiting at the West Portal station when a 78-year-old driver who was going the wrong way sped through a sidewalk bus stop, crashing directly into them. Police are still investigating the incident.

“Today is a moment for us to come together as a community in light of the tragedy that struck our city,” Breed said. “I don’t need to repeat the details of the moments to all of you — what happened, the pain, the terror, the hopelessness, the frustration.”

She thanked pedestrian and traffic safety advocates who responded by demanding the city treat the tragedy as an emergency requiring immediate action.

“This is a moment that we never want to live through again. Not just a family loss, but two lives of young people. Unimaginable,” Breed said.

The mayor also said she believes that the city needs to reimagine the role that streets play in the life of communities.

“These streets were built for another time, a smaller population and designed for a world we no longer want to live in, where cars are prioritized and the only option,” she said. “Our systems are long overdue for a physical modernization. And this is going to take a lot of time, a lot of resources, and a lot of understanding.”

The mayor also acknowledged that the city has done much to become safer despite the reality that dozens of people still die each year in traffic crashes.

Those accomplishments include instituting the SFMTA’s “Quick Build” program, which fast-tracks safety improvements in areas where there have been serious safety incidents. The city said it had completed 33 Quick Build projects since 2019 and added more than 50 miles of safety enhancements on high-injury corridors. The SFMTA has also reset most of the city’s traffic signals to give pedestrians more time to cross streets.

After Breed’s event on Thursday, SFMTA chief Jeffrey Tumlin said the city is facing two major challenges in working to reduce traffic deaths and serious injuries: funding and local politics.

“Over the last four years, we lost $40 million a year from our capital budget, and we lost $240 million a year from our operating budget,” Tumlin said. He said he was “amazed” that agency staffers have managed to continue installing safe street infrastructure despite the scarcity of funds. But he added that the city urgently needs help from the state and federal governments, as well as city voters, to be able to achieve its safety goals.

Tumlin also pointed to the difficulty of dealing with local resistance to street infrastructure changes.

“In order to advance traffic safety, particularly for pedestrians, it means reordering the right of way, it means taking space away from someone else in order to advance safety,” Tumlin said. “And here in San Francisco, political trade-offs are challenging, and that is why we are so grateful to the mayor’s strong commitment for us to keep doing this work and to accelerate it, even when we run into people who complain about a loss of a few parking spaces or a loss of a lane of traffic to advance safety.

Many of the initiatives Breed mentioned Thursday are programs the city has already embarked on and also include projects previously launched under state law or are steps officials promised long ago.

For instance, the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a resolution last October asking the SFMTA to develop a plan for banning vehicles from making right turns on red lights at most city intersections.

San Francisco police vowed a decade ago to increase enforcement against speeding and other dangerous traffic offenses as part of the city’s Vision Zero campaign, though Police Department statistics show the overall number of citations officers have written has declined by more than 95% in the last 10 years.

Jodie Medeiros, executive director of Walk San Francisco, thanked Breed during the event for observing the 10-year anniversary of Vision Zero “when it’s not yet a success story.” She added that there are many hopeful signs of change in the city, including the permanent conversion of John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park to a parkway for pedestrians and cyclists.

“We’re ready to work together to fight together like we did for JFK Promenade,” Medeiros said. “So we are also here asking Mayor Breed, we need your bold action during this very dark time.”