The Finishing Touches

The Finishing Touches
By Benjamin Barnett

Last week, a wonderful milestone was achieved when the finishing touches were added to the Golden Gate Park Traffic Safety Project. Supervisor Vallie Brown along with SFMTA Interim Director of transportation, Tom Maguire, staff from Parks and Rec and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition were all in attendance to lay down the final crosswalk paint for the project.

These improvements in Golden Gate Park are three years in the making, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to debut these safety improvements which will make travel safer and more enjoyable for everyone in the park. Speeding is a threat to everyone using the park, whether for recreation or to reach their destination. Research has shown that lowering speeds – from 40 mph to 20 mph, for example – dramatically improves the likelihood someone will survive a collision.

We all know that many visitors, families with small children and San Franciscans come to the park to enjoy the city’s largest outdoor landmark, improvements needed to be made. Following a directive issued by the late Mayor Ed Lee in 2016, we have been working to slow speeds down and going the extra mile by implementing all the tools in our tool kit including raised crosswalks, speed humps and protected bike lanes.

Current Projects to Date

• +13 raised crosswalks
• +10 speed humps
• Intersection safety improvements: JFK Dr & 8th Ave / Music Concourse – intersection ‘squaring’, lengthened median, left-turn bike lane
• Creative measures to deter illegal parking along JFK Dr’s protected bikeway (‘floating’ red curb and ‘no parking Ps’)
• STOP signs at JFK Dr & 30th Ave (the site of a fatal traffic collision)
• Two new accessible blue zones on MLK Dr and Nancy Pelosi Dr
• All crosswalks park-wide were upgraded with higher-visibility ‘continental’ striping

Results

The number of people traveling over 30 mph fell by 42 percent parkwide and prevailing speeds were reduced. Daily vehicle volumes also decreased 23 percent on MLK Dr and 10 percent on JFK Dr. The raised crosswalks increased yielding and nearly eliminated close-call incidents with people walking. Safety is our number one priority and everything we can do to make Golden Gate Park safer for people of all walks of life is the goal.

Published October 07, 2019 at 02:27PM
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