September 10, 2007
SFist Photo: Luxury Car Parking vs. Pedestrian Safety
You're looking at Oak Street right before it meets with Octavia Boulevard. This intersection is, by far, the most dangerous for pedestrians in all of San Francisco, based on the high number of injury collisions. Could a few simple changes in this area reduce the harm to people just trying to cross the street? See you after the jump.
Here's the intersection. Click on "Full Screen" and take a gander. Go ahead, we'll wait for you.
So, what you see is a grand total of one lane that allows drivers to go from the West Side to the 101 or the Bay Bridge. This is the situation about 90% of the time. The right lane is open only when there's no parking allowed, which is basically a few hours each day during rush hours. The problem is that rush hour is hardly confined to the traditional morning and evening drives. "Rush hour" can now mean Saturday in the middle of the day, as this recent shot of cars backed up on Oak reveals:
This area becomes a tangle of herky jerky lane changes and congested streets in the neighboring Lower Haight and Western Addition. So drivers can get confused.
What's that, gentle reader? We're "transit first" so screw those drivers and their death monsters? Well, O.K., but wouldn't having more relaxed and less confused drivers lead to fewer car vs. ped collisions? That's the theory. How do we get there?
Maybe preventing street parking on the right side of Oak between Laguna and Octavia at all times? Is that so outrageous? This guy thinks we're ready to give it a try. He wants to get rid of parking on the other side (aka left side, north side) of Oak. That sounds good too. Maybe the Lexuseses, Jaguars, and Volvos that park for free on this one block would have to find another place? What would the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association think of that? How about Walk SF or the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition? Worth a try?
It's not like these issues haven't been considered before, but do the powers that be realize how things actually are working at this intersection these days? This is from a MUNI Town Hall meeting from last year:
Q. On Oak from Laguna to Octavia (1 block), parking is allowed on the northern curbside during morning peak hours, creating a bottleneck where 4 lanes of in-bound traffic are forced into 3 lanes. This creates substantial delays for both drivers and MUNI. Why not prohibit morning parking between Laguna and Octavia, bringing that block into line with the rest of the corridor?
A. [Palliative cliché omitted.] We are working with Supervisor Mirkarimi's office to address this issue. It is pending Board of Supervisors review, and a committee hearing is to be scheduled on the item.
Considered, rejected, still pending? Will anything change in light last month's news regarding ped safety? Remember that there aren't a lot of peds here compared to other intersections, so the chances of a walker getting hit here can be something like 100 times higher than a walker in a crowded crosswalk at a better-designed intersection. Beware beware.
Agitated drivers routinely show a lack of respect to peds at this intersection. Here, a brace of stopped vehicles intrude upon the well-marked crosswalk. The driver in the green Honda (is that a sandwich AND a cell phone?) then proceeded to make an illegal turn.
Of course, the controversial Octavia Boulevard experiment will continue remain controversial. Fine. But what's wrong with a few drivers taking one for the team by trying to park somewhere else for a while in the interest of pedestrian safety? Just asking. Would allowing cars to flow more naturally and easily on this one block get drivers onto the superslab any faster? Maybe not, as Octavia Blvd. itself is oftentimes jammed up. But allowing this block to function as it could would result in calmer drivers and fewer injured peds. Wouldn't that be good? Really, having a car of any sort is a luxury in our urban village. Asking people to walk a little farther from their cars to their homes isn't asking all that much. Is it?
|
This is such a common sense idea, you can be sure it will NEVER happen in SF.
Although I agree that the situation is tough and the traffic flow needs redesigning, removing parking in this neighborhood seems more complex that you indicate. Luxury cars? Have you spent much time in this neighborhood? Asking people to walk a few more blocks? Are you proposing to add new spaces a few blocks away?
One thing that might help folks in this neighborhood is to drop the requirement that to get a neighborhood parking permit, you have to live on a street that requires a permit.
Double turns == pedestrian death. If they make this a full-time double turn they should have a dedicated right turn light alternating with a dedicated pedestrian light and no right on red.
They should put up an elevated roadway over Market and bring it down on Fell.
There--problem solved.
Also, I'm sorry to follow up to myself, but basically this is asking the people in the Hayes to give up something (street parking) so that people from other neighborhoods (the Sunset) can have an express lane to some place out of town. I'm sure I don't have to point out why this is unfair. The Sunset has been shitting on the core neighborhoods for years, and it's time for them to stop it.
Luxury? I see a Jetta, a Saturn VUE and a ten year old SUV. I don't know what your car salesman was able to get away with, but those ain't luxury rides. I drive past there everyday and it's just your usual neighborhood cars parked there.
Solution: Ban parking there 24/7, offer temporary spots in lot down the street for the people that live on that one block. Then give 'em permanent spots in the new apartment buildings going up in the vacant lots in the next couple of years. Next!
Interesting, jwb - how do you propose they "stop shitting on YOUR neighborhood"? They don't go to work? They take one hour on shitty MUNI to get to caltrain in the opposite end of town only to be late for their train?
There is something "greens" don't get - the more they obstruct the traffic locally and idiotically like here or with the Market st. right turn, the worse the situation for both the environment and the pedestrians/cyclists they create!
Extending no-parking zone by HALF A BLOCK (which would cost a single digit number of parking spots!) would not solve but seriously ameliorate this idiotic bottleneck. It's absolutely obvious to anybody but the people in charge.
I live a street over, walk this everyday, and sometimes park my beat up car (i.e. not a Luxury vehicle) on this block of Oak. The back ups are 99% created by the cars trying to trun right to get to the freeway. I agree that removing the parking on the right hand side will help this. There isn't much traffic in the far left thru lane, so I don't think we need to be extreme and eliminate parking on both sides of the street.
considering other places in the city there are areas where pedestrians are not even allowed to cross the street at the intersection, that would probably make the most sense here. Have them only be able to cross on the left side of the street so they are not dealing with all the people making a right turn. We are talking essentially about a free way onramp, and not many of those have cross walks in front of them. And to help this bottleneck move smooter, sacrificing 8 or 9 spots is not the end of the world. The other thing that goes on in this block is its no parking for only about 2 hours, and by the time the tow trucks get there to tow the cars there is only about an hour left. Not to mention the tow truck trying to tow a car screws up the traffic more than leaving it there. That block should be no parking on that side of the street ever, since as someone else said antipating when traffic will be bad is tough.
I gave up and just do down Hayes to Gough, where there IS a no pedestrian crosswalk to turn on Gough. It seems to save about 15 minutes if your trying to get to the freeway.
I live on Oak between Octavia and Gough, and yeah, that intersection is just insane when it comes to accidents. That said, it's not quite accurate to claim that this is the worst intersection for *pedestrians*. It's the worst intersection for injury collisions, and so far as I can tell, most of those at this intersection don't involve pedestrians. The real problem is the local/non-local lane confusion.
Specifically, here's the scenario that, in my experience from running out to rubberneck after hearing a grotesque squealing/smashing noise, happens most often:
- Car in local lane on Octavia at Oak heading north plans to go straight, and either doesn't pay attention to the stop sign/blinking red or just gets unlucky.
- Car in right non-local lane on Octavia at Oak heading north either turns onto Oak or tries to shift to the local lane. This car may be doing everything right, or they may be not bothering to see if anyone's already on the move in the local lane.
- Said two cars slam into each other about 1/2 to 3/4 of the way across Oak. Depending on the exact speed, angle, etc, the non-local car may spin off in between the southbound and northbound sides of Octavia, or (equally often) it'll slam into the traffic light pole on the island between the local and non-local northbound lanes. Take a look at that pole sometime - it's got giant dents in it. I saw a car get impaled all the way up to its engine block once. Meanwhile, the local lane car has generally ended up the better off (either through pure luck or good side collision protection) and is in the local lane north of Oak.
- Next it takes a while for cops to show up, screwing up traffic in this intersection even more.
That said, the Oak->Octavia->101 situation is pretty stupid. Even though it's not exactly luxury cars (as the previous commenter pointed out - sure, there are some, but the south-of-Fell, east-of-Laguna, west-of-Van-Ness, north-of-Market blocks aren't quite as rich as you made them sound), those parking spots should go - not so much for pedestrian reasons (you're nuts if you try to cross Oak on the west side of Octavia or Octavia at Oak at all, really, no matter what they do with traffic patterns) but because of the congestion coming from the west. I'm lucky enough to be able to just drop down to Page and turn left onto Octavia when I do need to drive, but it's just hellacious from the other direction.
Think about it: how many pedestrians do we serve (and have to suck d*cks of!) by allowing them to cross there, as opposed to on the other side, along the pedestrian-only park, vs. the number of drivers we delay and enrage?!
i use this intersection a lot, coming down oak and down octavia. for the pedestrian, this intersection should have a dedicated four-way (and/or diagonal) 10 to 15 seconds green light for peds and a no right turn on red, similar to several intersections in downtown.
people like ample parking, eliminating the parking might be a no-go from the start; however, with the proximity to many transit lines on market, i dont think removing a few spots will hurt the residents.
No, keep the parking.
In fact, I think Oak should have 90 degree or 30 degree parking spots and reduced to a single lane with an additional 100 feet of "right turn only" lane. Oak gets more parking, fewer cars can drive on it, and more people can take transit.
I understand that some people will be upset by this proposal, but we don't live in San Jose -- we should really be using transit or car sharing. If you want more lanes to drive your car to work on, move closer to work. I'm sure there are some choice properties down there in Mountain View or Gilroy and wide, wide lanes to drive your commuter cars on.
This is hilarious... we are talking about 8-10 parking spaces people. The ones on the South side of the street should be no parking from 6am-8pm... North side just no parking during rush hour. I don't drive, but I've been through that intersection and the right side parking is a joke...
If the parking is kept the middle lane should have the option to turn right. I know that currently this isn't possible because when the two lanes are going straight, the crosswalk is being used. I think this could be resolved by setting the cross walks on their own signal for an "all walk" as some of the intersections in the Financial District do.
This is a major traffic artery for those of in the West End of town to get to Bay Bridge. And yes it is nice to take transit, but transit is not the answer to everything, unfortunately. I have a job that requires me to drive to multiple clients in a day with tools, supplies and the like, and transit is simply not an option.
Kill the parking spaces... and also run concrete walls down between the lane that turns right and the other lanes so that jackasses who try to get ahead of others or who have a last second change of mind aren't holding up traffic and endangering bicyclists while they try to nose into the right turn lane.
I used to live on Oak between Webster and Buchanan, and this neighborhood is a beast to park in (with my, uh, luxury 2000 VW with destroyed bumpers from parking in said neighborhood for years). That said, the north side of the street is no longer a no parking zone from 7-9 am, which should free up a ton of spots, and losing 6-8 spots on the south side would be worth it to loosen congestion on the street.
Now I commute 3 days a week via this route, and my observations are that a lot of the back-up is worsened by (1) idiot drivers in the left lanes who wait until the very last second to try to force their way into the right turn lanes, (2) idiot pedestrians who cross against the light, either not paying attention to the light or deliberately and (3) idiot drivers who blow through the red arrow. How about everyone obey the goddamned traffic rules as they exist before we try to apply new ones?
There are a couple misconceptions here. There was a recent SFGate article about how this intersection was one of the highest pedestrian accident areas, but that was before the changes to the flow to have the right turn arrow before the pedestrian walk signal. This gives cars the initial crack at the intersection, and as long as the peds are actually paying attention, they get their own separate time to cross. Since then, the number of incidents has declined.
And yes, the south side of the street should be no parking all the time.
"As long as the peds are actually paying attention"
It might happen someday. We can hope!
We could also level the Victorian on the corner of Oak and Octavia so there is a larger right turn lane onto Octavia blvd. Think of all the space we'll have for more cars struggling to get onto the 101!
"stop shitting on YOUR neighborhood"? They don't go to work? They take one hour on shitty MUNI to get to caltrain in the opposite end of town only to be late for their train?
The way it's set up, and is proposed to change, adds value to the Sunset, allowing people to make poor choices to live there instead of elsewhere, but not at their own cost. If they have to drive because MUNI/Caltrain is so awful, instead of expanding a freeway through Hayes Valley, perhaps they could MOVE out of the Sunset.
There are choices in life. Some of them are not easy. I decided to live in Noe Valley - at a greater financial cost to myself, because I decided I would give up a few "nice things" in order to have a better commute. If you decided you wanted cheaper housing in the Sunset, don't bitch at me about the traffic. You made your choice.
This Saturday in the middle of the day the line to get onto Octavia took three blocks of Oak and multiple changes of light in the rightmost lane. Sunset COMMUTERS? I don't think so.
Wake up and smell the cof..exhaust. People have things to do. Errands to run. Places to go to. UNFORTUNATELY, most of the time, especially and specifically on the weekends, public transportation is just out of question.
I live up on Divisadero. Sunset commuter?
SFist, I know you're a blog but let's try to bring new media standards up to some level of reliability. Pls get a fact checker. According to the SFGate article earlier this year the Gough/Market St intersection is the most dangerous for pedestrians. This intersection allows multiple lanes to turn into the ped crossing.
How about if the Sunset becomes less rural & actually employes people so they don't have to commute to live their lives? Let's get 8-story buildings on Fulton & Irving- that would look great across from the park.
Most importantly, I don't follow the logic that removing parking & speeding up car movement makes intersections safer.
"If you decided you wanted cheaper housing in the Sunset, don't bitch at me about the traffic. You made your choice."
Good for you paying to live in Noe Valley -- we don't all have the choice. FU elitist A-hole.
You know what we need at crosswalks at intersections like this? Those spikes that raise up out of the pavement like they have in europe at high-speed rail crossings. Perhaps the threat of damage to their vehicle will persuade drivers to pay attention to pedestrians...
how can a pedestrian get hit at this intersection. All the cars are stuck dead in traffic. The pedestrian would have to walk right into a car to get hurt, cause the cars aren't moving
Commuters are only a fraction of the total traffic. Some of us are just trying to get around. (And yes, I take Muni AND BART every damn day.) Jas, I like your suggestion.
"If you decided you wanted cheaper housing in the Sunset, don't bitch at me about the traffic. You made your choice."
Good for you paying to live in Noe Valley -- we don't all have the choice. FU elitist A-hole.
****************************
You weren't calling me an elitist A-hole when I was living in an in-law apartment in the Sunset with no heat. I paid my dues. I don't want to pay your dues too...
Typical snarky SFist crap. All cars bad, all peds good. Is it too much to show a little bit of balanced reporting? Just a little?
29, good point. why don't we hear about all the car drivers maimed and killed by pedestrians? there's probably thousands every year but the liberal press (I'm looking at you sfist) hide these facts because they'd invalidate their sneaky pro-pedestrian agenda.
As far as luxury issue is concerned, the three cars closest to the intersection were Volvo, Volvo and 100-series Toyota Land Cruiser or Lexus LX470 (but probably a Cruiser owing to the absence of body color paint on the rear spoiler/deflector thingamajob).
All safely withing the luxury category.
All parking for free.