San Francisco Chinatown Acts to Reduce Pedestrian Accidents

Posted on Wednesday, December 1st, 2010

San Francisco’s historic Chinatown is one of the city’s densest neighborhoods, with the most crowded streets, and the lowest percentage of auto ownership (17 percent). While Chinatown’s streets have become some of the city’s most dangerous, it remains a top tourist spot for domestic and international visitors. Hoping to make the area safer for residents and visitors, the Chinatown Community Development Center has released two studies designed to improve the neighborhood’s streets and boost pedestrian safety in the bustling hub.

The San Francisco Chinatown Pedestrian Safety Needs Assessment and related Safety Plan are major steps for Chinatown, which in 2000 housed a population with a median income of just over $18,000, 21 percent of whom were below the poverty line (that’s compared to 11 percent citywide). The CCDC emphasized these facts as a reason for the study’s importance. Since “low-income communities are disproportionately affected by the lack of walkable neighborhoods,” the Safety Needs Assessment reads, “the provision of safe, walkable streets is a social justice issue.”

Streetsblog San Francisco notes that the two Chinatown studies are much bolder than the a recent pedestrian safety study by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which failed to include an suitable action plan. By contrast, the CCDC developed a detailed action plan based on investigations into the neighborhood’s 21 most dangerous intersections with the help of $20,000 from the San Francisco Department of Public Health. Below are some of the report’s suggestions, as reported by Streetsblog:

Along the Stockton corridor, for instance, the Safety Plan recommends increasing pedestrian space, comfort and mobility by adding pedestrian scramble phases and full intersection crosswalk treatments and curb extensions at intersections. Other suggested improvements include “adding seating, removing old signage and meter posts, and getting rid of newspaper racks to help reduce sidewalk clutter. Strategies to decrease vehicle speeds and turning conflicts include replacing standard ‘No Right on Red’ signs with LED signage, which illuminate to prevent turning movements during pedestrian phases, and adding a dedicated left turn signal phase to the traffic lights.”

In the past decade, Chinatown residents suffered seven pedestrian fatalities due to such dangerous intersections. “Rather than waiting for another accident to occur before taking action,” said Deland Chan of the CCDC, “we wanted to proactively identify and systematically rank priority areas where the city and community groups can work together to make the neighborhoods safer for pedestrians.”

Photo credit: jondoeforty1

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