Pedestrians walk along the open space on Brotherhood Way. Neighbors express a desire to preserve as much open space as possible in initial surveys. | Courtesy
A planning process to improve traffic safety along Brotherhood Way, Alemany Boulevard and surrounding streets is resuming after delays.
San Francisco County Transportation Agency staff will begin sharing with the public three proposals developed for the Brotherhood Circulation and Safety Plan at a series of meetings starting next week. The goal of any new design is to improve safety, circulation and connectivity for people walking, driving and biking along the thoroughfares known for fast-moving traffic. However, the plan for near- and long-term concepts was supposed to have been finalized in late 2024. Now, its targeted completion date is the middle of 2026.
Originating from the ConnectSF Streets and Freeways Strategy, a multi-agency long-term planning effort for improving the city's transportation system, the plan kicked off in early 2023 with $641,812 from a Caltrans sustainable transportation planning grant, plus $175,516 from the transportation authority board. Daniela Ribela, a spokesperson for SFCTA, said the delays will not impact the $817,328 budget.
The plan is one of two transportation studies that the San Francisco Public Library said it needed to better understand if city-owned open space at Brotherhood Way and Orizaba Avenue might be suitable as a future location for the Ocean View Library. The other study is the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency's Brotherhood-Alemany Safety Project.
The SFCTA's consultant, D&A Communications, conducted a community survey while staff and consultant Fehr & Peers went to work collecting information and building traffic models.
A community advisory committee was convened in March 2024 to provide initial feedback. Emails obtained by The Light show members wanted a significant reimagining of the streets.
"As much as we support incremental improvements like delaying a walk sign, adding flashing lights to stop signs, pedestrian bridges, lower speed limits etc., we think that these changes aren't going to be enough to really make our part of the city safer and more livable," We Are OMI's Alyssa Cheung wrote to the SFCTA. "A simple bike lane or a better-timed signal aren't going to make seniors or families more likely to bike/walk along Brotherhood Way or appreciate its green spaces if traffic is still moving at 40 mph+ across four lanes — these streets would still be dangerous, unpleasant and loud."
Planners began developing three concepts responsive to community input in May 2024 with the intention of sharing them before schools release students for summer vacation, Senior Transportation Planner David Long told the community advisory committee.
"Unfortunately, the project team is still working to refine our traffic modeling methodology," Long said in an email at the time. "The information generated from these traffic analyses is important to ensure concepts are free of fatal flaws and is critical to help the community understand the benefits and drawbacks of various ideas. The outstanding questions won’t be resolved in time to evaluate concepts and share findings with stakeholders in May as we had originally planned."
In January, SFCTA officials said they developed three alternative concepts to address concerns heard from the first round of outreach and would release them in the spring. Now they will be shared next week.
"The timeline was adjusted to allow for the development and evaluation of sketch alternatives," Ribela, the SFCTA spokesperson, said. "When the SFCTA team developed concepts based on the first round of community input, we were not satisfied internally with the level of detail we would have been able to provide the community about the effects on traffic flow. The time between then and now has allowed the team to run traffic models. Conducting detailed microsimulation traffic modeling helps ensure that the tradeoffs of various ideas can be communicated clearly during our second round of outreach."
Alex Mullaney founded The Ingleside Light in 2008 during the peak of San Francisco's great tradition of neighborhood newspapers. He is the publisher and editor.
