Traffic Safety Improvements Targeting Seniors, People With Disabilities Slated For Ingleside

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency identified Ingleside for Vision Zero Proactive Traffic Calming, a project to improve safety for seniors and people with disabilities.

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Traffic calming measures for the protection of seniors and people with disabilities are slated for Ingleside, according to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.

The SFMTA’s Vision Zero Proactive Traffic Calming project identified Ingleside among a group of neighborhoods with a disproportionate number of traffic injuries and fatalities that affect seniors and people with disabilities, according to a presentation before the San Francisco County Transit Authority’s Vision Zero Committee on June 25.

Traffic calming will seek to alter, slow and reduce traffic in the middle of residential streets. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency launched the project in 2018 to reduce instances of speeding.

Neighborhoods are prioritized by the number of senior centers, public libraries and public health facilities with at least 100 paratransit trips occurring in one month along with other locations providing services to seniors and people with disabilities.

The plan also takes account of the top one-third of census tracts with residents who are seniors or have disabilities and the quarter-mile street segments where at least one fatal or severe occurrence, or three non-fatal injuries, involved a senior or a person with a disability.

“We are all only as safe as the most vulnerable of us are,” Brian Haagsman, Vision Zero Organizer for Walk SF, told The Ingleside Light. “We know that seniors are five times more likely to be killed in traffic. They also make up at least 50% of all pedestrians killed each year, even though they are only 15% of San Francisco’s population.”

Ingleside’s project is expected to begin in the next 10 months. It’s expected to cost around $750,000 a year through fiscal year 2025 drawn from San Francisco’s half-cent sales tax for transportation for the SFCTA’s Capital Improvement Program.

The traffic safety improvement measures for Ingleside may include speed humps, raised crosswalks, median islands, changes to lane widths, lane shifting, speed tables, speed cushions and traffic circles.

The first phase of the neighboring Excelsior neighborhood’s calming improvements were completed in March. Phase two — the installation of 38 traffic calming devices along 27 blocks — remains in progress.

The SFMTA will reach out to district supervisorial offices for direction on community outreach, according to the SFMTA.

The SFMTA did not answer questions about the project.