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Vision Zero

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Zero progress on its stated goal after 10 years of mistargeted policies

Now doubling down on more of the same

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October 2025

Baseline: SF Modal Share – 2023 (Most Recent Data)

• Cars 36.7%, up 1.7% from PP
• Drive alone 29.7%
• Carpool 7.0%
• WFH 24.4%, up 17.4%
• Transit was 22.0%, down 14%
• Walk was 10.3%, down 3%
• Bicycle was 3.5%, down 0.3%

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• One interpretation of this graph is that 1/3 of the people who rode transit, walked, and cycled to work pre-pandemic are now working from home

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https://vitalsigns.mtc.ca.gov/indicators/commute-mode-choice

- Unsigned resolution of the SF Board of Supervisors, dated March 18, 2014

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Traffic Fatalities – Setting the Baseline

• The majority of our peer cities have their own Vision Zero initiatives, but no city has achieved the goal of zero fatalities.

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• San Francisco has fewer fatalities per 100,000 residents than half of its peer cities. SF streets are relatively safe.

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• Rigorous NTSB “accident analysis” methods should be used to identify and categorize causes of traffic deaths and inform policy responses

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https://www.sf.gov/vision-zero-benchmarking

https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/process/Pages/default.aspx

Vision Zero

• SF traffic fatalities have oscillated but shown no real trend since Vision Zero was adopted in 2014

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• If anything, the average walking + biking fatality rate has risen a bit despite the extensive right-of-way engineering interventions

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• Vision Zero as a program has been a failure

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• The talk now is of adding yet more bike lanes and reducing speed limits

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https://app.powerbigov.us/view?r=eyJrIjoiMGNmMDdmNmQtMTA1Ni00NTFmLWI5YmQtNzZiNDU0YWE4NmJmIiwidCI6IjIyZDVjMmNmLWNlM2UtNDQzZC05YTdmLWRmY2MwMjMxZjczZiJ9&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

More Bike Lanes?

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• SF has materially more separated bike lane coverage than peers

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• 2^nd only to NYC, but with similar coverage

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• MORE SEPARATED BIKE LANES IS NOT WHAT’S MISSING

Peer cities: Boston, Chicago, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York City, Oakland, Portland, San Jose, Seattle, Washington DC

https://www.sf.gov/vision-zero-benchmarking

Slower Speed Limits?

• 25 of the 39 deaths in 2022 were pedestrians or bicycle/PC riders
• Only 2 of the 25 ped/bike deaths involved unsafe speed

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• Among peer cities, DC, Seattle, Minneapolis, and Portland average 67% coverage of city streets 20mph or below… compared to 5.4% in SF

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• However, San Francisco compares favorably to these cities on traffic fatalities per capita

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• The average speed on SF streets in 2024 was 14mph, the second slowest in the country behind NYC

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• The problem is the exceptionally fast driver, not the average slow one

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• UNSAFE POSTED SPEED IS NOT A KEY FACTOR IN PEDESTRIAN OR BICYCLE/PC DEATHS IN SF… ENFORCING CURRENT TRAFFIC LAWS SHOULD BE PRIORITIZED… WILL REQUIRE FIXING THE SFPD STAFFING GAP, NOT RECONFIGURING STREETS

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• Vison Zero advocates should be shouting for a fully-staffed police department

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https://www.visionzerosf.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Vision-Zero-2022-End-of-Year-Traffic-Fatality-Report-FINAL-PUBLIC.pdf

Vision Zero – Root Cause Analysis

• A critical review of the 25 pedestrian (20), bicycle (1), and PC (4) deaths in 2022 sheds light on what actions could have been taken to prevent the fatalities

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• 16 of the 25 (64%) were avoidable by the victims, who ran a stop sign/light, crossed against a light, crossed mid-block, or caused their own accident*
• Eg, all 4 of the PC riders ran a stop sign/light or fell over, and the cyclist ran over a tree branch and fell over
• In 6 of these and an additional 2 others the victim was homeless, and given the prevalence of addiction and mental illness among this population, it is possible that improved homelessness policies and programs could have made a difference
• In 3, there were other circumstances… a fleeing robber, a DUI, and a driver looking at the radio

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• The remaining 4 deaths MAY have been avoided by street design or traffic policy
• Vanishingly small addressable opportunity set to be targeted by existing approaches

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• A policy aligned with the root cause analysis would be to plaster the city with a two-fold message on bus-side ads and billboards:
• Calling out the 11 pedestrian deaths in 2022 and reminding them to cross at crosswalks and always with the light
• Calling out the 5 deaths in 2022 and reminding cyclists and PC riders to stop at stop signs/lights and ride carefully

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https://www.visionzerosf.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Vision-Zero-2022-End-of-Year-Traffic-Fatality-Report-FINAL-PUBLIC.pdf

* SFPD’s Traffic Collisions Investigative Unit assigned fault to the “vulnerable user” 40% of the time, which is a different standard than avoidability

Vision Zero – Program In Context

• Over the past three years, there have been an average of 8 pedestrian/cyclist/PC deaths potentially addressable by Streets & Sidewalks
• That represents 0.1% of total SF all-cause fatalities (ie, 1 out of 1,000 who died in SF)
• If the same per capita budget were allocated to preventing all fatalities equally, the city would be spending multiples of its entire budget annually on those programs

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What Has Been Achieved Elsewhere?

• The SF Vision Zero 10 year report touts Sweden as a model of what can be achieved
• After 26 years of dedicated effort, Sweden achieved a rate of 2 pedestrian/bicycle deaths per 100k

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• If SF were to achieve this rate, we would have 17 annual pedestrian/bicycle deaths
• In fact, we averaged 19 prior to adopting Vision Zero in 2014… and 20 since

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• The reason traffic deaths have not been reduced is because SF has reached the frontier benchmark of what is possible… progress from here entails severe disruption to other interests (commerce, free flow of traffic, etc.)

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https://www.visionzerosf.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/VZSF_10YearRetroReport_081924v6_FINAL-1.pdf

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Is This About Injuries?

• Having failed to achieve its goal of zero traffic deaths, and with no progress in even reducing traffic deaths, Vision Zero reporting has shifted from fatalities to injuries

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• SF had 77% of the per capita traffic injuries of CA peer cities in 2019, the last year complete comparable data was reported
• SF STREETS ARE COMPARATIVELY SAFE

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• After adopting Vision Zero, some categories are up, some down, but total injury crashes have been reduced by only 3% since 2013
• EFFORTS TO REDUCE INJURIES ARE NOT HAVING A PRACTICAL EFFECT EITHER
• If anything, street reconfigurations have traded vehicle injuries for pedestrian injuries, with increased scooter injuries offsetting reduced bicycle ones

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Peer cities: Bakersfield, Fresno, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, San Diego, San Jose

https://www.sf.gov/vision-zero-benchmarking

https://www.visionzerosf.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/VZSF_10YearRetroReport_081924v6_FINAL-1.pdf

By the way, how is MTA doing with managing traffic flow?

• SEC. 8A.100. PREAMBLE. (a) An effective, efficient, and safe transportation system is vital for San Francisco to achieve its goals for quality of life, environmental sustainability, public health, social justice, and economic growth. The Municipal Transportation Agency must manage San Francisco's transportation system which includes automobile, freight, transit, bicycle, and pedestrian networks to help the City meet those goals…

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• Seems pretty important to understand the extent to which Vision Zero quick builds have caused surface street traffic congestion… bad for residents, bad for business, bad for transit buses

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https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/transit/sf-traffic-is-second-slowest-in-us-and-getting-worse/article_ebe26770-d45c-11ef-9a49-5fba319c395e.html

Biking & Rolling Plan

• The new plan provides a long term framework for adaptations to the city’s streets and sidewalks for the benefit of cyclists and pedestrians
• The plan is missing critical core elements that would bring context to the broader set of city residents, namely a COST/BENEFIT analysis
• What are the expected direct financial costs
• What are the expected impacts on traffic speed throughput on North Star Network streets, as well as overflow to other streets
• What additional local trips are expected to be taken by cycle or foot
• What additional percentage of trip miles are expected by bicycle, walking
• How many injuries/deaths avoided
• This analysis should be done by an independent third party hired and overseen by the controller’s office before any additional time or cost is put into the plan

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Vision Zero – Bottom Line

• Lack of any meaningful progress in the last 10 years is driven by dearth of focus on the actual causes of pedestrian, cyclist, and PC rider fatalities and the reality of complex systems

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• Important to recognize that driving cars, riding bicycles and PCs in traffic (and even just walking out the front door) all entail some small modicum of risk… any engineer or physicist (or city attorney) can explain the impossibility of perfectly controlling a complex system like a city’s streets… zero traffic deaths is not a realistic or achievable goal

- “While zero fatalities is an important aspirational goal, setting a deadline for zero is a set-up for failure.” *

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• When pursuing the noble idea of zero traffic deaths in SF, it is critical to acknowledge that progress will necessarily be asymptotic (ie, will approach a natural limit), and that pragmatism is a critical element of every government policy that involves the sacred trust of the public purse

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• In addition, whenever government imposes costs on one group for the benefit of another, the tradeoffs should be objectively quantified and made transparent

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• REFOCUS POLICY GOAL ON ZERO PED/CYC/PC FATALITIES IN CROSSWALKS / LEGALLY RIDING, AND REQUIRE OUTSIDE COST/BENEFIT ANALYSIS COMMISSIONED BY THE CONTROLLER BEFORE ANY FUTURE VISION ZERO WORK

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* 2024-2025 Civil Grand Jury report, “Failed Vision, Revamping the Roadmap to Safer Streets”

Street Safety Act – Sep 16, 2025

• Supervisor Melgar’s SSA re-ups much of the VZ policy
• A summary from WalkSF highlights:
• More speed humps and tables
• Redesigning all high-injury streets to include “turn calming”, signal timing, protected bike lanes, and lane reductions
• Expand the Bike & Roll network, and keep drivers going at “safe” speeds
• More red light and speed cameras
• Ignores the inherent tradeoffs for drivers
• Should require a third party assessment of cost/benefit… to what extent are drivers disadvantaged and is it worth it
• To balance these objectives, SFMTA should designate key streets prioritized for cars and facilitate higher throughput
• Transportation should be about choice

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https://walksf.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/street-safety-act-melgar-amendments-2025.pdf

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