To reduce right-angle accidents caused by red-light-runners -- not only South of Market but on Geary, Pine, and other major thoroughfares -- the DPT has begun installing controversial mast arms that cantilever traffic lights out over the roadway for better visibility. The department is also reprogramming signals at key intersections to have all-red delays of up to two seconds.
The city's tweaking nonsignalized intersections, too. The four-way stop, described by one cabdriver as the "sine qua non of San Francisco driving," has been the standard for traffic control in residential neighborhoods since the Model T. Now there are 1,320 of them.
James Sanders
Cabdriver and City Hall gadfly Barry Taranto.
James Sanders
The DPT's Jerry Robbins.
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The big problem with the city's four-ways is that drivers can't easily distinguish them from two-way stops. Things get dangerous when a driver, assuming a four-way stop, sees no other cars stopped at an intersection and proceeds to enter it when, in fact, it's a two-way stop and there's cross-traffic moving at speed. The only way to be sure about four-way stops is to visually check for stop signs at all four corners. Recently, the federal government stepped in, mandating that municipalities attach "all way" or "4-way" signage to the bottom of standard red stop signs at three-, four-, and five-way intersections. The DPT is now carrying out the order and should be finished in mid-2006.
On the safety front, the DPT seems to be doing its job: In 2003, collisions resulting in injury (3,511) reached their lowest level since 1990. Collisions resulting in fatalities (41) were up slightly from 2002, but were well within the average range of the previous 10 years.
I ask Robbins if he thinks the San Francisco driving experience is loved or hated. The bureaucrat slices the question down the middle by obliquely flattering the intelligence of San Francisco drivers: "I think it requires more attention to drive here," he says. "Concentration. You have to think about what you're doing."
Not everyone is happy with the DPT's new, easy-to-see mast-arm signals and the other efforts to tweak the roadways for safe, keep-it-moving driving. SPUR's Jim Chappell, for one, cites ancient European cities as models for what San Francisco could be -- and should do.
Historically, Chappell argues, streets were used for more than just "traffic sinks," as he puts it.
"They're the primary open space of the city, where everything mixes. The reason San Francisco is so much better than other places is that we've maintained better than most American cities the original function of streets," he says. "Our streets are narrow, and the traffic is slow, with lots of pedestrian uses."
Chappell charges that the DPT ("the department of cars") and its engineers are making some terrible mistakes, among them the high-visibility mast-arm signals, which have the effect, he says, of increasing traffic speeds. "With the new mast-arm lights," he says, "a driver can line up traffic lights from 15 blocks away, lose consciousness, and go faster -- that's absolutely the wrong thing to do.
"The big thing in Europe right now is to take out traffic controls. They're taking out both lights and stop signs ... and traffic moves better. It's safer, because drivers have to pay attention. They're watching more closely what's going on, looking into other drivers' eyes."
Chappell asks me what kind of car I drive; I tell him an old Tercel.
"You know, the smaller and junkier car you drive, the more aware you are; that's why I asked. If you've got a big SUV with air conditioning and a fancy stereo, you're not going to notice what's going on around you as much."
Chappell is carless, but he's a paying member of City CarShare, the 3,000-member nonprofit that makes the occasional use of a car as cheap and painless as possible. For 10 bucks a month, Chappell has computerized access to one of the fast-growing program's 85 fuel-efficient cars, stashed in one of 25 locations around the city. The cars rent for $4 per hour plus 44 cents per mile. He jingles his car keys proudly.
The SPUR spokesman predicts a time in the not-too-distant future when some of San Francisco's major streets are narrower and traffic is even slower. As "Transit First" policies really kick in, plans are under way to convert traffic lanes on Geary and Van Ness to exclusive bus and trolley service. That will speed up both the buses andthe cars, Chappell claims. And the recent conversion of a section of Folsom back to a two-way flow is, Chappell predicts, just the first step in the reversion of downtown streets to their original, two-way bustle.
"One-way streets allow traffic to go faster," he avers, "but is that the only value of an urban street?"
"A boundless, tightly bound world" is how columnist Herb Caen described his beloved, bedeviled town in 1962. Little did Caen know that within a few years, during the historic "Freeway Revolt," San Francisco's citizens would decide to keep its bindings tight, as neighborhood after neighborhood said "no" to a proposed web of intracity expressways sponsored by speed-freak planners, the construction industry, and downtown interests. (The revolt is just now reaching its denouement with the retreat of the Central Freeway to South of Market.)
San Franciscans didn't want to go faster. They loved and love our streets, where every block is somebody's front yard, somebody's neighborhood, and somebody's commute, chock-full of storefronts, pedestrians, bicyclists, cabs, buses, streetcars, and delivery trucks. There are no "traffic sinks" here, no "traffic sewers" flushing cars through with master-planned efficiency. Smack in the middle of car-crazy California, the complexity of San Francisco traffic is defiantly urbane.
"Complicated but civilized," the Bernal Heights-Sausalito commuter said of her daily route across the pearly white hills. Maybe it's complicated and civilized. As a traffic planner told me, "You can't just blast through San Francisco. You actually have to participate in the chaos, in the meaning of the city."
