Seniors and people with disabilities demand more time to cross the street
Advocates: SFMTA should time the signals for human behavior
In 2005, David Vega was crossing Cabrillo Street in the Outer Richmond District when he was struck and severely injured by a driver. It was a collision that nearly cost him his life, had it not been for the quick action of some Muni drivers, who witnessed the frightful crash from a bus yard, and made sure the driver stopped and dialed 911.
“I was flying like a rag doll through the air, at least 35 feet, and I slammed into the side of the street, with my head bleeding,” Vega said. He was in a coma for a month and when he finally became conscious he couldn’t remember anything.
“I had to relearn how to talk,” said Vega, who used a wheelchair for the first year after the crash, as he recovered from a fractured skull and limited use of his left side. “It just seemed like a bad dream, until I saw what I looked like and then I realized this was not a dream. This was something that actually happened to me.”
Vega, who turns 70 this year, recently talked about the life-altering crash at a press conference by senior and disability activists on the corner of 25th Avenue and Geary Boulevard in the Richmond District, a block from where 87-year-old Alfred Yee was killed by a driver in 2015.
Vega recovered and uses a cane now and walks the intersection regularly to shop and catch the 38 Geary, along with many seniors and people with disabilities who live in the neighborhood and frequent the nearby Richmond Senior Center.
It’s a challenge and often treacherous to cross a wide, high-speed street such as Geary. To demonstrate this, Vega and a group of senior and disability activists crossed the street to see if they had enough time to make it safely to the other side.
But many were forced to wait at a substandard median, with cars speeding by on both sides, until the light turned green again.
“There’s a lot of seniors out in the street, and we’re really concerned about their safety,” said Cheryl Mar of the Richmond Senior Center on Geary near 26th Avenue. Mar coordinates the Safe Streets Richmond program.
“They’re either elderly or disabled, and even folks who are just pushing strollers or carts or people in wheelchairs. It’s a challenge for them and probably a safety hazard,” said Mar.
In San Francisco, seniors make up 14 percent of the population, but account for more than 60 percent of all fatal crashes involving people walking.
The Richmond District press conference was the third held by Senior and Disability Action over the past few months.
At 3rd and Revere streets in the Bayview, and 5th and Mission streets in South of Market, walking and disability advocates demonstrated that the intersections — which are on the city’s high-injury network— are known trouble spots that don’t allow enough time for people to cross, and need the timing changed.
At last week’s Richmond District press conference, Supervisor Sandra Lee Fewer, a “senior in training” who just turned 60, told the group she shares their concerns.
“I have to hustle to get across in time, and increasingly I see more and more seniors passing, needing more time to cross the streets,” said Fewer.
Indeed, the most common complaint pedestrian advocates hear from seniors and people with disabilities is they don’t have enough time to cross the street.
“Safely crossing an intersection should not be a privilege for the young or for those who can move fast,” said Cathy DeLuca, the interim executive director at Walk San Francisco. “The good news is the city has the ability to fix this problem by increasing crossing times — a remedy that has been proven to reduce crashes by up to 51 percent.”
In California, it’s illegal for a pedestrian to enter a crosswalk once the red countdown signal starts. But that’s not how the vast majority of people walk. And this “jaywalking” law is used by police to unfairly target low-income communities of color.
That’s why a bill moving through the California Legislature would change this antiquated rule. But it still doesn’t address the biggest concern of seniors and people with disabilities: ample time to get from curb to curb.
SFMTA officials told Human Streets the citywide crossing time for pedestrians is 2.5 feet per second, lower than the statewide standard of 3.5 feet per second, outlined in the state’s Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices.
The pedestrian clearance interval, or the time when the countdown signal starts, is timed for 3.5 feet per second, a point of contention for advocates who say it should also be timed for 2.5 feet per second.
But SFMTA officials say to have consistency, and prevent transit delays, it’s better to set a uniform time for all intersections, with a few exceptions.
“We’re not encouraging people to violate the law, or condoning it,” the SFMTA’s James Shahamiri said. “But if one countdown is timed for a slower speed than another, people may end up running into an intersection where they think they have enough time to cross, but they actually don’t because they crossed at some other intersection that had a lower walking speed.”
Shahamiri stressed education. “If you know you’re a slower walker, start at the beginning of the walk. Some people say that’s not fair, I should be able to start at any time during the walk, and be timed adequately,” said Shahamiri. “But you know, we’re trying to balance all the needs here.”
One solution advocates are pushing is the The Green Man Plus, a program used in Singapore that gives seniors and people with disabilities a card they can use to activate the signal to give them more time to cross.
SFMTA officials, however, have ruled that out because they say it doesn’t fully comply with the American with Disabilities Act.
The 2009 Better Streets Plan called on the city to experiment with video surveillance detection for intersections, but Shahamiri told Human Streets “it was unreliable and didn’t work very well.”
Advocates stress that in a city that generally prioritizes automobile throughput over humans, the city should find solutions so that everyone is given time to make it across the street. And with a Geary Boulevard bus rapid transit redesign in the works, there is an opportunity to think differently on this dangerous corridor.
“When you address the needs of seniors, people with disabilities and children, you address the needs of everyone,” said Pi Ra with Senior and Disability Action.
“Of all the traffic safety problems we face in San Francisco — like speeding cars and the proliferation of ride-hail vehicles — getting stranded in the middle of the street because there’s not enough time to cross should not be one of them,” said DeLuca. “Everyone deserves to make it from curb to curb in one try, and there’s an easy fix.”
After David Vega’s mobility was shattered, it took him awhile to get his sense of confidence back. It was a strange sensation adjusting both physically and mentally, he told Human Streets.
“I’m careful about walking and I’ve gotten back to walking and I can manage pretty well now,” he said. “I think I’m one of the lucky ones considering what happened.”
At the May 3rd press conference in South of Market, senior and disability advocates read the following statement:
We the senior and disabled pedestrians
Who take longer to go down the sidewalk ramp
Gives us more time to cross
Who can’t clearly see the potholes in the crosswalk
Give us more time to cross
Who have to walk around vehicles and bicycles in the crosswalk
Give us more time to cross
Who need canes, crutches or manual wheelchairs
Give us more time to cross
Who live and work by major traffic streets
Give us more time to cross
We do not care if it is by increasing the traffic light cycle, or by adding a request for more time button
Just give us more time to cross
