Local advocates are taking action to prevent the cancellation of SF’s popular long-running neighborhood street festival series, Sunday Streets, due to budget cuts, urging residents to sign their petition, contact local officials, and attend a rally at City Hall Monday.

As Streetsblog SF reports, the San Francisco Department of Public Health announced earlier in January the agency’s plan to cut funding for the city’s popular Sunday Streets program after a 17-year partnership in order to reallocate the funds toward covering department deficits. Per Streestsblog, the funds were originally appropriated for Sunday Streets by the SF Board of Supervisors through the health department's Equity & Promotion program.

Per the SF Bicycle Coalition, San Francisco is a healthier and more connected city because of Sunday Streets, which launched in 2008 and often serves neighborhoods with limited access to open space community events.

Livable City, the nonprofit that runs Sunday Streets, has created an advocacy toolkit for residents interested in pushing the city to keep the program going and find ways to stabilize it. The toolkit includes an email template for contacting officials, a petition urging SF Mayor Daniel Lurie and the Board of Supervisors to restore funding, and a guide to giving public comment at the Health Commission hearing, which is taking place  at 4 pm Monday in Room 408 at City Hall, preceded by a rally on the City Hall steps at 3 pm.

Per Streetsblog, the Department of Public Health is moving to cut $17 million in funding from community-based organizations, and Livable City receives a mere 1.3% of those funds for Sunday Streets — $215,758 per year.

Per Streetsblog, Sunday Streets is a hugely popular program that continually exceeds its metrics in providing the community with outlets for physical fitness and wellness each year, while offering a platform for more than 120 city and nonprofit groups to connect with the community through direct services, educational resources, and outreach.

Image: Sunday Streets, Excelsior; throgers/Flickr

Previous Sunday Streets coverage

A 28-year-old San Francisco man was recently arrested and charged for an attack in Hayward where he allegedly grabbed and threatened a woman on Jackson Street, shouting “I’m a pimp” as he tried to force her into prostitution, according to police.

As Bay Area News Group reports, Hayward police say Taz Guest spotted his 24-year-old victim walking home around 10:20 p.m. on May 30 and followed her onto the 100 block of Jackson Street. When she rebuffed his advances and said “no,” officers allege Guest grabbed her breast and reached for her pants.

“He screamed ‘I’m a pimp,’ claimed he was armed, and threatened to kill her,” according to a Hayward Police Department statement. The woman fought back by hurling a can of Red Bull and striking Guest until he fled.

Guest was arrested on June 4. In a recorded police interview, he’s accused of admitting to the assault and threats but denying any sexual intent. Investigators noted Guest’s detailed knowledge of the local sex trade — terminology and known street corners — which matched the victim’s account.

He now faces felony counts of assault, criminal threats, and sexual battery. Bail is set at $200,000.

A defense motion ahead of Monday’s bail hearing claims Guest is unlikely to reoffend and questions whether Jane Doe clearly saw her attacker. Prosecutors counter that the victim’s prompt 911 call, physical evidence of her injuries, and Guest’s alleged own statements provide clear probable cause.

If convicted, Guest could serve up to several years in state prison.

Hayward Detective Lt. Maria Alvarez reminded the public that assaults targeting pedestrians remain a concern citywide. “We encourage anyone who feels unsafe walking alone at night to call us immediately,” she said, urging witnesses to come forward.

Guest’s attorney has not responded to requests for comment. Meanwhile, the victim is recovering from bruises and psychological trauma, according to court records. Her case will proceed through Alameda County Superior Court, where a judge will soon decide whether to lower Guest’s bail.

Image: Ritchie Quintero/Getty

A federal appeals court ruled Oakland police can be held liable for the 2022 death of Lolo Soakai, a bystander killed after an unauthorized pursuit—challenging qualified immunity and allowing the family's lawsuit to proceed.

According to KTVU, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Friday that the Oakland Police Department can be held liable for the death of Lolomanaia “Lolo” Soakai, a 28-year-old bystander killed in a 2022 crash following an unauthorized police pursuit. The ruling allows the family’s wrongful death lawsuit against the city to proceed and marks a significant challenge to the use of qualified immunity in reckless pursuit cases, which often shields police officers from civil liability.

On June 26, 2022, rookie OPD officers Walid Abdelaziz and Jimmy Marin-Coronel pursued 19-year-old Arnold Azael Linaldi, who was allegedly leaving a sideshow on International Boulevard. The officers initiated a “ghost chase”—unauthorized under department policy, with no supervisor approval and no lights or sirens. During the pursuit, Linaldi crashed into a row of parked vehicles and motorcycles, setting off a chain-reaction collision. A motorcycle flew into Soakai, who was standing at a taco truck with his mother after attending a family graduation. Soakai was killed at the scene. His mother sustained a broken back, and two cousins were hospitalized.

The court held that officers may be held accountable under the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause. In a 48-page opinion, the 9th Circuit found the officers had "affirmatively created danger" and failed to get help for the victims. One judge noted it was plausible the officers caused harm for reasons “unrelated to any legitimate law enforcement purpose,” citing body cam footage where one said of the driver, “I hope he dies.”

While narrow in scope, the ruling sets precedent within the 9th Circuit and puts limits on police pursuits deemed reckless. The City of Oakland may appeal, potentially delaying proceedings further. As of late 2024, both officers remained on the force, despite reported efforts to fire them in 2023.

The case lands amid debate over pursuit policy. Governor Newsom has urged Oakland to loosen restrictions, but critics argue Soakai’s death shows why stricter oversight is essential.

Previously: Report Alleges Oakland PD Officers Lied About No-Headlights, 100-MPH Car Chase That Killed Bystander

Image: Battlesnake1/Wikimedia

Two collisions Tuesday night in San Francisco may have killed two people in separate incidents, one near Alamo Square and one in the Tenderloin.

The first incident happened just after 11 p.m. on Fulton Street, near the intersection of Fillmore Street. A solo scooter rider coming downhill from Alamo Square Park on Fulton, possibly at a high rate of speed, reportedly collided with a vehicle exiting a parking space.

An SFPD officer on the scene suggested to this reporter that the scooter rider had been killed, and said that the car's driver — who had apparently remained on the scene — was attempting a U-turn out of the parking space when the collision occurred. These details, and the condition of the scooter rider have not yet been confirmed.

The incident was noted on the Citizen app on Tuesday night, with video showing SFFD EMTs on the scene.

SFist reached out to the SFPD but they have not yet responded to confirm the details.

The second incident, a hit-and-run, occurred at 1:46 a.m. Wednesday at the intersection of Polk and Ellis streets. As NBC Bay Area reports, a pedestrian was killed in or near the intersection, and the driver responsible fled the scene.

No vehicle or suspect description were made available by the SFPD, and the driver remains at large.

Anyone with information about this incident is asked to call the SFPD tip line at 415-575-4444 or text a tip to TIP411 and begin the text message with 'SFPD.'

After Lower Nob Hill resident Chandini Davis was almost swatted by an oncoming car (that failed to yield for her) earlier in the week, she's now keen on making her neighborhood crosswalks safer for pedestrians.

San Francisco’s walkways are notoriously quite dangerous. Just this year alone, over 14 people have lost their lives trying to cross the street, according to the city’s Vision Zero Network, an increase from 2018’s fatality count. So, when Davis and her dog almost became another statistic, she was adamant about cementing a change for the better (and safer).

"[The car was] inches from hitting me, and he was going quite fast, and when I informed him that he was about to hit me he had some choice words for me," said Davis to ABC 7 about the incident, having previously shared her experience on the community-centered NextDoor App. "[I’m hoping] to get more enforcement and eventually get a no turn on red sign on here [...] cars are not yielding on red.”

During ABC 7’s on-site reporting earlier in the week, reporter Luz Pena noted that at least five cars, making either left or right turns, nearly collided with pedestrians on the crosswalks of Hyde and Pine Street.

It seems Davis isn’t alone in wanting this change, too. Neighbors of hers have expressed support of her “No Turn On Red” petition, having already made its way to Supervisor Aaron Peskin’s inbox; Paskin noted to ABC 7 that he, in fact, did receive her email and is considering the request, which could lead to other SF neighborhoods receiving like signage.

Similar initiatives – some once believed “unrealistic” to ensure pedestrian safety – have recently come to fruition, like the now-approved “Better Market Street” plan, which will soon make a large stretch of latter mentioned city street car-free.

Related: A Decade On, 'Better Market Street' Plan Gets Final Approval, Vehicle Ban Made Permanent

Image: Screenshot taken of Vision Zero's High Injury: 2017 Map

A car running a red light Wednesday morning collided with multiple cars* in San Francisco's Westwood Park neighborhood, near City College and Balboa Park. As the Chronicle reports, a female driver "ran a red light at near Ocean and Miramar avenues and hit at least one car, a parking meter and a tree," and injured eight people including "two or three minors."

This happened at 8:30 a.m. this morning.

Six of those injured were taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, and two declined medical treatment, per the Chron.

The incident is under investigation and the driver has not been arrested or charged with a crime, according to SFPD spokeswoman Officer Giselle Linnane.

Update: The SFPD offered some clarification, and now says that only three adults were treated for injuries at the hospital. "Per the investigation it was determined that the driver, an elderly female, accidentally stepped on the gas pedal instead of breaks. All parties were passengers in other vehicles and no pedestrians were hit."

*This post has been corrected to show that no pedestrians were hit.

Confirming what you've surely always known deep down, the vast majority of those buttons you push at intersections do not do anything to shorten the amount of time you are going to wait to cross the street. SFGate, inspired by a piece in the Boston Globe that revealed that Boston employs total placebo buttons for pedestrians in a majority of downtown intersections, reached out to the SFMTA to see whether the same was true here. And the answer, essentially, was yes.

In Boston, officials decided some years ago that "the city’s core is just too congested — with cars and pedestrians — to allow any one person to manipulate the cycle" with a button, according to the Globe. The buttons are still functional in some outer parts of the city where there's less traffic, but otherwise all the traffic signals are controlled by timers that fluctuate throughout the day — and the buttons still sit there on traffic poles as relics of the past, having been installed at a time when traffic was lighter and pedestrians could ask for the right of way.

In San Francisco, of the 1,222 intersection crosswalk buttons across the city, only 251 are "pedestrian actuated" according to SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose, but as he spins it for SFGate, "In San Francisco, every push button has a purpose." That is to say, none of them are there just to be placebos, but most are actually just there to help the visually impaired. Those buttons that don't actually effect when the light changes do produce what's called an Audible Pedestrian Signal (APS)," often that little voice that says "Walk!" and then makes that grating jackhammer sound to let the visually impaired know they can enter the intersection.

There are also plenty of intersections in SF where they've just done away with the buttons altogether, because we all know the drill.

SFGate provides the following map below showing where the functioning, pedestrian-actuated cross signals are, and as you can see a lot are clustered along the long, busy thoroughfares of Third Street, the Embarcadero, and 19th Avenue where car traffic tends to outnumber pedestrians who need to cross.

This guy on Flickr wrote a lengthy treatise on why actuated signals are actually bad for pedestrians, noting that having timed signals that switch over on regular one-minute intervals are likely to get you across a street faster than, say, the Embarcadero where you might stand around waiting for the system to acknowledge you for god knows how long.

And, naturally, here in SF, pedestrian advocates Walk SF have something to say about these buttons, which they refer to disparagingly as "beg buttons." They support getting rid of them unless they are necessary for the disabled, saying, "We don't think people should have to ask to cross the street."

Well, right.

See also elevator door-close buttons that don't actually work.

In what will likely come as a surprise to even the most jaded of San Francisco's pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers, we learn via a Department of Public Heath report that half of all the injuries treated in SF General Hospital are a result of traffic collisions. The Examiner picked up the report, which covers 2012 through 2014, and noted that treatment of those injuries ended up costing around $30.5 million a year.

Of the more than 4,000 patients observed, injured pedestrians required 44 percent of the annual treatment expenditures. Next came motorists (drivers or passengers) at 22 percent, followed by motorcyclists at 18 percent, and cyclists at 16 percent.

That, according to the DPH study, traffic-related injuries outpace “all other categories for cause of injury including falls, cuts/pierces, firearms, and assault” does not sit well with pedestrian-advocacy group Walk SF. “We’re astounded to learn that half of all San Francisco trauma victims are transportation-related traffic crashes,” Walk SF executive director Nicole Ferrara told the Ex.

This report casts new light on Vision Zero and the effort to reduce traffic fatalities on city streets to zero by 2024. By focusing on the number of traffic-related deaths, as opposed to all injuries, it is perhaps too easy to overlook the true scale of the danger people face navigating San Francisco streets.

“This analysis puts into perspective the pervasiveness of traffic crashes in our society and the urgent need to invest in proven strategies to prevent crashes,” Ferrara told the paper.

According to city statistics, around 30 people die and 200 are "seriously injured" on San Francisco streets each year. Although, as the below SF Gov chart shows, the 2016 fiscal year has tragically surpassed that number of deaths.

Related: Slain Cyclist's Family Argues City Should Stop Removing Memorials

Thank you @SFMTrA ! Westbound traffic visibly slower when crossing with kids today, and more walkers are using the intersection already. pic.twitter.com/DCULFK2qiV

— Hum of the city (@humofthecity) October 13, 2016

Saying that someone at some point in the future could theoretically be endangered if one of the posts gets knocked loose, SFMTA has pulled illegally installed crosswalk posts at Golden Gate Park's Crossover Drive — endangering pedestrians right now today in the not theoretical present. The posts were installed by SFMTrA, the safety vigilante group responsible for similar actions across the city, and were met with a positive response from people who had to cross the wide intersection. However, as SFMTrA tweeted yesterday, the city removed them — citing abstract safety concerns as the justification.

"The issue is that they could cause a hazard if they become dislodged," SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose told SFist via email, "but generally we have no choice but to remove cones and posts that do not go through an official process because it’s a code violation to place objects in the roadway, and they could create conflicts for various types of transportation."

Got that? That the city made the road tangibly less safe for pedestrians today in order to prevent a possible danger in the future is an irony that isn't sitting well with some.

Here's what the street looks like now.

The SFMTrA, meanwhile, says that they will return and reinstall the posts — leading, we assume, SFMTA officials to quickly pull them up again (we asked Rose if the city would install permanent posts there — he didn't respond). And indeed, it is the very speed at which SFMTA undid the unofficial group's work that upsets SFMTrA so much.

"The SFMTA is glacially slow to install pedestrian and bicyclist safety infrastructure, yet was able to remove our simple safety improvements within a week," the group said in a statement sent to SFist. "We call on SFMTA to immediately replace these pedestrian safety improvements with protection at or above the level installed by SFMTrA."

SFMTA, for its part, intends to take things slowly. "We will be kicking off a community outreach process in December to better understand the challenges and opportunities for roads in Golden Gate Park," SFMTA public relations officer Ben Jose told us. "Simultaneously, SFMTA planners and engineers will be analyzing the park’s collision history and traffic circulation patterns. Through that process we’ll identify and implement safety solutions that meet engineering guidance and use the city’s formal (and legal) process for altering the city’s public right of way."

This post has been updated to include the comment from Ben Jose.

Previously: Map: SFMTrA Safety Vigilantes Install More Bike-Lane Posts Under The Cover Of Night

A group of anonymous pedestrian and cycling safety advocates have upped their game in a challenge to city officials to do more, now, to make San Francisco streets safer. San Francisco Metropolitan Transformation Authority (or SFMTrA), a play on the name of the official SFMTA, has made the news in the past for placing traffic cones around the city to create de facto separated bikes lanes. Now Streetsblog reports that the group has now taken it to the next level: Installing semi-permanent safety posts.

"While we love the psychological impact of orange cones (drivers intuitively slow down around them), we have noticed that our orange cone installations get pretty banged up after a day or two," the group explained on its website. "Cones get knocked over or removed, and their impact dissipates over time. So we decided to test out a new tool this week."

Pictured above, the post are essentially glued to the road at JFK and Kezar Drive — a route taken by scores of cyclists heading into Golden Gate Park — and cost around $27 each. They were installed sometime early last week on the edge of an existing bike lane that was notoriously unsafe.

Here is the corner before the posts were installed:

And here it is after the installation:

And while the route is undoubtedly now safer, the folks over at SFMTA are none too pleased. "We have no other choice but to remove the cones placed on the road by SFMTrA, because it is a code violation to place objects in the roadway and they could create conflicts for transit in the areas where they have been placed," spokesperson Paul Rose told Streetsblog.

Update: SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose reached out to SFist to clarify that his above statement was specifically in reference to cones placed by SFMTrA, not the safe-hit posts.

And while we can be certain that city officials will undue the work of SFMTrA, we can be just as certain that the group will keep at it — until they no longer have to.

"We'd love the city government to pick this up from us," they explain. "We're doing this as a showcase of how cheap and easy this is, and we're wondering why in the world the city isn't following our lead."

This post has been updated to reflect Paul Rose's comments.

Previously: Guerrilla Traffic Safety Warriors Take Reforms Into Their Own Hands After Cyclist Deaths

A man is dead after he was struck by at least one vehicle while walking on a San Francisco stretch of freeway Wednesday evening.

According to KRON4, at 10:54 p.m. Wednesday the California Highway patrol started getting calls of a man walking in the northbound lanes of 280 near the Monterey Boulevard onramp.

Moments before CHP officers arrived, the man was struck by the driver of a car. His injuries were fatal, and he was pronounced dead at the scene.

The CHP closed three lanes of 280 until concluding their investigation at 1:53 this morning.

As of publication time, the San Francisco Medical Examiner's Office had not publicly identified the man. According to a CHP spokesperson, it's still unclear why he was walking on 280.

After residents of the visitor-beloved stretch of Lombard known (dubiously) as the "world's crookedest" asked the SFMTA to consider keeping tourist traffic off their street, the MTA complied, launching a "pilot program" of weekend closures that began last Saturday. But, surprise, instead, throngs of pedestrians packed the fabled stretch, causing some to say that the closure plan has backfired.

According to the Chron, signs were already up by 11:30 Saturday morning when "a small platoon of parking control officers" arrived in advance of the 12-6 PM closure.

Even the PCOs were skeptical about the closure, with one asking John King "Why buy a house on a block that tourists come to from around the world?"

Though SFMTA spokesman Paul Rose said that "pedestrians will still be allowed to use the sidewalks...but will not be permitted to walk or gather on the crooked street itself," the meter maids apparently weren't there to enforce that rule as, according to CBS5 "Lombard’s been turned into a pedestrian path."

"Greg," a man who lives three blocks away from the area, told the Chron that "It gets brutal on weekends...It's always been brutal, but the last four years has changed the area."

But instead of the tranquility they might have expected, says CBS, "they got chaos" when tourists "turned the redbrick road into a winding walkway."

“I think this pilot program is a joke...I mean look at this,” Fran Bak told CBS.

Future closures are planed for noon to around 6 PM through July 13th, and on Friday, July 4th. After that, the MTA will decide if they want to continue the closures, or make the more permanent decision of seeking "State legislation to allow the City to gate Lombard Street so that only local traffic can drive down the Crooked Street at all times or when deemed necessary." Until then, happy hiking!

Previously: San Francisco's World Famous Crooked Street Might Close
Want To Visit Lombard's Crooked Stretch This Weekend? Then Take A Cab

[Chron]
[CBS]