By Thomas K. Pendergast

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) is set to roll out big changes for six roadways in the Sunset District this summer as part of the Lincoln Way Quick-Build and Sunset Neighborways projects.

The Neighborways project will include:

• 34th and 41st avenues between Lincoln Way and Vicente Street.

• Kirkham Street between La Playa Street and 19th Avenue.

• Ortega Street between 47th and 19th avenues.

• Vicente Street between 46th and 19th avenues.

Neighborways are residential streets designed to prioritize people walking and bicycling.

The Sunset already has one Neighborways street on 20th Avenue.

“They are streets that are designed with people walking and people biking in mind, but they do not prohibit vehicle access,” the agency’s Senior Transportation Planner Brian Liang told members of the Sunset Heights Association of Responsible People (SHARP) on a Zoom meeting.

Liang said that during the agency’s community outreach sessions, they found support for traffic safety improvements for each of the proposed Neighborways.

He said the top concerns were related to improving safety, especially around schools in the neighborhood, plus traffic intersection conflicts and vehicle speeds. The community cited fast cars as a traffic safety issue.

Most people supported speed cushions – humps in the middle of the block – to better manage vehicle speeding.

Another focus is intersection daylighting – the red curbs at intersections prohibiting a vehicle from parking and blocking that space, thus obstructing visibility – so drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians approaching an intersection will have a better view from all sides, Liang said.

“Another comment that we heard a lot during that first phase of community outreach was opposition to the Slow Streets in the Outer Sunset and traffic diversion as a tool,” Liang explained. “We found out there was a lot of confusion among community members between the differences between a Slow Street and the proposed Neighborways.

“So, to quickly clarify, they are both preferred walking and biking routes, however, their approach to creating that facility are different.”

Slow Streets incorporates traffic diversion at every intersection and implements vehicle access restrictions against cars from outside the neighborhood.

Neighborways offer a more “holistic traffic-calming lens,” he said.

The agency removed all of the Slow Streets in the Outer Sunset last year and conducted an analysis to understand the traffic conditions of the streets that they are proposing for Neighborways. They went through the feedback that they heard during the initial outreach phase. Coupling that information with their analysis, they developed concept designs.

The criteria to choose Neighborways streets include that they each have an average daily volume of fewer than 3,000 vehicles, with 1,500 per day being ideal.

Daily vehicle averages for the first five streets they chose are 800 for Kirkham, 1,400 for Ortega, 900 each for both 41st and 34th avenues and 1,400 for Ortega.

Because the proposed Neighborways are “naturally meeting this criteria,” Liang said they are not proposing traffic diversion on any of these streets.

The typical vehicle speed maximum is 25 mph, but the ideal threshold is 20 mph, Liang explained.

• Kirkham averages 23 mph.

• Ortega averages 23 mph.

• Vicente averages 24 mph.

• 41st Avenue averages 27 mph.

• 34th Avenue averages 30 mph.

Liang noted that vehicle speeds are higher than desired on most of the Sunset Neighborways streets.

The three methods Neighborways streets will use for dealing with traffic speeds primarily focus on speed cushions, intersection daylighting and “continental” crosswalks, which are thick, longitudinal stripes designating pedestrian crossing areas.

The agency is also proposing other methods at “target locations” along each of the five corridors, like traffic circles and raised crosswalks (essentially a speed hump combined with a crosswalk).

“All of which were basically chosen on a case-by-case basis at each location to address intersection safety,” Liang said.

For Ortega, they are proposing to add 11 speed cushions.

Intersection daylighting is proposed at all intersections along the Neighborways, and existing daylighting paint will be refreshed.

They are also proposing a raised crosswalk across Ortega at 37th Avenue, next to A.P. Giannini Middle School.

A traffic circle at Ortega and 34th Avenue is under consideration as well.

Lincoln Way

Quick-Build Project

Transportation Planner Jeffrey Banks explained to SHARP members that the Lincoln Quick-Build project will go along Lincoln Way from the Great Highway to Arguello Boulevard.

Lincoln Way is on the agency’s High Injury Network, the 12% of City streets where 68% of serious traffic injuries and fatalities have occurred in the last five years. From 2017 to 2022, there were 25 collisions involving a pedestrian, with 144 overall collisions involving an injury, including one fatality.

Banks said 17% of reported incidents (25 collisions) occurred between pedestrians and vehicles, 19% of reported incidents (28 collisions) cite unsafe speeds as a primary factor in these collisions and 82% of reported incidents (119 collisions) occurred within 20 feet of an intersection.

Some of the “hotspots” for collisions on Lincoln Way are:

• The intersection with Crossover Drive and the pedestrian crossing from Martin Luther King Jr. and Transverse drives.

• The intersection with Chain of Lakes Drive.

• The intersections at Ninth Avenue and Kezar Drive.

Quick-Build projects are adjustable and reversible traffic safety improvements installed within months and are intended to be evaluated and reviewed within 24 months of construction.

“It does include paint, signs and signal timing changes that are lower-level improvements that can be done more quickly and can be removed or adjusted if they’re not being as effective as we want them to be,” Banks said.

The “paint and post” improvements include continental crosswalks, plus painted safety zones that wrap around sidewalk corners to make pedestrian crossing intersections more visible. They are often flanked by white plastic post delineators, plus refreshed road and curb paint.

A few seconds will also be added to the traffic signals cycles allowing more time for pedestrians to cross.

Left-turn safety treatments consist of installing waist-high vertical delineator posts, small rubber speed bumps, and paint to create center lane lines with painted safety zones to encourage slower, wider left turns and increase drivers’ awareness of other road users.

“The intention is to slow the left-turning vehicle,” Banks said. “We’ve heard and we’ve analyzed this street and we see that the left turns off of Lincoln to get up into the neighborhoods are one area of conflict that’s pretty consistent.”

The size of signal lenses will be increased from 8 inches to 12 inches to improve visibility.

The speed limit on Lincoln Way is 30 mph.

“The State of California has a law that you can reduce the speed limits in certain conditions and Lincoln, at this time, does not qualify for any of those,” Banks said.

The project team members are currently in the public outreach phase with detailed designs. This summer will be the environmental review and legislation phase. The implementation phase will be either this summer or in the fall.

For more information on the Sunset Neighborways project, go to sfmta.com/projects/sunset-neighborways.

For more information on the Lincoln Way Quick-Build project, go to: sfmta.com/projects/lincoln-way-quick-build-project.