something the city has been looking at since the 90's. there has been a lot of policies issued. one is the two and a half feet per second crossing time and curb to refuge or curb to curb and implemented city wide and still in effect. i guarantee the seniors, children, some of our more vulnerable populations time to cross the street. recently the state and federal guidelines have changed nationwide so instead of providing that clearance time which is the average walking speed of average pedestrian, the average determined by studies. that was lowered to account for the fact that we have an aging population and we also have vulnerable populations so city wide we are retiming more time to cross so the signals are on for longer. that was a project when we knew the guidelines were going to be changed so right

now we're half done with this project and we expect the remaining half to be done in the next few years and we're devoting our resources to get that accomplished. another change city wide is changing the way the cross walks are marked. the two parallel lines are what is done at most locations now but we're shifting to the continental pattern and the school crossings which are the yellow crosswalks and that pattern will be done at all locations and one of the easiest way to get this accomplished as paving projects come along we will shift to the continental pattern. uncontrolled crossings of particular area of concern. this is area where the pedestrian didn't have the benefit of the sign or construction and this indicates best practices should be at uncontrolled crosswalk. a

median so people only have to worry about crossing one direction at the time. the continental walk and highlights this and these yield ones which the government recommended and for vehicles from stopping right up against the crosswalk and if they go further back it will prevent the multiple threat collision and one vehicle stops and another passes and hits the pedestrian and the theory in the research is the further back the vehicle stop the passing vehicle has the chance to see the pedestrian crossings the street. monterey in the bold and street lighting and sign are important. again the red zone keep vehicles like the truck here blocking the sight of the pedestrian. we have traffic calming and in residential areas and revamped

the program to devote resources to arterial traffic calming so that's something we're going to start now given the interest in improving pedestrian safety and they're happening on major commercial or traffic streets. we wanted to have the resources to address those collisions as well as resources to address the more neighborhood traffic calming needs, and finally road design and slope boulevard and fatal collision involving a 17 year old and a student at forest view. that street that is -- was six lane wide. the state actually on its own initiative decided to narrow the street to four lanes and add a bicycle lane which is a good idea when you have multiple lanes and you reduce some of the lanes it reduces the pedestrian factor. obviously that wasn't enough to prevent the fatal collision

from occurring because vehicles whether have six lanes or four are going fast and not yielding sometimes as required by law so we're doing as the department of public works indicate pursuing a grant to make improvements at that location and others and we will work with the state on one of the longest stretches in san francisco without signs or signals and we are having meetings as we speak in getting the work done. finally in with the enforcement and they can devote limited resources to address the concerns and based on the collision date that is being indicated so we provided that information as well to the board of supervisors, so if you need to see that let me know, but just a report that has this kind of level of detail and

your offices can work with the police department in terms of addressing some of these issues. regardless of what engineering that we do there is still the issue that motorists need to be aware of pedestrians as they go through the city. if motorists are not looking for pedestrians and not careful we these situations where they run over pedestrians legally crossing at crosswalks and some of that has to involve awareness on the part of motorists in terms of the responsibilities they have in a dense city like san francisco. they have to be looking at for bicycles as well and pedestrians. the important thing just to mention to the public even though that we look at high collision locations we always look at collisions no matter the collisions they have. we have about thousand

complaints a year. i look at all of them. the easiest way for the public to get a a hold of us is call 311 and you can report it in the website or in writing and mail. my email and my address is here if people need to contact us in those ways as well. thank you. >> thank you mr. alial. next up and -- >> can i ask a quick question. i know someone from senator yee's office is here and increased fines on these areas and i am wondering if enforcement -- increased enforcement efforts like that help to reduce the number of collisions or killings in areas like 19th avenue? >> i think that's an issue that -- again because of the multiple factors with what causes collisions. at the same time

double fine was implemented there were other changes happening on 19th avenue. i think the police department could comment on the actual enforcement of the double fine zone. i think on a street like 19th avenue we appreciate having the tool and the message given to the motorist this is a particularly sensitive street for them, and so that -- what that has resulted in terms of collision reduction it's difficult to tell. it's difficult to tell how a collision pattern was affected by a change in legislation, but the problems are still there. i would not say that 19th avenue has been cured. 19th avenue cross over drive are still some of the problem locations in terms of collisions. >> and similarly with data on areas like 19th avenue and how doubling the fines and other

things impact that and also the red light cameras and intersections in the city and useful to know if that helped to reduce the number of collisions in those key intersections where we have the red light cameras and i know the department of public health always argues the reduction of speed limits saves lives and reduces collisions and i would like to know in school zones and 15 miles per hour at school times is effective if there is data from the mta in the future as well. >> in terms of the red light camera program we noticed decreases where we have used them. again there were multiple things we were doing at locations to improve them so sometimes it's combination of enforcement and engineering change. overall red light camera collisions are down significantly from where the program started so i would say we are going in the right

direction and they decreased overall through enforcement and engineering and other measures. speed enforcement is again another issue that we're looking at. right now there is no state law allowing automated speed enforcement but perhaps as a city if we agree on what method we want to pursue to talk to sacramento and see what the possibilities are in terms of legislation. in terms of the 15 miles per hour speed limit that is a change in law that he we implemented recently and we need to have time before we can say this has resulted in a statistically reduction in speeds. i do know that the community and the school district has expressed appreciation for the changes so over time the question of how effective it was statistically speaking we have to wait for

the data to be robust and we don't to speculate at this point but it's definitely school areas, safe areas of grants, improved signage and markings and something that the city has been doing and will continue to do. >> thank you. there are a few more presentations and i want to get through as many public comments as possible so next up is the department of public health and they will be presenting on injuries and the cost to the city and their resource to apply predictive modeling to prevent pedestrian safety injuries. >>

>> i thought the presentation -- [inaudible] >> do you need some time to get ready? >> [inaudible] >> right after this i will be calling up captain newman and captain harvey if they're here.

>> hi i am megan wier and work in the environmental section. thank you for having the opportunity and to share our work today. me and my colleague will talk about some of the health department's work. with respect to pedestrian safety the department's role is doing data and research and affect strategic planning and processes and mapping and modeling. we are working to develop a more comprehensive injury system to support monitoring and evaluation activities as the city moves forward to pro-actively address the issues. we work with interagency support and coordination with the sister agencies who are presenting

today including co-ed leading the san francisco task force and other agencies and advisory groups and also sharing our data and analysis in support of grants and project development and targeted improvement. we worked to facilitate and support community engagement within pedestrian safety activities in the city and administer programs including safe routes to school as well as media campaigns. so just to provide a big picture. i think this really complements ricardo's presentation. there are over 800 pedestrian injuries each year and two a day and under reporting of 20% based on previous data linking the police department's records to the general hospital's data. approximately 100 people are killed or seriously injured and the trends have been stable over the last 10 years and our per

resident rate and 97 per 100,000 population is five times the national health target for the nation with respect to pedestrian injury. seniors have a fatality rate four times of adults and 11 times youth in the city and we know based on research there are evidence concentrations with respect to injuries considering when we have busy streets where cars are traveling faster, higher population densities as well as concentrated poverty where we see populations more reliant on walking as transportation. this sum rices the annual cost. >> >> in san francisco and as supervisor yee noted in the introduction district 7 ranks among the higher districts for the total amount of injuries. it's notable that approximately

15 million annually is seen just at san francisco general for the injuries and 76% of the total cost is paid for with public funding. established risk factors for vehicle collisions with pedestrians include environmental factors and high traffic flow and higher pedestrian activity and higher speeds and vehicle design and crossing of facilities and lighting. it's also depended on youths and seniors and cell phone use and safety rules and on this slide is a statistic that i think really elegantly illustrates the importance of speed and for any individual collision your likelihood of dying is six times that at

30 miles per hour than 20 miles per hour thus how do we prevent pedestrian fatalities and severe injurys in san francisco and focusing on reducing speeds is imperative. also the map illustrates aggregate pedestrian injuries and this is a way to look at the patterns and the northeast and also that patterns really follow the high traffic arterials throughout the city so forg along 19th avenue and we conducted modeling to look at the patterns and found a model with traffic volumes and busy streets, land uses that reflect where we have more people living and working and walking along the street really explain our local injury concentrations. as a part of the pedestrian safety

task force process that my colleagues have mentioned the department of public health chaired a data sub-committee and we revisited how we think about patterns of pedestrian injury on the streets in san francisco because there's really a need to focus on resources and attention on those areas that contribute to the highest number of injuries, and so on the left we see a map of over 9,000 intersections in san francisco and pedestrians are injured at 1700 intersections and the top once counting for the number of injuries listed here. this is daunting when thinking about a intersection by intersection approach -- >> can you repeat the statistic. the top 10% -- >> i'm sorry. the top 10 intersections account for less

than 3% of injuries so if we pick the 10 intersections each year we are impacting less than 3% of the problem, so an approach that we developed as part of the task force work was a corridor analysis to looking at injuries and we identified the high injury blue corridors and account for 5% of the city street piles and 55% of sever and pedestrian injuries occur and the total injuries, so this map is after over lay that we can use to inform and investment on pedestrian safety and ultimately meet our reduction goals. this map illustrates the high pedestrian corridors in district 7, and as i think we see a lot of the areas that ricardo mentioned in his presentation and 19th avenue to these areas and ocean toaston

and geneva and terrabell and really understanding how how these corridors reflect pedestrian injury. the department of public health has standardized the number of injuries per road mile in the district so overall district 7 has a relatively low rate of five pedestrians killed or severely injured per hundred miles of roadway annually however with the corridors the rate is 20 times higher than the district rate and the street miles account for half of the sever and fatal injuries, so that's illustrative how the corridor approach can help us focus. another thing the department has worked on is trans base and really a spatial data space and takes the data

and links it to a whole host of other factors including street characteristics, population factors, and other collision conditions to conduct analysis such as the model i mentioned earlier as well as other small area analysis to understand what are the factors. for example who is living near the high injury corridors? and how can the understanding of senior populations or senior centers focus where we're are making investments? and finally the department of public health is helping to support changing city policies and practices ultimately informed by the evidence, so as others have mentioned speed reductions are really crucial. 15 miles per hour in school scroans have been implemented and the corridor programs that the mta mentiond and automated speed enforcement. other practices include

reducing traffic volume so fundamentalally traffic investments that reduce the traffic are investments in public safety. counter these measures to areas of vulnerable populations and as ricardo mentioned consistent targeting of safety laws. they created maps for the corridors for the place station and distributed them to inform that targeted enforcement effort and finally advancing a more comprehensive system so we have the data to engage in the processes and linking transportation infrastructure investments with safety goals so not every -- pretty much every transportation change is repaving is an opportunity to improve safety. >> ms. wier i wish we had longer to talk about these issues but thank you for covering so much in a short time. you mentioned vulnerable populations and the

focus around senior centers or where seniors congregate and safe schools where the schools are and does the demographics show there are some more vulnerables than others? >> yes. seniors are more vulnerable and we have the highest amount in the state and this is a crucial issue. we have a couple more slides. i will turn the presentation over now. >> good morning supervisors. actually good afternoon. i am anna [inaudible] with the health department and the community health and promotion section. i actually manage a number of programs and projects related to pedestrian safety. one is the walk first project. it was a interagency partnership with a grant from the california office of traffic safety. it was a one year project with mta, planning, the transportation authority, and ourselves to look at

pedestrian safety and the capital projects that we can use to improve pedestrian safety by creating a map of key streets and zones that we want to create in the city looking at -- making -- creating a message and data driven process to prioritizing pedestrian safety improvements since we have limited resources in dollars for the really expensive projects. creating some five case study and concept designs to illustrate what we talking about to improve pedestrian safety and creating a capital project list. it is completed. it is in draft form and the pedestrian strategy that will be released in the next couple of weeks is going to be talking about how do you complete walk first and be able to have the city family implement the project list that is create created out of that.

you mentioned safe route to school and a program that is a international movement. we are bringing it to san francisco for the past three-four years and increase walking and biking to school but making it safe to do so for the school children and their families. it involves transportation. it involves health. it involves the environmental components of that and we use the 5e model and education, encouragement, enforcement and engineering and evaluation. we actually just received grants from the office of traffic safety to do enforcement around all 15 schools that are participating in the safe routes school project and senior centers so they are -- our traffic company officers are out there right now every tuesday and thursday rotating through the school to do traffic enforcement during drop off and pick up hours and

district 7 sunny side elementary is the participating school and supervisor yee joined us last year for the bicycle to school day and bicycle to school week is coming up. you're more than welcome to come and as part of an education component for general pedestrian safety we do a lot of social campaign, social media campaigns. this is a project implemented along monterey boulevard with friends of monterey boulevard received a minigrant from the health department to paint the street banners in multiple languages along monterey and connect to the school and it's a couple blocks off of monterey so this is an example of what we can do, and there is a grant coming through i believe at the end of this year. it's a joint project. mta is the lead and d dph is participate to do a safety campaign so we can include elements like this and

that concludes our presentation. we wanted to tell you this is national public health week and the theme is projecting while on the move and we thank you for conveniently scheduling this hearing to highlight the theme. >> thank you. i mentioned the captains are here to basically answer questions that we have and also from the planning department we have adam vara and lily langlos to answer questions but right now i want to go ahead and ask the public to come forward. i will call up your name. several people have submitted cards and you have two minutes to make your public comments at this point. [calling speaker names]

come on up. roger. >> thank you supervisor. i am roger ritter. i'm a 60 year resident of district 7, and i'm current president of the balboa terrace home association, vice president of the west of twin peaks central council. my particular concern is traffic safety on westportal where my wife and i walk everyday and westportal and 14th avenue which currently has stop signs but no

traffic lights. that has become an increasingly dangerous intersection and left turns and u turns and cars essentially forcing pedestrians to play russian roulette but cars may stop at the signs. pedestrians stop and it's unclear who has the right of way. if the pedestrian is in cross walk and cars move forward and we also have a problem with cars with u turns and they are unable to do the u turn and they need to back up and thus jeopardizing pedestrians. my suggestion is for a traffic light, a signal on

westportal and west 14th avenue and a no u turn at those intersections. thank you. >> thank you roger. >> good afternoon supervisors. i am robert gee and we -- the club is in existence since 1935. i am speak on behalf of the club and the challenges in the area and otherwise known as a race track. it's the main thoroughfare down to monterey and highway 280. has neighborhood has young children and baby strollers and seniors and disabled. our pedestrians have a difficult time crossing here with cars moving fast.