in our city and the audience nicole snider and tyler frisbee and many others. with that colleagues i'd like to ask if you have any opening comments supervisor christensen . >> supervisor campos. >> i just want to thank you and thank supervisor yee and kim i look forward to the presentations and suggestions and thank you to the budget analysts for their work as well. >> thank you with that i'd like to invite you to present your findings. >> good afternoon. supervisor

mar supervisor campos and supervisor christensen i'm fred r from from the budget and analyst's office. i'm just getting this prepared. today i'm going to summarize the report that we completed at the request of supervisor mar on reduction options in san francisco. i'll start with a quick profile of collision statistics and speeding information in the city. first of all from 2011 the number of vehicle collisions was 3111 of

those 844 involved pedestrians and 630 involved bicyclists. of the -- another statistic is the number of collisions with fatal ities and that number has gone up respect respect ively and 622 collisions in in 2011 and over 21 percent of the drivers in the city exceed the speed limit by five miles per hour or more. this map shows where those streets are and when i say over 21 percent, this was some information com piled by the department of public health, that range is from 21 percent to a hundred so we could have significant numbers of drivers exceeding

the speed limit. >> let me ask you to repeat that. i think this is highlighting the culture of speeding and unsafe driving in our city so at least 21 percent of the drivers are driving over the speed limit and it's on over 88 streets that are identified by that map. >> that is correct supervisor mar and as you can see they are scattered throughout the city. no neighborhood is immune. in terms of the collision history and you made reference to this supervisor mar in your opening remarks there was a drop off and we can see through about 2004 in collisions and then it stayed around 3000 or so for every year since 2006. for collisions resulting in fatal

ities otherwise the numbers are between around 30 and have been around 40 since 2011 we have newer information from the police department that i referenced earlier and this is a 6-year history is shown on this map of collisions due to speeding. again, throughout the city certainly a concentration in the north east quadrant and certain neighborhoods may have higher rates that others but you can see the main arterials are affected here when you look at this map. in terms of current enforcement efforts in san francisco the traffic enforcement unit is staffed with 41 officers 6 sergeants and two lieutenants and we have statistics here from the report that shows the number of citations issued by the traffic enforcement unit and other officers also issue tickets for

speeding and that is not their primary function. so out of the citations issued in 2014 on an on an average that's 20 citations a day. >> thank you mr. chairman. just a quick question how does the number of citations for 2014 compare to 2013? is there an increase? >> yes i'm pretty sure we have that let me just check if we have that. maybe we don't. i think we just got the 2014 from the department. >> you can speak into into the mic so we can hear you thank you. >> we have the total we don't have that broken down for

2013. sorry. i lost the page here. >> that's okay. >> the total was 129 thousand in in 2014 and in 2013 it was 65. >> that's good to know we've seen a pretty significant increase in enforcement. >> we don't know how many of those were -- >> excuse me. the next slide is a map showing high injury corridors for pedestrians for the period 2007 through 2011 similar to what was is shown for the collision incidents. there's the same pattern there, though, the numbers are fewer. >> your skull and cross bones

are pretty provocative there. >> we imported those but i think they do tell the story. >> switching to the pop i to the topic of state law and what the the city can do -- there's actually a limitation of city authority the state and the california vehicle code in particular established speed limit minutes and maximums and sets certain conditions under which the the city can make changes and the the minimum is 25 25 and the maximum is 65 and there's the primafacia speed limit 25 miles 25 miles 25 miles per hour the minimum in residential and commercial areas so the city cannot go go below that with the one

exception within a school or senior center but the city on its own cannot reduce speed limits below 25 miles 25 miles per hour the the city can make changes to the speed limits but has to be based on an engineering and traffic survey and that survey is intended to determine the speed at which 85 percent of the drivers are driving and a change can be made to that so the concept is that most drivers are determining a rational or reasonable speed to drive on streets and the speed limit should reflect that so if you wanted to reduce a speed limit and most drivers are going at the current speed limit or higher, you could not do that under the current provisions of state law because your engineering and traffic survey would not justify it. >> can i ask a question about that? you need this

engineering and traffic survey before considering reducing but it it can't be below 25 miles an hour in general. >> that is correct. >> so they probably went through this process to make that kind of change. >> and for for safe routes to schools and 15-mile an hour zones that's also saying that you could potentially do it near a senior center by creating a zone around a senior center as well. >> yes. >> and that's the minimum limit is if you have a school or senior center you can create a slow zone around those areas. >> right there's one other small exception and that's blind alleyways which can go down to 15 miles per hour which would not affect a large area.

>> okay thank you. >> as part of this report you had asked us to look at research done on the topic and the experience in other cities just a few highlights from some some of the research and this is done by u.s. academic institutions and governmental agencies in other countries and a few of the key highlights from the research reviewed some of it may seem obvious but actually based on rigorous studies. vehicles travelling at higher speeds result in increased risk of collision. and collisions occurring at higher speeds result in more serious injuries or death and one of the specific measures that helps bring that to life is the distance needed to stop. at 30 miles per hour it takes 109 feet on average for a vehicle to stop and one going 20 only requires 62 feet to

stop and this is actually done in the uk and even a one miles a 1 miles per hour increase or decrease in average speed can result in a 5 percent increase or decrease in collisions or injuries and this table shows some of the probabilities of impact based on vehicle speed and based on the age of the pedestrian struck so you can see there's a dramatic increase on the column on the left there of a pedestrian fatal ity so it just jumps to 45 percent at 30 miles per hour and so it may not sound a lot but a 10-mile per hour difference in speed

can have a significant impact. and the probability of an fatality based on age and there's a big jump as you can see with the pedestrian's age and over sixty particularly it gets to a very high percentage probability. >> and in our research looking at speed reduction programs in other cities both in the u.s. and abroad we saw there were a few models being implemented that have been implemented citywide speed limit reduction so that's a program where all streets in the city are reduced they may not be reduced to the to the same amount but they are reduced from what they currently are to a lower amount and there's 33 cities in the uk that have implemented that type of program and we also found a large number of slow zone programs where a certain area of

a city a certain neighborhood has a speed reduction usually to 20 miles per hour for residential streets or sometimes 30 for arterials and for example barcelona and paris and zurich and various techniques are installed to slow down traffic and that's often done in a designated area and you can see here london new york new york seattle and portland has programs like that. there's a traffic program implemented by the mta and we'll talk about that a little bit later. particularly speed

enforcement currently not allowed in california these are speed cameras but they are growing in number in other states and cities in the country. portland oregon has an extremely effective program looked at in detail and other jurisdictions in the u.s. >> you said it requires state legislation to allow a local district to use automated speed cameras like red light cameras? >> actually red light light cameras are allowed in california but speed cameras are not so in fact san francisco has had red light cameras in the past but speed cameras cannot currently be installed and finally the traditional approach which is police officers like the traffic enforcement unit do in san francisco now now

patrolling streets and issuing citations and many jurisdictions are combining these different approaches and implementing programs that have different elements in their efforts. we reviewed speed reduction programs in 6 cities and selected these because they had a lot of information we could access but more important the results are is shown on this table and the cities were london new york bristol england and austria and portland oregon and this table highlights the approach they used a combination of slow zones and traffic calming devices and speed limit reductions for example in bristol england they simply lowered the speed limit

but didn't increase enforcement or put in traffic calming devices of . other cities combined it with traffic calming measures or slow zones and again these are the different approaches of all of the cities we looked at the london experience has been the most interesting because it's the most extensive there's more than 400 areas in greater london that have slow zones established on the residential streets and no higher than 30 on some some of the main streets. in terms of results, they are is shown here again because the london efforts have been so extensive they have also done the most exhaustive research so of the studies we looked at that was probably the most interesting it covered 385 of the 400 zones and excuse me -- here we go. and found

that they had an average reduction in speed in those zones of 9 miles per hour and going back to the formulas i mentioned earlier it it can have a dramatic impact on fatalities and accidents and on the collision rate in general and over the the 20-year period they had a 40 percent reduction and just a foot note on that on that the trend over all of the reduction in speed and collisions in the city of london during that same period however the rate in in the slow zones was much higher close to double so there's a nice control by looking at the over all city versus the individual slow zones and new york was one particular area the clairemont neighborhood in the bronx implemented a 25 miles a 25

miles per hour slow san a 25 miles per hour slow zone and it did not have an impact in terms of lowering the speed although it stayed about the same as it had been before which i hope indicates that people will driving at that lower speed anyway in the neighborhood and had a reduction of collisions of 7 percent and you can see the results on the others bristol england and others when you look at the average change in collisions they all went down in those cities as well and just a note on that also where you see the higher reductions in the average number of collisions higher in ports mouth and higher in london and bristol did not enhance enforcement and finally portland oregon where we don't

have statistics on the change in collisions but they did have a dramatic reduction. >> do you know when portland implemented their automated speed enforcement? >> i think it was around 2006 because i know the study was over a a 5-year period. >> so they should have some data. >> they probably do but unfortunately it wasn't in the information we were able to access. >> two other things you had requested in the city chair mar one was the environmental impact and the other was the economic impact the numbers in terms of studies have been done mostly the u.s. department of transportation studies on the average costs of accidents they are quite dramatic 4.5 million

is is the average cost and that's counting lost wages and medical costs and all related costs to the accident so when a fatality is involved that's the average established by the federal government for an accident with injuries it's approximately 280, 000 and so you can see when you multiply it by the number of collisions in san francisco that there is a huge cost both personal and medical costs and so forth that are being experienced by the people involved in those collisions . finally, oh, and on the environmental we did look at some studies on that the results were somewhat mixed. the main point i guess on that is the best impact in terms of reductions in emissions occur when vehicles

are driving at a moderate and consistent speed when these programs are implemented sometimes they don't assist in that effort because vehicles are slowing down down to go over speed bumps so there's a lot of variability and we couldn't give you a definitive statement it depends is what i have to say. >> finally provided alternatives for the board of supervisors to consider and ranked on the impact on speed and cost and cost will depend also on the expense of the program and the number of elements that the program involves so we measured these by what we're calling unit costs for example for traffic calming the idea is one traffic

calming zone and one additional police officer and in that way we could at least have some apples to apples types of comparisons and rough estimates of costs and the alternatives are pretty much the types of programs we talked about and enhancing traditional programs and increasing the efforts of the san francisco police department in the traffic enforcement unit and i should add we have information from them with the current hiring plan underway to get the number of officers up to the charter man at mandated number the department does plan a 25 percent increase in increase in its traffic enforcement unit and would be increased by by 25 percent in the coming years as the staffing numbers are increased for the department as a whole and advocating for change in the state law to

implement an automated speed enforcement program and as i mentioned earlier that's currently not allowed in the state of california by state law so efforts would have to be initiated to make changes in the vehicle code and if that occurs there are costs associated with one time capital costs with purchasing the equipment and preparing the staff to operate it. a third alternative is advocating for change in the state law to allow the city to make speed limit reductions not based on current actual speeds so you can only make changes based on the engineering studies and based on what people are driving now and a number of drivers are exceeding the speed limit now so doesn't allow for moving the speed limits down if people aren't driving that way currently so that would require

a change in state law alternative 3 and alternative 4 advocating for changes in state law along the same linings and enhancing enforcement of the of the new speed limits assuming that legislation is adopted and the the city can lower its speed limit. >> that would improve the effectiveness of a speed reduction program there's a higher cost associated with it because there would be an increase in enforcement costs and one time cost to amend the state legislation and alternative five as i mentioned there is a program underway currently with sfmta but one possibility for the board of supervisors to consider is enhancing that program additional funding or reallocating mta resources so that the program is expanded and finally the 6th alternative is a combination of all of

the above advocating changes in state law to allow the city more flexibility in controlling its own speed limits and making changes to these speed limits and enhancing enforcement either through traditional means or through automated speed enforcement were allowed by state law by that means also and then expanding and enhancing the current traffic calming efforts. so that is a summary of the report and we're here and happy to answer any questions. >> supervisor christensen. >> i have a question i certainly support chairman mar's support i don't want to put you on the spot i had a couple of questions based on this pretty dramatic to see the change from 1990 continuing all the way the way to 2005 so 15 years of very steady reduction was there

any indication on the data whether we got to be better drivers over those years or whether there were measures on the part of the city that might have caused those reductions? supervisor christensen there wasn't information on that that we reviewed but we've seen that trend in other cities as well but i'm speculating here but every place has become more congested so that that can be a good thing in terms of speed limits but frustrating for drivers. >> we saw backup lights and improvements and things like that and the other question was whether the map that shows the corridors that are the primary problem areas where speeds tend to be high. >> correct. >> is there anything that correlates those areas with current ongoing programs for example we have a number of programs in the city mta

programs for bicycles and transit and we've got a lot of intersection changes and bulb outs that are being made is there any overlay showing what we're we're already doing to try to address those corridors? >> no we don't have that information it's an excellent question i'd like to see that also you may be familiar with some programs and could you know eyeball it but we don't have a map to provide that information. >> i'm sure probably we aren't the first people people to be in these corridors. i find it interesting because i think probably the best changes are the intuitive ones and i've been delighted to see some some of the things mta has been doing in the city alleyways and bicycle lanes things that they have been doing that

intuitively get people to slow down and be be be more cause be more cautious and i think that's great and it beautifies our streets makes the pedestrian experience better so i'm glad to see those numbers are good but i look forward to seeing what supervisor mar had in mind. >> thank you and i want to thank supervisor christensen for those questions i think it would be useful to get the overlay in terms of what programs are happening in different parts of the city just a quick question and i think this is a very important topic with respect to the alternatives do you have a sense of whether or not any city in california has tried to make some of the changes or advocated for some of the changes to state law that are referenced here? has there been any effort on the part of

any jurisdiction in california to make those changes. >> i don't have information on that but our own city has been interested and probably mta staff can address that better than i can but i know there's staff people working on potential changes to state legislation. >> i really thought it was an excellent report just a final question about about london and the 20 miles per hour zones -- who was what was the speed limit prior to shows zones being put in place. >> supervisor supervisor campos most of of the residential were 25 and dropped to 20 and then some some of the commercial and main streets were 30. >> thank you. >> i just wanted to thank both of you for the great report i

wanted to highlight that the speed limit compliance map that you gave is all over the city and i know the mta has identified the pedestrian high injury corridors and the map of the collisions due to speeding in the city tend to be concentrated south of market and supervisor christensen district but still there's a lot of injures on the west side where there's a lot of red lines in the speed limit compliance in streets that you can drive much longer distances like i'm just looking at this through golden gate park i see a lot of red lines and maclaren park and long street probably like sunset boulevard and a few others within the west side of the sunset but i think for a citywide approach and i know our