By Tay Wiles, Mission Local
Mission Local sat down recently with District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener to talk about issues affecting San Franciscans and Mission residents.
Mission Local: You recently introduced legislation on pedestrian safety. Why is walkability important to the average citizen?
Scott Wiener: Having walkable neighborhoods, people get to know their neighbors. It increases public safety if people are out on the streets. It’s good for the environment and you get exercise.
We want to make sure that people can walk in not just a safe way, but a comfortable way. So having shorter crossing distances at intersections; having bulb-outs [enlarged sidewalk corners], where you have better eye contact between turning cars and pedestrians so they’re more likely to see each other; [and] having plazas, so we have good public spaces where people can gather and hang out.
Guerrero Street is a mess when it comes to pedestrian safety. Guerrero has really fast traffic. It’s challenging for pedestrians, and we need to take every opportunity to upgrade it.
Right now, we are in the process of working on every single curb corner in the city to upgrade them for those yellow ADA ramps. We need to make sure as we’re doing that, we’re saying, OK, should we rebuild it with the exact same dimensions, or should we consider bulbing out?
I’m very focused on trying to find the funding to upgrade the intersection [of 18th Street and Dolores] because it’s incredibly heavy pedestrian traffic there on any nice day in Dolores Park. That intersection needs to be bulbed out and to have better, more visible crosswalks.
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