On March 25, 2026 the Better and Safer Streets (BASS) Collaborative hosted our first Fillmore/Western Addition community meeting at Community Day, a weekly neighborhood event housed in the African-American Arts Complex. 17 members of the community – residents, neighborhood leaders, and Raynell Cooper from the District 5 Supervisors office – came to the meeting.
Each member of the BASS Collaborative presented key issues for street safety in the Fillmore/ Western Addition including both regional and local transportation measures this November, TKTKTK walking signals, and implementing the Fillmore/Western Addition Community Action Plan from the Biking and Rolling Plan (BRP), San Francisco’s first update to the bike plan since 2009 which was adopted by the City in March 2025.
Between 2023 and 2025, New Community Leadership Foundation led many neighborhood meetings with residents and community-based organizations to create the Fillmore/Western Addition Community Action Plan.
We learned from the outreach process that residents want to be more engaged in designing and planning efforts for their neighborhood, that all transportation projects should focus on the needs of low-income families, and that the City and advocates alike must rebuild trust in the community and repair past harms.
We focused our presentation on the priorities identified by the community action plan: youth education and programming, culturally relevant events and programs, and expanding access and affordability to biking and rolling options. SFBike supports these priorities and have successfully implemented similar programs and events across the City. In the Bayview, we distribute over 100 bikes every year at the B’Magic backpack bike giveaway, and we’ve successfully curated culturally relevant events like the first Bayview Black History Bike Ride and youth programs like the Black Bike project in partnership with Rafiki Coalition.
After the presentations, community members shared their ideas about how they’d like to see us move their priorities forward. We heard valuable feedback about the need for more free and affordable bike repair clinics because people “have bikes in the neighborhood but don’t ride them because of a flat tire or something small.” We also heard strong support for free bicycle education classes and programming. Lastly, attendees were interested in learning more about safe biking routes to downtown and the Mission and we were able to provide route planning support for some members. Having these discussions with the Fillmore community will help in future outreach and advocacy efforts with supporting the community with the tools, and information they need to acquire for bike and street safety.
This first meeting was a great way to introduce ourselves to the Fillmore/Western Addition community and we are excited to hear support for our priorities. We are planning to schedule a regular, every other month cadence of meetings in the Fillmore and encourage you to sign up for updates if you live or work in the neighborhood.
