San Francisco’s most dangerous intersection is one step closer to safety. The long-awaited right turn enforcement camera will finally be installed at Market and Octavia on November 1, catching drivers making illegal, dangerous and in multiple cases, deadly, right turns onto the freeway. There are more injury collisions at Market and Octavia than any other intersection in the city.

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition has been fighting for safety improvements to Market and Octavia for more than a decade. In November, the long-overdue right turn camera will be installed.

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition has been working since 2007 to get this right turn enforcement camera added at Market and Octavia. Our members joined us on the street, in City Hall and in the State Capital to advocate for this critical safety improvement. The Market and Octavia camera is the first right turn enforcement camera in San Francisco, and it took new state legislation and years of our advocacy in order to get it. We thank Assemblyman Tom Ammiano and the California Bicycle Coalition for their years of commitment in helping move this critical safety improvement forward.

While we are relieved to see this long-overdue safety improvement at Market & Octavia, it is disturbing to realize how long this critical safety improvement took, given that Market and Octavia is the most dangerous intersection in the entire city. We call on City leaders to step up their urgency and action toward addressing the known dangerous areas on our streets, particularly in the South of Market area, where we’ve seen a tragic rash of deaths. These are preventable fatalities, and the City must step up  to its responsibility to move faster to fix these streets.

We invite our members to join us in calling on the City to improve SoMa’s deadly streets and intersections now, before anyone else is injured or killed. Please sign our letter to the Mayor calling for No More Deaths on SoMa Streets at sfbike.org/soma and join us for an on-street action for safe SoMa streets on Wednesday, October 23 at 7:30 AM and a Folsom Street Pilot meeting on Wednesday evening.