We learned yesterday that a man riding on a bike was struck and killed late on Sunday, November 16, by a person driving a car, at Alemany and Naglee in the Outer Mission. The person driving the car fled the scene, but a suspect has been apprehended by SFPD.
Though his identity isn’t known to us yet, our thoughts are with the person’s friends and family as they navigate this heartbreak, and our hearts are heavy today – no one should ever lose their lives while riding a bicycle on our city’s streets.
As we wait to learn more details about the person who was killed this week, what we do know is that Alemany Blvd is a nightmare for people to ride on, and has been for years.
As a wide four-lane road with 30mph posted speed limits, Alemany is unsurprisingly a known high speed corridor – in fact, SFMTA placed one of the automated speed enforcement cameras on Alemany between Naglee and Farragut, near where this crash happened, and data shows that 27% of people were driving more than 10mph over the posted speed limit before the implementation of the speed enforcement cameras. And while the cameras are proving effective at lowering reckless speeds, automated enforcement alone is not sufficient to protect people’s lives.
Alemany Blvd is the main designated bike route between the south and southwest of the city into the heart of San Francisco. Yet west of Rousseau, Alemany bike infrastructure consists of paint-only bike lanes for the entire length of the corridor through Mission Terrace and Outer Mission, which we know fails to protect people biking, particularly along wide roads with high speeds. The existing painted lanes on Alemany are an insufficient facility for people biking, especially in a part of the city where residents are disastrously underserved by All Ages and Abilities facilities.
And the consequences of this unsafe road design have been tragic – since 2017, there have been dozens of traffic-related collisions resulting in injuries or death involving people biking or walking along Alemany in District 11.
We have long called for improvements not just to Alemany, but also many other streets on the High Injury Network and inadequately protected bikeways in southern San Francisco that have been putting residents in those neighborhoods at risk of serious injury or death for many years.
Today, in the wake of another preventable death along this corridor, we demand that city leaders direct the SFMTA to accelerate implementation of street safety and traffic calming projects in D11, and prioritize projects that adhere to All Ages and Abilities standards, to ensure that everyone in San Francisco can get where they need to go by their chosen mode without risking their lives.
