Last Tuesday evening, February 17, some of our members in District 2 met with their Supervisor, Stephen Sherrill, to discuss biking and street safety priorities in the neighborhood.
Our friends at Fort Mason Center hosted us for a lively conversation about protected bike lanes on Arguello Blvd, connections to downtown, intersection spot improvements, and more.
Conversations like this are crucial for our elected officials – it allows them to hear directly from people who bike and roll in SF on a regular basis, which encourages them to prioritize street safety and active transportation in their work. There is mounting pressure across the city to preserve and even increase parking, remove car-free spaces, remove daylighting, and similar anti-biking sentiment. Our elected leaders need to be reminded that a majority of San Franciscans want safe streets, robust biking and rolling infrastructure, and well-functioning public transit. It is also important to remind them that these things are the future of San Francisco and will create a livable, healthy city for future generations.
One member asked Supervisor Sherrill to share his assessment of how the city is doing right now for Vision Zero and street safety overall. The Supervisor said clearly that he sees the city’s progress as mediocre. He sees that we’ve made some good progress with the new automated speed cameras, red light cameras, daylighting and more, but biking and rolling conditions in the city are still dangerous, and pedestrian and bicycle fatalities are still high.
Supervisor Sherrill shared that today there are nearly twice as many cars on our roads as there were 15 years ago, largely due to the proliferation of ride share companies. The Supervisor shared his vision for more public transit and biking and rolling infrastructure, because he understands that it benefits everyone to have more and better forms of sustainable transportation.
Supervisor Sherrill seemed to converse easily about some of the challenges that people biking in SF face daily. However, it did come up that the Supervisor supports bringing back cars to car-free Market St. By contrast, our members at the meeting gave a round of applause when we shared about our work defending car-free Market St.
This conversation is a great step in connecting our members to their representative in District 2. As he was appointed by Mayor Breed to fill a vacant seat, Supervisor Sherrill will face a special election in June and then will be up for reelection in November. The months leading up to both elections are a great time to talk with the candidates and encourage them to make commitments for safer streets and better biking infrastructure.
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