This story aired in the July 10, 2025 episode of Crosscurrents.
San Francisco is a pretty small city. Despite those 48 hills, it’s a fun place to walk. But it’s not always safe.
For the past decade the city has tried to change traffic infrastructure to protect San Franciscans. But in 2024 pedestrian fatalities hit a 10-year high.
Now advocates are pushing for change. In May, 400 people took to the public stairways of Bernal Heights to raise money – and awareness – about pedestrian safety.
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Story Transcript:
ERIC CHASE: I think Bernal is the best stair neighborhood in the city.
WALK PARTICIPANT: It's a beautiful walk.
CHRIS KHATAMI: There are long stairs. There are short stairs, curved stairs, wide stairs. I just love stairs.
REPORTER: The SF Stair Challenge followed a winding five and a half-mile route through Bernal Heights up hills and down stairways – and even a slide.
PETER HARTLAUB: You think you know a city and then you discover 45 new things in an hour.
WALK PARTICIPANT: I'm excited that I get to share my love of urban hiking with my daughter who's now ready to explore with me.
REPORTER: The urban hike is an annual fundraiser for Walk San Francisco, a pedestrian safety advocacy group. Here’s Executive Director Jodie Medeiros.
JODIE MEDEIROS: Walk San Francisco exists because we really believe that San Francisco can and should be the most pedestrian friendly place in the country.
REPORTER: But right now, San Francisco trails behind other major cities in pedestrian safety. And get this. In 2022, twice as many walkers died here than in New York City – per capita.
You heard that right. It’s more dangerous to be a pedestrian in the City by the Bay than the Big Apple – and has been for at least the last 10 years. Already this year, eight people have been killed by cars in the city. And 24 pedestrians died last year… making it the deadliest year in a decade.
Numbers like that make Stair Challenge participant Perry Vermillia extra cautious while walking around the city.
PERRY VERMILLIA: You gotta keep your head up, you gotta keep off your phone. You gotta look out for yourself. You gotta be super vigilant.
REPORTER: But city infrastructure plays a big role in pedestrian safety as well. So over a decade ago, the City of San Francisco adopted a street safety policy and plan, Vision Zero. The goal of Vision Zero was to completely end traffic deaths within 10 years.
The program used data to identify especially dangerous streets so the city could focus its safety efforts in those places.
Vision Zero revealed that the Tenderloin was one of these high-injury areas, and so the city implemented changes like 20 mile per hour speed limits and no right turn on red in the neighborhood.
The city also retimed crossing lights to give walkers a head start, and used paint and posts to make crosswalks and bike lanes safer across San Francisco.
Another visible change: removing the last parking space before an intersection to make it easier to see pedestrians. This is called “daylighting” and it’s now state law.
But the initial 10-year Vision Zero SF plan ended last year.
MYRNA MELGAR: it expired during a year that was very tumultuous politically.
REPORTER: That’s San Francisco District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar. She’s been passionate about this issue for years, since her colleague, former President of the Board of Supervisors Norman Yee, was seriously injured in a crash.
MYRNA MELGAR: He was hit by a car crossing the street and spent a good 10 months convalescing. And really he had to like relearn how to walk. That event completely changed his life. And so he's the one who introduced the Vision Zero legislation along with former supervisor Jane Kim.
REPORTER: Melgar is concerned that without Vision Zero, the city has no framework to address the growing danger on San Francisco streets. But she was having a hard time gaining traction with the moral argument, especially after a few major projects angered many city drivers.
MYRNA MELGAR: We just went through this big fight to pedestrianize JFK Drive and the Great Highway. So people are feeling some kind of way. And it becomes like an issue of like my rights, right? As opposed to an issue about preserving human life, which is really what it should be.
REPORTER: So Melgar took an unusual step to get the city’s attention.
MYRNA MELGAR: I commissioned a report from the Budget and Legislative Analyst asking them how much is it costing us as a society? To have, you know, this amount of just pain on our streets, injuries and deaths. What's the value of a human life?
REPORTER: That report came out in April, and the results were shocking. traffic crashes in San Francisco cost an estimated $2.5 billion between 2018 and 2022. That’s including things like emergency services, medical bills, property damage and lost wages for victims and caregivers. It’s difficult to determine how much of that the city was actually on the hook for, but the report noted that San Francisco paid $61 million in claims and litigation for crashes involving city vehicles over those five years.
Melgar hopes putting a dollar value on safety will push city leaders to revise and relaunch Vision Zero.
MYRNA MELGAR: So we know what works, reducing speeds works, daylighting works, enforcement works. Paint and posts are not that expensive. Especially when you're looking at $2.5 billion lost in the last five years, which is what the BLA report said. So it's a small investment.
REPORTER: Vision Zero didn’t accomplish its goal to end traffic fatalities by 2024. Pedestrian deaths have gone up and down since the policy was adopted, with a 10-year low in the first year of pandemic, and have mostly increased since.
But Melgar says that’s not a reason to abandon the plan. Instead, the city should recommit to Vision Zero and update it to reflect how conditions on the streets have changed since 2014.
MYRNA MELGAR: We have a much higher percentage of Uber and Lyft on our streets. We have parklets, we have all kinds of new things that affect how people interact with the sidewalk and the street.
REPORTER: Things like motorized scooters. Waymos. Bigger, taller cars, which studies show pose greater risks to pedestrians than smaller ones.
In an email to KALW, a spokesperson for Mayor Lurie’s office said his administration is focused on public safety, which they said includes traffic safety. They also pointed to the speed cameras recently installed around the city, which are part of a state pilot program.
The city says speeding drivers should begin to receive citations in late summer.
A spokesperson for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which makes the street and sidewalk safety changes, wrote to us that it is continuing the work of Vision Zero, and that, quote, “just because 10 years has passed does not mean we will stop our efforts to make our streets safer for everyone who uses them.
But implementing new safety projects could be a challenge. The SFMTA is facing a $50 million budget deficit for the next fiscal year.
Meanwhile, back at Walk SF’s Stair Challenge in Bernal Heights. people are enjoying a stairway stroll in the sunshine. On the Bernal Hill summit, Walk SF volunteer Nancy Botkin keeps it positive.
NANCY BOTKIN: There's a lot of stress and depressing news about walking.we're constantly focusing on those statistics and dangerous intersections, but we also needed to celebrate the joy, and really the joy of stairs!
