By George Wooding : westsideobserver – excerpt
Supervisor Myrna Melgar, Mayor Breed, and SFMTA Director Jeffrey Tumlin attempted to redirect traffic on the first block of West Portal Avenue. The proposed changes will hurt West Portal businesses, cause traffic congestion, and destroy the character of surrounding neighborhoods.
The San Francisco Standard, April 18: “If it were up to me, I would take all of the cars off West Portal,” Melgar said. “I think that this plan takes most of the cars off the intersection, and that is my goal.”
Westside residents and businesses hated Supervisor Melgar and Jeffrey Tumlin’s plan so badly that the SFMTA was forced to allow residents and business leaders three additional months to form a committee to evaluate impacts to parking and traffic congestion and “come to a consensus that works for all parties,” according to a statement from Melgar’s office. Prior to the committee formation, the SFMTA had done none of these evaluations.
Originally, Melgar had proposed only a ten-day community outreach period to accept the SFMTA’s proposed slow streets plan. The SFMTA West Portal plan was not well thought out, and the people involved may have had limited transportation planning capacity. The West Portal plan looked like it was drawn up on a Peet’s coffee napkin in five minutes…
SFMTA still has no quantifiable road safety data other than right turns are bad, left turns are bad, fast-moving cars are dangerous, slow-moving cars are dangerous, cars are bad, and bikes are good.”…
SFMTA’s Traffic Experiments The SFMTA’s Slow Streets road experiments are causing more accidents and business failures than they prevent.
The SFMTA’s transportation experiment on Valencia Street has failed by any transportation metric. SF Chronicle, April 12, 2024: “According to the SFMTA’s three-month evaluation of the new Valencia Street bikeway, 12 crashes between cyclists and cars occurred between August and October — a higher accident rate than before the bike lane opened. It didn’t help that new traffic rules on the eight-block corridor, including eliminating left turns, created confusion. In September, a left-turning driver killed an 80-year-old pedestrian at Valencia and 18th streets…
Vision Zero Strikes Out: The SFMTA’s Safe Streets “Vision Zero” program is a failure… The SFMTA cannot demonstrate one example of saving a life through quick builds, road diets, and/or slow streets. Over the last ten years, there have been 253 traffic fatalities. The changes the SFMTA is experimenting with will most likely cause a false sense of security and more traffic problems.
“Street design did not factor into a fatal crash that killed a family of four in West Portal earlier this month, according to an initial report from the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency…(more)
The more SFMTA does do to annoy the drivers the less time they spend on improving the riders’ experience on MUNI and the fewer rides they have. It doesn’t take a special survey to count the buses and bikes on the streets of San Francisco. Anyone can do the count as they drive across the city. There are very few of anything other than motor vehicles. San Francisco needs a new MUNI centric leader who will concentrate on serving the people who need the service and leave the rest of us alone.
There are a number of petitions out now regarding the SFMTA and a few of them want to either fire Tumlin or convince him to resign. As we find them we will add more:
SFMTA Director Jeff Tumlin Must Resign! https://www.change.org/p/sfmta-director-jeff-tumlin-must-resign
ABC interviews: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWw6Kw5AwJsThere is a Fire Jeff Tumlin petition that I will link to later.
Stop SFMTA: https://www.change.org/p/stop-sfmta/dashboard?source_location=user_profile_started
Meter Madness 
Well said. The Imperial SFMTA, like the BOS, just does Not Listen to the Public. When they screw up Once, you just hope they’ll learn from it. But when they screw up again and again, you lose patience. These People Have To GO!
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