SFMTA officials pause on right-on-red proposal, consider citywide ban
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors declined to act Tuesday on a proposal that would ban right turns at an estimated two-thirds of red lights in the city. The board instead signaled support for a blanket ban for all intersections.
The proposal in front of the board Tuesday would instruct city staff to ban right turns on red at intersections with "high levels of pedestrian activity," which longtime SFMTA engineer Ricardo Olea estimated would cover two-thirds of all lights in the city.
It comes after a successful pilot in the Tenderloin where a banning of right turns on red lights led to a reduction in close calls between vehicles and pedestrians. The program is currently expanding into adjacent areas like the Financial District.
At Tuesday's meeting, numerous public commenters and SFMTA directors asked Olea, why not just go all the way?
"We just have to have a full-on debate about going the full nine yards," Director Steve Heminger said.
But Olea said that the case for a blanket ban isn't as cut and dry as it may seem, particularly for traffic engineers whom he described as "divided" on the issue.
Yes, judging from San Francisco's studies, banning right turns on red can reduce pedestrian injuries. But right turns at red lights don't cause many pedestrian injuries to start with either. Most years, San Francisco barely sees double-digit injuries caused by right turns on red, according to data presented at Tuesday's meeting.
As both Olea and public commenters pointed out, one has to look beyond crash data to appreciate the full impact of right turns on red lights.
Olea said many drivers don't abide by a law requiring cars to come to a complete stop before making the turn, and instead are rolling into crosswalks. At the 50 intersections included in the Tenderloin pilot, there was a 70% reduction in vehicles blocking crosswalks, according to data presented at the meeting.
Many public comments at Tuesday's meeting focused on stress for bicyclists and pedestrians who are unsure if a driver will make a right turn on red or not.
Improving the walkability of streets, more so than the safety of them, has driven San Francisco's push for right on red bans, according to a staff memo from ahead of the meeting.
"Walkability is more than survivability," said public commenter Stephen Lawson, a self-described longtime San Francisco resident and frequent pedestrian.
That led many public commenters to urge the board, and eventually a majority of board members themselves, to adopt a ban like New York City's. The New York policy bans turning right on red lights as a default, then allows the city to permit those turns on a case-by-case basis if there is a need for them.
But Olea worried a New York-like change, essentially flipping existing policy on its head, would create a shock to the system for Bay Area drivers—that the argument against a blanket ban was a matter of habit.
California, along with other West Coast states, was one of the inventors of right turns on red, implementing them some 40 years before they were legalized nationally. This contrasts with New York City, which has always maintained a right-on-red ban.
Olea said the idea behind the two-thirds proposal was to make San Francisco's northeast quadrant into a "center of gravity" where drivers could get used to not making turns on red lights, before expanding outward.
Olea argued for the proposal because compliance with signs was necessary for the program to succeed, either as a blanket ban or staged approach. In the memo to the board, staff said that the program needed voluntary compliance from drivers "given limited traffic enforcement resources."
In the Tenderloin pilot, 92% of drivers complied with the right on red signs. But Olea speculated that figure might drop if drivers felt as though signs were at intersections that didn't really need them.
"We're going to have people who could have made a safe turn on red, and they are going to sit there and are either going to be resentful, or they are going to disobey the rule," Olea said. "We will have to explain why the city has decided to do that."
Director of Transportation Jeffrey Tumlin said that these compliance concerns led him to favor Olea's proposal. But Directors Janet Tarlov, Amanda Eaken and Heminger floated the possibility that the opposite might be true.
Creating a whole paradigm shift might be easier than relying on drivers reading signs each time they pulled up to an intersection, especially with the number of signs alongside San Fransisco roadways, Heminger and Eaken said. If drivers knew that right turns were banned by default, Eaken asked, could there then be less confusion about where turns were permitted and not?
"I have a limited belief in the power of signage," Tarlov said, getting a few laughs from people in the room.
If Olea was wary about putting signs at intersections that didn't need them, others at the meeting were unsure how staff would go about determining which ones did. One public commenter, identifying themself as a resident of District 2, questioned staff's methodology for determining pedestrian activity, saying that it focused too much on commercial activity.
Eaken, echoed this, pressing Olea on whether the proposal would a specific threshold for the number of pedestrians to determine an intersection as having "high levels of pedestrian activity."
Olea said the proposal was meant as a general directive rather than a specific threshold, and Eaken recommended that the board continue discussion in September. In the meantime, the city would continue to put up signs downtown banning turns at red lights, Olea said.
By doing so, whether by a blanket ban or staged rollout, San Francisco is among just a handful of cities overturning decades of right-on-red precedent, Olea said.
"The gradual evolution of the profession, culture, (and) people's perception of what is acceptable in terms of driving or design, I think this may start that conversation," Olea said.
