San Francisco city officials listened to a full house Tuesday night as residents from Bernal Heights talked about the death of 30-year-old Binod Budhathoki, who was killed Saturday morning in a hit-and-run on Cortland Avenue.
“I want to acknowledge the heaviness of the tragic passing of this young man who was just three years younger than I am. This is absolutely not the first time that this has happened,” said District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder, who represents the area, in her opening remarks.
“If we do not mobilize to prioritize Cortland as the high-injury corridor that it is, it will not be the last,” she added.
Residents agreed. Traffic collisions have injured nine people on Cortland Avenue over the last three years. Others nearby include one on Banks Street, just off Cortland, and five more at the intersection of Cortland Avenue and Mission Street, including one death last year.
The accidents have been enough to land Cortland on the most recent map of “high-injury” streets in San Francisco.
Ingleside Captain Gerald Newbeck said he saw a short video of the vehicle involved in the accident. The person behind the wheel, he added, was driving so erratically that even a red light wouldn’t have stopped them.
Sergeant Kathryn Winters from the San Francisco Police Department Traffic Coalition Unit said she made an arrest on Friday from a similar hit-and-run that happened in April, but she declined to give specifics on the investigation into Saturday’s fatality.
The timeline of the recent arrest failed to satisfy a resident who has lived in Bernal Heights for 10 years.
“I’m a new mother. I love all of the deterrents we’re doing. What I’m interested in, really, is accountability,” said the neighbor.
“Respectfully, six months is too long,” the neighbor added.
Winters said that adding speed cameras to Cortland will be tough. State law only allows the city to have 33, and those are all currently deployed elsewhere.
Over the last few months, the city has installed two flashing beacons at the intersections of Cortland and Bradford Street and Cortland and Moultrie Street.
Also added: Signs with more reflective technology to help drivers see better at night, said Viktoriya Wise, director of streets at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.
The agency is exploring protection for some of the new daylighting zones to ensure people can’t park there and block visibility, Wise said.
Another neighbor asked if the city could install more traffic lights on Cortland.
Adding new traffic signals to an intersection can take between two and four years to complete, Wise said. It also costs about $1 million. Flashing beacons, like the ones at Bradford and Moultrie, can be installed much faster.
“Realistically, we have to balance the timeline, the cost and, frankly, the appropriate treatment based on the engineering judgment of our city traffic engineer,” Wise added.
Another neighbor said that parents and their kids are nearly hit by cars multiple times a week.
Almost immediately, another neighbor jumped in and pointed out that a police vehicle was parked in a red zone designated as “daylighting” as the meeting went on.
This summer, the Civil Grand Jury, a watchdog organization tasked with measuring the effectiveness of different city programs, released a report examining why injuries to pedestrians and cyclists have continued to rise despite the adoption of Vision Zero, a citywide plan aimed at eliminating those deaths.
Kate Blumberg, the lead investigator on the Vision Zero report, said the problem stemmed from a lack of traffic enforcement. Changes to street design would reduce the risk that cars pose to cyclists and pedestrians, the report read, but past efforts on street redesign led to backlash from communities worried that changes would increase traffic congestion.
The meeting ended just before 7 p.m. SFPD Commander Tracy McCray was the only panelist who did not talk during the evening.
Afterward, a group of neighbors walked to the intersection where Budhathoki was hit, and made a makeshift altar: A T-shirt hanging from a stop-sign post, which they later signed, and some flowers.
It is a sign of our sick society that we are more concerned about convenience than literal lives. The threat of congestion is waved around as an excuse for people getting mowed down in the streets. If there is congestion, more people will opt to walk, bike, or take public transit. If the solution to senseless murder means more people are walking, biking, and taking the bus, then I’m all for it!
P.S. Looks like there are TWO cars parked in the daylighting zone in the picture above. Can we egg their cars if they are parking illegally? Seems like a fair trade-off. Or maybe next time I’ll just walk over the car if it’s in the crosswalk….
Safety and capacity/thruput are always at odds. If all that mattered was safety then we would have a 5 mph speed limit. but the voters would never approve that.
Because it’s nonsensical. There’s such a thing as the law of diminishing returns, and ZERO EVIDENCE in this case that anyone was even speeding at all!
The anti-car clowns make stuff up to suit their agenda.
‘Zero evidence’ is an interesting way to describe a video clip that, in fact, shows the guilty party egregiously speeding. Get a clue
So all car owners are responsible for this hit and run, gotcha.
Not all hit and runs are preventable despite promises from non-profits.
“Changes to street design would reduce the risk that cars pose to cyclists and pedestrians, the report read, but past efforts on street redesign led to backlash from communities worried that changes would increase traffic congestion.” — Kate Blumberg, the lead investigator on the Vision Zero report
Reduce the risk that cars pose to cyclists and pedestrians by how much? Do these treatments ever reduce the threat to zero?
Of the total number of vehicle, bicycle and pedestrian miles traveled, injuries and deaths are rounding error on chump change. Moving around San Francisco might be scary at times, but by the numbers, it is not particularly dangerous.
Given Bernal’s demographics, City government is probably going to bend over backwards to appear conciliatory.
Compare and contrast this to how City government throws whatever it wants to over the transom in the North Mission and expects us to deal with it.
God Marc, are you literally ever capable of using Google? Or are you just too busy being a full time troll to actually connect with reality anymore?
SF’s fatality rate per 100k of population is THREE times the rate of any city in Canada and FIVE times the rate of European cities of comparable size. And that’s just fatalities—not lives shattered by permanent injuries.
Fremont, CA and Hoboken, NJ are just two sizable cities that you can easily look up whose success stories in implementing Vision Zero street design are real and provable.
You’ve posted this same spectacularly ghoulish thought at least a couple times, that just because the area where you live (ie gentrify) has significant challenges means no one has the right to stand up for their community when their friend dies. No wonder you never want to use your name when you post on these sites. And when you show up in public it’s to oppose things that the city wants to build or enact to help people in your community. Why do you even live here?
Chilling and heartbreaking for this local community. Here is reason number 743 why San Francisco MUST turn its gaze to robust, reliable well funded public transportation for all. Once upon a time, the buses in this town ran so regularly and parking was such a hassle that you just opted for the bus. No-brainer,Easy Peezy.
People are going to die in the streets. That’s the reality. Millions spent or not.
The lights don’t do anything. Last time I pushed the light at Moultrie and Crescent, a driver just looked at me an sped up. We’ll probably have to resort to speed bumps to see cars slow down.
Speed bumps also do nothing. Only old people and new drivers slow down for them, it’s a massive waste of money.