Five years after being approved by the city, a “District 4 Family Neighborway Network” to make eight residential streets in the Sunset safer for pedestrians and cyclists has only finished one of them, on Ortega Street.
Ortega got new stop signs, crosswalks and speed cushions. Construction on Kirkham Street is still ongoing, while design and planning for 41st Avenue has been paused until late 2026. A lack of funding has put the other five on the shelf indefinitely.
“The demands are incredibly basic, and we’re just asking [the city] to complete the projects that they committed to years ago,” said Abbey Levantini, a parent at Francis Scott Key Elementary School at Kirkham Street and 43rd Avenue.
Budgeting is the issue, the city says.
“Given our historic budget crisis, we decided to work only with city partner agencies on construction to keep costs down,” wrote an SFMTA spokesperson. Coordinating with other city agencies “takes time, depending on the agencies’ capacity,” the spokesperson wrote.
Even as early as 2023, the SFMTA announced that funding limits would delay six of the neighborway streets. Ortega and Kirkham were given priority. The design and implementation for all eight streets, according to an initial study, would cost about $1.1 million.
That the street redesign is needed is not in doubt. Sunset residents use their cars, even when they are only traveling short distances in the neighborhood: A 2021 study from the San Francisco County Transportation Agency found residents take 17,000 car trips a day within the district.
“Enhancing transit, walking, and biking infrastructure may help create feasible options to automobile travel within District 4, especially for short trips,” the study recommended. The city approved traffic calming designs for eight Sunset streets in 2021 and began outreach in December of that year.
After the outreach process, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency decided to remove Sunset’s slow streets — established during the pandemic, and made permanent afterward in other parts of the city. The neighborway network might be a better alternative, the agency wrote at the time.
The neighborways were supposed to offer a similar network of slow, calm streets for pedestrians and cyclists. But without a completed network, the sole finished project, on Ortega Street, has failed to make much of a difference.
Ken Johe, whose family has lived at Ortega Street and 40th Avenue for more than 60 years, constantly sees cars driving down Ortega Street, running stop signs or simply rolling through them, even after the speed cushions and stop signs were installed.
“It’s dangerous. No one stops, coming down the hill,” he said, watching oncoming traffic as he washed his car on a recent Wednesday.
In front of his home, students from Sunset Elementary School cross the intersection daily. The speed cushions don’t help much, because they’re further up the street, Johe said — and by the time cars reach the crosswalk, they have already picked up speed again.
“If I had a kid, I’d be so scared,” he said.
Implementation of the neighborway project on Kirkham Street started in early 2025. The agency told parents that speed cushions would go in the summer of 2025 before the school year started, then the timing was pushed to this summer. It still hasn’t happened, said Levantini, the elementary school parent.
“I’ve been so frustrated in recent months that all I can do to advocate for my child’s safety is to send an email,” she said.
The SFMTA estimated that the Kirkham Street project would be finished “later this fall.”
One improved street vs. a complete network
Former District 4 supervisor Gordon Mar, who originally supported removing slow streets in the Sunset, believed at the time that the neighborway network could “better achieve the important goals of slow streets and better serve all our needs.”
Today, Mar said he was “disappointed and shocked” to see “how little progress has been made in over five years.”
“For me, the keyword is network,” Mar said. “One improved street by itself has limited value. A useful system needs continuous east-west and north-south routes, so people can safely reach destinations around the neighborhood,”
The delay, Mar said, points to a bigger problem. “The city may adopt sustainable transportation goals, but it does not consistently provide the staffing, funding and management attention required to deliver them.”
To some, the neighborway project is “a lesser version” of slow streets. Slow streets must serve 1,000 or fewer daily vehicles moving at speeds under 15mph. Neighborway streets, in contrast, can serve up to 3,000 vehicles per day traveling under 25mph.
The neighborway conditions originally seemed more appealing to many District 4 residents, and in 2022, the SFMTA removed all slow streets in the neighborhood.
Residents viewed them as ineffective, and cited concerns with traffic spilling into nearby streets, limits on vehicle access, and drivers who bypassed the slow-street barriers. That decision has now put the Outer Sunset behind the rest of the city in calming its traffic.
“Slow streets in the rest of the city have had infrastructure on the ground for years now,” said Alice Duesdieker, a member of the community group Outer Sunset Neighbors.
“Then I look at the Outer Sunset, where we still don’t even have two of the originally eight proposed streets completed. Five years is a long time to wait for street-safety improvements in a neighborhood that doesn’t even have protected bike lanes.”
Residents living on unfinished neighborway streets, Duesdieker said, have been waiting for too long.
“Why does this one district deserve lesser safety standards than the rest of the city?” Duesdieker asked. “I’m excited for any and all safety improvements in the Outer Sunset. Anything is an improvement.”
‘Ortega is the only “Neighborway” finished in the Sunset’
That’s incorrect, 20th Avenue was completed as a “neighborway” in 2020. Google the 20th Avenue Neighborway Project, there’s an SFMTA webpage for it.
Your average Sunset resident thinks it’s worth killing kids so that you can speed.
The Slow Streets program is far from perfect, and wildly uneven between neighborhoods. But at least it was a starting point. Gordon Mar, at the urging of school principals, opted to yank D4 to the back of the line, so it’s no surprise they’re still languishing.
The schools incorrectly believed “Slow Streets” meant that parents would be forbidden from dropping off kids on those blocks. Mar had the chance to work with them and SFMTA to correct this misinformation and make the program really shine the way it has for schools on Page and Somerset, for example, but he dropped the ball and now it’s worse for everybody.
The supposedly better slow streets in the Mission don’t provide much relief from cars. Only the section of Shotwell where they put in mid-block diverters (for unrelated reasons) is sufficiently calm.
I would definitely say all sections of Shotwell are better than before it was a Slow Street.
20th Street, on the other hand, is languishing, and it’s due to opposition from SFMTA leadership to meaningful improvements. Jackie Fielder supports a diverter and her office got funding specifically earmarked for one last year, but SFMTA canceled the project, citing vague opposition; in reality, lots of neighbors and businesses on 20th Street support it.
I think we need a ballot measure for this.
Budgeting will always be an issue. It’s a matter of priority and finding the right contractor to do the work.
SF is spending money where it shouldn’t. Closing the Great Highway and putting in so much money for play structures to force it into a park was one big mistake.
Look at all the Avenues in the Sunset and Richmond. Observe how many people are running stop signs and speeding. The police are no longer pulling people over and citing drivers.
It’s a huge mess.
The improvements in Sunset Dunes have been entirely funded by grants and private donations, not Rec & Park capital funds. The city itself has on balance saved money thanks to that park so far. Though that mostly benefited DPW, who did the sand clearing, and not SFMTA.
I am surprised the article fails to mention the ultimate slow street recently installed in the Sunset and the neighborhood’s (unhinged) response to it: Sunset Dunes Park. In a time where SFMTA is already strapped for cash, why should it allocate resources to a neighborhood that will likely want the infrastructure ripped out as soon as it’s installed anyway? Maybe Sunset residents should decide if they want to eat their cake or have it.