PRESS RELEASE: Community Celebrates Pedestrian Safety Improvements 10/26/15

San Francisco, CA – Amid lion dancers and cheering neighbors, Mayor Ed Lee, District 3 Supervisor Julie Christensen, San Francisco Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru, San Francisco Director of Transportation Ed Reiskin and Self-Help for the Elderly President and CEO Anni Chung cut a ceremonial ribbon this afternoon to celebrate the completion of new pedestrian safety improvements in front of the Lady Shaw Senior Center, at the corner of Broadway and Mason streets.

“Our City continues to make great progress in improving our streets and keeping our residents safe while traveling throughout our diverse neighborhoods,” said Mayor Lee. “Working with Supervisor Christensen and City departments, these new improvements will make it easier and, more importantly, safer for our seniors to cross our streets and move around the busy Chinatown commercial area to shop, visit with friends and enjoy our City.”

Added Supervisor Christensen, “Pedestrian safety has been one of my top priorities since Day One. Protecting our seniors and students by providing safe routes to schools, senior centers and parks has been my main focus. Making the 1400 block of Mason Street in front of Lady Shaw Senior Center safer for seniors will greatly improve pedestrian safety.”

San Francisco Public Works installed new curb ramps and widened the sidewalks with bulb-outs to shorten intersection crossings, and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency added the new pavement striping to make walking safer in the neighborhood.

“We’re about making our sidewalks and streets safer for everyone,” said Director Nuru. “We honor our seniors with these pedestrian safety improvements, and what we’re celebrating today will move us closer to achieving our Vision Zero goal.”

The City and County of San Francisco adopted Vision Zero as a policy in 2014, committing to build better and safer streets, educate the public on traffic safety, enforce traffic laws, and adopt policy changes that save lives. The goal is to create a culture that prioritizes traffic safety and to ensure that mistakes on our roadways aren’t deadly. The result of this collaborative, citywide effort will be safer, more livable streets as we work to eliminate traffic fatalities by 2024.

“At the core of Vision Zero is a very simple philosophy: A mistake on the road shouldn’t result in death,” said Director Reiskin. “Our aim is to prevent traffic deaths by focusing our resources on effective engineering treatments, education programs and traffic enforcement.”