Vision Zero, San Francisco’s ambitious program to eliminate traffic deaths, is off to a rough start this year — with six people in crosswalks struck and killed by cars and accusations that the Municipal Transportation Agency is protecting parking instead of pedestrians.

In addition to the six pedestrian deaths, three people in a car were killed in a Super Bowl Sunday crash on a city street, and a cable car operator hit by an allegedly drunken motorcyclist in June 2015 died of his injuries in January.

The Vision Zero policy was adopted in 2014 with a goal of eliminating all deaths from traffic collisions in a decade. To that end, a collection of city departments has focused on the most dangerous streets and intersections.

The MTA has made at least 30 major renovations and scores of simpler safety improvements based on data compiled by the Department of Public Health identifying the city’s deadliest streets and intersections and most common causes of crashes. At the same time, police have stepped up enforcement efforts at deadly locations. Education campaigns focused on getting drivers to yield to pedestrians were also launched.

“The goal of Vision Zero is that nobody should be dying on our streets just trying to get around town,” said Ed Reiskin, transportation director for the MTA. “While lots of good things have been put in place, it is troubling and tragic that people are dying.”

Rash of deaths in 2016

The seven deaths this year compare with just one, a motorcyclist, during the first 10 weeks of 2015, and seven, five pedestrians and two motorcyclists, during the same period in 2014. Two pedestrian deaths in March this year have not yet been officially entered into the Vision Zero database but were recorded by the MTA and Walk San Francisco, a pedestrian advocacy group that is part of a community coalition supporting Vision Zero.

Nancy Sarieh, a Department of Public Health spokeswoman, said the early spate of deaths, as well as serious injuries, is tragic but it’s too soon to tell statistically if Vision Zero is losing ground.

“It’s an unfortunate start, but it’s too early to make any conclusions,” she said. “We still have 10 months ahead of us.”

Many of the projects have only been on the streets for months, Sarieh and Reiskin said, and some of the streets and intersections identified as most dangerous have yet to see safety improvements.

Easier said than done

Common safety improvements at intersections include painting more visible crosswalks, clearing parking from street corners, installing extended pedestrian waiting areas and transit boarding platforms, traffic signals that give pedestrians a head start, and bike lanes. Others include erecting new stop signs or traffic signals, lowering the speed limit and restricting turns.

But making major changes to street intersections is not without controversy in San Francisco, especially when it means parking spaces are lost.

“Anything we do to redesign streets is going to have trade-offs,” Reiskin said, “and one of those trade-offs is parking.”

This year’s fatal crashes have occurred at or near the intersections of Leavenworth and Ellis streets, Broadway and Powell streets, Athens and Geneva streets, Market and Seventh streets, Dolores and 30th streets and Post and Divisadero streets. Of those, only Seventh and Market has seen any Vision Zero improvements.

“Every one of those collisions is tragic, and every one of them was preventable,” Reiskin told the MTA Board of Directors at a recent meeting.

Vision Zero, Reiskin said, is a work in progress, and by year end, hundreds of intersections across the city will have been improved.

“We will continue doing everything we can to redesign the streets,” he said at the MTA meeting.

But he said safety improvements aren’t enough. “There are behavior issues at play here,” he said. “We need everyone in the city to be careful and mindful about how they’re getting around. We need people to slow down.”

Parking is a sore point

Pedestrian advocates applaud the progress that’s been made on Vision Zero projects but said they fear the MTA is weakening its resolve, and pulling back on some of its projects, when it meets neighborhood opposition — particularly over parking.

A plan in the works on Taraval Street calls for construction of concrete boarding islands to provide a safe haven for people getting on or off the L-Taraval line. According to the MTA, 46 pedestrians have been hit by cars on Taraval over the past five years, and 22 of them were getting on or off the L-Taraval in the middle of the street.

MTA planners say the boarding islands would make the street much safer for pedestrians. Merchants, however, say it would remove too many parking places from in front of their businesses, many of them small restaurants and shops.

“It will give pedestrians safety but it will suffocate any kind of prosperity on the street,” said Albert Chow, secretary of People of Parkside-Sunset, a merchants association that opposes the boarding islands. “What we are trying to do is find a solution that will preserve parking and let traffic continue to flow.”

The MTA plan calls for parking displaced by the boarding islands to be moved around the corners to nearby streets — a plan the merchants don’t like. Chow, who owns Great Wall Hardware, said many of the businesses, including his, require street-side parking.

Merchants’ alternative

The merchants have suggested that instead of installing boarding islands, the MTA should paint bold diagonal stripes in the street at Muni stops and post signs telling drivers to stop outside the zone when streetcars are present. The plan would allow curbside parking to remain.

While the MTA has not completed the Taraval plan, it may test the merchants’ idea on at least part of the street. That, in turn, has angered pedestrian advocates, who say the agency is sacrificing pedestrian safety for parking places.

“You can be Vision Zero leaders and not let this plan be watered down,” Cathy DeLuca, policy and program manager for Walk San Francisco, told the MTA board.

In an interview, DeLuca said she considered her remarks “a call to action for the board to put pedestrian safety above all these other issues like parking.”

Reiskin said Friday that the Taraval plan, which will continue to be worked on for a couple more months, has not been diluted, and that the MTA is putting safety first.

While the street safety markings may be tested starting later this year on the side of the street where the inbound streetcars stop, he said, physical boarding islands will be included on the outbound side because that’s where the majority of pedestrians are hit stepping off trains.

“I won’t support compromising on those,” he said. “We absolutely will not compromise on safety.”

Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan