San Francisco fire officials block critical safety upgrades on city streets

The fire code is being used to water down life-saving measures

A proposed parking-protected bike lane on Upper Market Street between Octavia Boulevard and Duboce Avenue is on hold because of concerns from the San Francisco Fire Department. Photo by Adrienne Johnson/Human Streets

The San Francisco Fire Department is blocking critical safety upgrades on city streets, clashing with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s plan to roll out protected bike lanes and other life-saving measures as part of Vision Zero, the goal to end all traffic deaths by 2024.

Human Streets has obtained emails between SFFD and SFMTA staff that show the Fire Department’s objections to parking-protected bike lanes on Upper Market and Turk streets and pedestrian safety upgrades on Hermann Street in front of a new LGBT senior housing complex.

The Fire Department’s concern is one walking and biking advocates are all too familiar with: fire trucks won’t have enough street space to quickly respond to emergencies.

The emails relay the frustration among SFMTA staff to SFFD’s objections or lack of prompt or consistent feedback to safety improvements on city streets. SFMTA officials have tried to ensure that the SFFD’s need to rush fire rigs to emergencies on redesigned streets, or deploy aerial ladders for tall buildings, would not be compromised in any way.

The SFMTA Board has the power to overrule the Fire Department in the City Charter but rarely does. Said one city official who spoke to Human Streets on the condition of anonymity: “No one wants to be the person that made a change that made it hard for the Fire Department to respond to a situation. But no one wants to be the person that didn’t make a change that could save a life.”

The state fire code allows the department to object to safety improvements if redesigns narrow the street to 20 feet or less. An appendix to the International Fire Code allows the standard to be 26 feet, but San Francisco has not adopted it. State Senator Scott Wiener, during his term as city supervisor, worked to make sure it was clear that it is not on the books in San Francisco.

Most of the projects being opposed by the Fire Department do not narrow the street to less than 20 feet yet it continues to insist on 26 feet as all or nothing, with one exception: removing parking spaces. However, parking removal is always controversial, and needs the political backing of someone like the mayor or a supervisor.

The Fire Department states its opposition in interdepartmental meetings known as TASC (Transportation Advisory Staff Committee), which are not open to the public.

Protected bike lane objections

In the case of Turk Street’s proposed parking-protected bike lane from Market to Gough, the Fire Department’s feedback came all the way from the top. Chief Joanne Hayes-White made the ultimate decision. Now, Human Streets has learned, the proposal is being scaled back to a buffered bike lane.

Turk Street is a high-injury corridor — a street where a majority of traffic crashes occur. SFMTA officials say between 2010 and 2015, there were 92 collisions involving drivers and pedestrians and bicyclists. On average, that means one to two people walking and biking are injured on Turk Street every month.

Image: SFMTA

Protected bike lanes physically separated from auto traffic not only make the streets safer for people on bikes but for those walking and driving. They slow speeds and reduce crossing distances on streets that are dangerous for pedestrians. But the department has expressed concerns about parking-protected bike lanes.

“We agree with the goal of protected bike lanes to afford cyclist safety,” Fire Marshal Dan de Cassio wrote in an October 19 email forwarded to SFMTA officials. “In parallel, when parked cars are used as the fixed protection for the bike lanes, it impacts access and potential fire ground operations.”

De Cassio wrote that the street width would need to be 26 feet, instead of what would amount to 22 feet to support “aerial operations” and access by other vehicles, trucks and engines.

SFFD had also expressed concerns about the parking-protected bike lanes going in on Seventh and Eighth streets, which Mayor Ed Lee promised in his executive directive last August. This is an example of a project that is happening because the mayor is backing it, overriding any concerns about parking loss or how parking-protection for a bike lane would affect fire operations.

City transportation officials and safe streets advocates are worried about the city’s ability to adhere to timelines under the executive directive and its ambitious Vision Zero goal if the Fire Department continues to object or significantly delay feedback on critical safety projects.

Upper Market Street’s buffered bike lanes are plagued by double parkers. This stretch, between Noe and Sanchez, is also in need of protected bike lanes. Photo: Adrienne Johnson/Human Streets

Upper Market

On Upper Market, the SFMTA Board was set to consider and approve parking-protected bike lanes between Octavia and Duboce on March 7. But SFMTA staff yanked the proposals at the last minute from the agenda of a City Hall engineering hearing — the final step before board approval — because of delayed feedback from the Fire Department.

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, alarmed over that action, sent a letter last week demanding that SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin put them back on the table.

“The city has specifically identified parking-protected bike lanes connecting Octavia to the beginning of the Wiggle as a Vision Zero Priority project for 2017,” wrote SFBC Executive Director Brian Wiedenmeier. “To reverse course at this juncture, after months of planning, outreach, and compromise, would be a baffling abandonment of the city’s commitment to Vision Zero.”

More than 300 SFBC members also responded to a call to email Supervisor Jeff Sheehy and the SFMTA to make sure the project stays in track. Sheehy then announced he would support them.

Emails reveal that SFMTA staff were particularly frustrated that it took more than three months for Fire Department staff to be available for a walk-through to hash out their concerns.

San Francisco is not inventing these kinds of street treatments, which exist in North America and throughout the world, in cities with narrower street widths, said Wiedenmeier.

“It’s a real sad commentary on this city’s ability to meet safe streets that our transportation planners, our first responders and our city leaders can’t find a path forward on this,” said Wiedenmeier. “Instead, we are stuck with delayed or watered down projects. People who bike in San Francisco deserve better.”

Upper Market has some of the city’s highest collision rates, according to the SFMTA: “From 2007 to 2012, there were 27 collisions involving vehicles and pedestrians, 32 vehicle-bicycle collisions and 102 vehicle-vehicle collisions on Market between Octavia Boulevard and Castro street.” Over the past five years there have been 35 collisions, including three severe injury crashes. Eleven of them involved people on bikes.

Some residents have already begun settling into 55 Laguna, the site of 40 residential units for LGBT seniors. Photo: Bryan Goebel/Human Streets

Hermann Street

SFMTA officials have also proposed a slew of pedestrian safety and Vision Zero measures on Hermann Street next to a new LGBT senior housing complex at 55 Laguna St.

Seniors are among the most vulnerable to traffic crashes, and planning for Vision Zero takes into account senior centers and other facilities that cater to vulnerable populations. Last year in San Francisco, seniors accounted for 44 percent of all traffic deaths, even though they make up only 14 percent of the population.

The SFMTA proposed to transform the two-way street into a one-way, and narrow it with improved crosswalks, curb extensions and other safety features around a complex and messy intersection where Laguna and Hermann connect to Market St.

The SFMTA also proposed increasing parking in the neighborhood by converting parallel parking on the north side of the street to angled parking. But fire officials wrote that the street would be too narrow for their trucks to maneuver, even though SFMTA staff attempted to demonstrate the redesign would not impede access.

SFFD also objected to curb extensions on the southwest corner of the intersection. In an email to SFFD, an SFMTA official described that as a “big blow to our initial safety concepts — which again, are meant to support the adjacent senior housing development and a large anticipated increase in pedestrian volumes.”

The real reasons for delayed responses

The Fire Department has not analyzed the reasons for delayed responses to emergencies, but a 2015 Civil Grand Jury report did. Street design was not mentioned in the report. The real culprits, it said, were aging equipment, working conditions, population trends and lack of strategic planning.

Almost 80 percent of the Fire Department’s calls in 2015 and 2016 were for medical emergencies. About five percent of those emergencies — nearly 5,000 each year — were for traffic collisions, according to numbers provided by SFFD. An average of 30 people are killed every year in San Francisco in traffic crashes, and 200 are severely injured.

The grand jury report also found that auto traffic is a hindrance for emergency response: “It takes longer to travel in many parts of the City, not just downtown. The City is growing vertically with the development of many high-rise offices and housing. Each of these issues affects the SFFD and their ability to respond in a timely manner to fire and medical emergencies.”

There’s also the city’s double parking problem. When State Senator Wiener went on a ride along with the Fire Department, he found that fire trucks were getting stuck behind double-parkers.

“I repeatedly expressed to the Fire Department that double parking is a fire-and-life-safety issue and the Fire Department should be beating the drum on SFPD and SFMTA on double parking,” he told Streetsblog San Francisco last year.

Jonathan Baxter, a spokesperson for the San Francisco Fire Department, said the department is mandated to “represent a broader spectrum of safety standards.”

“Each neighborhood in SF has unique considerations for fire ground operations. The Bureau of Fire Prevention evaluates each proposal with the goal of cyclist safety and Fire Department access,” Baxter said. “Only in those instances where safety standards are materially compromised do we recommend exploring additional options.”

Tom Radulovich, the executive director of Livable City, questioned whether the Fire Department’s concerns were valid, considering there are “a zillion” narrow streets in San Francisco that are less than 26 feet wide.

“If it’s a genuine problem to have streets narrower than 26 feet, then the fact that they haven’t insisted on keeping all streets clear is negligent, which seems to me that they’re making it a bigger safety problem than it appears to be,” said Radulovich.

Why not focus on fire prevention, Radulovich suggested, such as sprinkler and electric upgrades. “Let’s harden our buildings rather than design dangerous streets,” he said.

Too often, the Fire Department’s opposition prevents street safety projects, such as raised crosswalks, traffic circles and curb extensions, from even being proposed, said Nicole Ferrara, the executive director of Walk San Francisco.

“This resistance is confusing. Shouldn’t our first responders put as much emphasis on preventing crashes as they do on preventing fires?” said Ferrara.

For now, the future of protected bike lanes on Upper Market and Turk Street, and pedestrian safety measures on Hermann Street, remain in limbo.

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