The City and County of San Francisco, CA adopted its Vision Zero 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. Its Controller’s Office has now launched a new dashboard to benchmark its progress on Vision Zero traffic fatalities, in comparison to 12 similar cities.
The dashboard presents San Francisco in comparison with: Boston; Chicago; Long Beach; Los Angeles; Miami; Minneapolis; New York; Oakland; Portland; San José; Seattle; and Washington DC. These cities were selected based on similarity in population size and density, prioritizing those in California.
The new dashboard explores the traffic fatalities over time, which is a core measure of Vision Zero’s progress. It also records fatalities by mode of travel to better understand which transportation modes are being affected, including pedestrians, drivers, passengers, bicyclists, and persons on personal conveyances (such as scooters).
The benchmarking uses seven metrics demonstrating progress on key Vision Zero indicators or efforts:
- annual public transit trips;
- commute methods;
- fatalities;
- injuries;
- separated bike lanes;
- street network speeds; and
- traffic citations.
Initial results from the benchmark have shown that no peer cities have zero fatalities, fatalities in San Francisco have returned to pre-Covid numbers, bicycle fatalities have declined since 2018, and that San Francisco has fewer fatalities per 100,000 residents than nearly half of its peer cities.
“The Controller’s Office has supported the City’s Vision Zero efforts for many years. We are pleased to provide this new interactive tool for the public and policy makers to understand how San Francisco is performing in the context of its peer cities. Vision Zero is an incredibly important goal for the City,” said Controller Greg Wagner. “There is still more work to be done.”