Vigil and call for safety measures after San Francisco's 2nd pedestrian killed in 20 days

SAN FRANCISCO - Dozens of people shut down several blocks of Valencia Street in San Francisco's Mission District Friday, stopping traffic around 5 p.m. and calling for city officials to make the streets safer after the second fatal pedestrian death in just three weeks. 

They marched in memory of a woman they don't know, but who was killed January 10, a fellow pedestrian who was hit by a car while walking along the same paths these neighbors say they have walked every day.

"I've walked on this crosswalk hundreds of times, and I've had so many close encounters. This could have been any one of us," said Adam Egelman, who helps advocate for pedestrian and bicycle safety through the group, Safe Street Rebel.

"Oftentimes it is our elders, children, people who have disabilities, people who are vulnerable in other ways who get killed," said Aditya Bhumbla, another volunteer with Safe Street Rebel.

Protestors say the city's Vision Zero plan to eliminate traffic fatalities by 2024 is not moving quickly enough.

"We're calling for a Mission transportation plan," said Kevin Ortiz, co-founder of Mission Destino, a Latino transportation advocacy group which helped organize the vigil and march. "SFMTA tends to come in do very blanket policies. It's really top down, top-down, not really from the bottom up."

They want SFMTA to work more collaboratively with community members.

Rosa Chen with the Chinatown Community Development Center also attended the vigil. She says that many Asians are living in senior homes near the intersection, and she's skeptical that the city can reach zero fatalities by next year.

Since Vision Zero began in 2014, the SFMTA says an average of 30 people every year have been killed and more than 500 severely injured on city streets.

An SFMTA spokeswoman Erica Kato says there has been progress, focusing on areas of the city with the most high injury collisions.

Over the past five years, the agency says they have added more than 600 new speed bumps, modified intersections with so-called scrambles where pedestrians and cars take turns entering intersections, and plan to lower speed limits to 20 miles an hour on many streets.

"For us it's not fast enough, it's not urgent enough we want our city leaders to put this at the top priority for their agendas," said Jodie Medeiros, executive director of Walk SF.

She says they city leaders should focus on simple and expedient solutions such as removing left-turns in areas such as Valencia and 16th Streets, especially in areas such as San Francisco's Mission District.

"It's important people most vulnerable get the most attention," said Medeiros.