Placement of 33 speed cameras in San Francisco under SFMTA's consideration
SAN FRANCISCO - San Francisco's Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) is considering where to place 33 speed cameras throughout the city.
Project managers have made their recommendations about where those cameras should be placed. Fulton Street running along the north side of Golden Gate Park is being considered for two cameras.
Paul Rivera and his family live along this road, and say at times it can be dangerous. "You constantly have to be paranoid or have your head on a swivel," said Rivera. "The cars go super fast and you wonder if you're going to get hit on a daily basis. Especially with a young one. I have a two-year-old daughter."
Rivera has taken photos and videos of the aftermath of collisions along Fulton, some of them serious. He says he wants drivers to slow down, and hopes that cameras that can issue tickets to speeders will be the incentive drivers need to slow down, and would like to see one on his block.
"We should have another camera here just so we could make this like a hot spot and because there's so many people crossing into the park now, because we have this amazing space," said Rivera. "You just have to get there and not have to worry about getting hit while you cross."
Marta Lindsey works with the pedestrian advocacy group Walk San Francisco. She took a radar gun to a stretch of road at Fulton and 10th Avenue and tracked cars going over the 30 mile per hour speed limit regularly, including one vehicle traveling at nearly 50 miles per hour.
She says the speed cameras, which are triggered when a vehicle goes 11 miles above the speed limit, are urgently needed as a tool to slow traffic on some of the city's most dangerous stretches of road.
"A car going 25 miles per hour; 75% chance that I'm going to make it through to the other side of that crash," said Lindsey. "But by the time a driver is up to 40 miles per hour that completely flips. 74% chance that I'm dead or that I'm very, very severely injured."
Speed camera project managers have carefully sorted through data and recommended the city install 33 cameras along some of the city's high-injury corridors. Now the board will consider those recommendations.
Pedestrian advocates say the cameras can't come soon enough. "
We think that they did it in a really data-based way looking for the streets where the problem is the biggest and where the people are most vulnerable," said Lindsey.
Some motorists tell KTVU that they don't think the cameras will be an effective deterrent.
Despite that, the SFMTA is expected to give their final approval on the locations for the 33 cameras in this five-year pilot program in the coming months. Those cameras are set to be up and operational by 2025.
Oakland and San Jose should have a similar network of speed cameras next year as well.
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