Did you know approximately half of San Francisco's street trees were planted by Friends of the Urban Forest over the past 40 years?
You can request a tree for the front of your home or business and they will help you plant it for FREE! 🙀
https://www.friendsoftheurbanforest.org/volunteer-opportunities
Happy Earth Day! I recently learned that San Francisco has approximately 125,000 street trees, so I made a fun project where you can enter your birthday to discover street trees that were planted on the day you were born! 🎄🌴🌳🥳
https://transpomaps.org/projects/san-francisco/birthday-trees
In addition to significantly reducing vehicle crashes, Slow Streets have also had a trivial impact on emergency response times, which is important to know because the San Francisco Fire Department vehemently opposes Slow Streets as well as anything that slows drivers down, claiming (w/o proof) that traffic calming devices (speed bumps, soft-hit posts etc) impede their ability to respond to an emergency.
Now we finally have data to push back on speculative narratives and have an informed conversation about traffic calming and its impact on emergency response times.
Our project also updates daily with the latest emergency response data from the city’s open data portal and is a “live” resource for anyone concerned about traffic safety in San Francisco.
There’s a ton to explore here, especially on the map, and I would love to know what you think!
🚨 New Data Analysis: San Francisco's Slow Streets have reduced vehicle crashes and related injuries by 61% over the past 2 years! Compared to a 5% increase in crashes citywide AND they've had a trivial impact on emergency response times, despite the fire department vehemently opposing them.
Dan Brekke covers my latest project today in KQED. https://www.kqed.org/news/12028444/sf-struggling-reduce-traffic-deaths-slow-streets-could-be-answer
After 4 years & connecting 320 people in need with free bikes, Bike Match Network is shutting down.
Plus a deep dive into why Telraam's traffic monitoring sensors haven't been effective at calming our streets in the Bay Area.
New substack just dropped 🔥
Our analysis looked at city data and eight case studies where waterfront roadways and industrial areas were converted into public parks. In every case, these conversions generated an economic windfall for local businesses.
San Francisco crash & 911 data also suggest that permanently closing the Great Highway to vehicles will reduce the frequency of vehicle crashes and shorten emergency response times across the neighborhood.
https://transpomaps.org/projects/san-francisco/ocean-beach-park
This analysis was one of our most extensively researched projects to date and took us over two months to produce.
Please support our work so we can continue bringing you carefully researched data analyses that help us fight for safer streets and on November 5th, please support our local businesses by voting #yesonk!
Support Our Work: https://transpomaps.org/donate
Learn More About Prop K: https://www.oceanbeachpark.org/
🚨 New data analysis: Turning the Great Highway into a park will bring millions to local businesses.
Our latest analysis predicts Ocean Beach Park will bring $6.3M – $12.6M in additional customer spending to the Sunset District annually AND will likely reduce vehicle crashes and emergency response times across the neighborhood.
https://sfstandard.com/opinion/2024/10/20/economic-windfall-turning-great-highway-into-park/
As I write this, the “Middle Fire” is burning just outside of Yosemite with zero percent of it contained and everywhere you look you can still see the widespread destruction of the Rim Fire from 10 years ago.
As climate change, wildfires and vehicle related injuries in the U.S continue to rapidly accelerate, we desperately need leadership at every government agency to prioritize our safety and the health of our planet over the greed of the auto industry and the selfishness of those who want to drive everywhere.
Here is the current leadership of the NPS. How do we get these people to take action?
I just got back from visiting Yosemite National Park (my first time in 16 years of living in CA). We camped at nearby Camp Mather and on Tuesday we decided to bike to the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir to see where our drinking water comes from. At the entrance to the park, we were charged $300 to enter the park on our bikes. 12 adults and 3 children at $20 each.
As we were trying to negotiate with the rangers, a massive 10,000 pound Ford F-WTF with 4 people in it entered the park for only $35.
It is obscene that the @NationalParkService is subsidizing road destroying, forest-fire accelerating motor vehicles and giving the finger to anyone who chooses to visit our national parks sustainably by walking or biking.
1/2
Marc Hedlund
