Jeffrey Tumlin and Heather Knight in Moscow by the Bay

Jeffrey Tumlin

The Chronicle's Heather Knight apparently sees herself as a voice for sanity in a city stagnating in some kind of "progressive" policy quagmire.

Her latest jeremiad is unhinged like some of her other columns (See Heather Knight comes unglued)

Knight today:

Jeffrey Tumlin has worked in cities around the world — from Los Angeles to New York, from Vancouver to Wichita, Kan. He’s worked in Seattle, Portland, Ore., and Moscow, too. And the executive director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency says San Francisco stands out among them all — for being the most conservative.

Wait, what? San Francisco is more conservative than Moscow? “Oh, yes,” he said. “Definitely.” Tumlin and I sat on a green bench overlooking JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park for an interview the other day....He truly believes that supposedly progressive San Francisco makes so little progress that it’s actually among the world’s most conservative cities.

Oh, dear! San Francisco is worse than Moscow, where peaceful demonstrators are beaten and arrested? Knight tells us what Tumlin has in mind:

Just take JFK Drive, perhaps the most controversial 1.5 mile stretch of pavement in all of San Francisco....Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Tumlin said, 85% of traffic on JFK Drive was commuter traffic....It was drivers opting to get from one place outside the park to another place outside the park — by zipping through the park. That, in turn, made it one of the city’s most dangerous roads for pedestrians and bicyclists.

Motorists cutting through Golden Gate Park makes us worse than Moscow? Turns out that it was no accident, so to speak, that Knight and Tumlin had their conversation near JFK Drive in the park.

Knight is a typical city journalist when she writes about traffic safety, since she takes city officials at their word about safety on city streets. 

Apparently she didn't ask Tumlin for specifics showing that JFK Drive is "one of the most dangerous roads for pedestrians and cyclists." How many accidents there, when did they happen, and who was responsible?

Since the city made that part of JFK Drive car-free during the pandemic to give people space to social distance while exercising, there hasn’t been a single fatality there....

That's good. But how many accidents were there before the pandemic so we can make the comparison? We'll never know if it's up to Knight and Tumlin.

The city used to provide some of that information, however inadequately, in its annual Collision Reports, but the last one issued was in November, 2016. That report (page 35) found this: "Fault for collisions seems to be evenly split among bicycle riders and drivers according to SFPD collision reports."

On pedestrian injury accidents: the report (page 29) finds that pedestrians were responsible due to bad behavior for 26% of their own accidents.

Both of those conclusions are debatable, since without seeing an in-depth analysis of every injury accident that happens on city streets, independent judgment is impossible. 

But it can be done. A thorough analysis of every fatal accident in a year was actually done way back in 2015 by SFPD's Commander Ali.

Knight:

But despite San Franciscans pledging to aggressively fight the grave threat of climate change and professing to care about pedestrian and bicyclist safety, if it requires less driving or even giving up access to one part of one road, they balk. City residents have fought over JFK Drive for decades, and there’s still no resolution.

How much does city hall really care about the safety of cyclists? Recall that a UC study back in 2012 found that the city was significantly undercounting serious cycling accidents. The city has never publicly acknowledged that study and neither has the Chronicle.

More Knight:

After two gadflies tried blocking nearly all the pandemic response measures from the SFMTA — costing tens of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours in staff time — Mayor London Breed and Supervisor Matt Haney proposed allowing such appeals only with 50 residents’ signatures or five members of the Board of Supervisors.

Speaking of the MTA's staff, does the agency still employ more than 7,000 people? Why doesn't Knight find out what all those people not driving muni buses actually do all day? 

The city's response to this feeble dissent, approved by Knight: make it harder to appeal a city policy! (See Heather Knight sells city's phony emergency.)

There's more political dissent in North Korea than in San Francisco.

Like all city reporters writing about traffic safety, Knight inevitably goes to the Bicycle Coalition for a sound-bite:

But it’s the same city leaders who lament the lack of progress who aren’t doing enough to fix it. Janice Li, advocacy director for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and a BART board commissioner, said, “There’s a lack of leadership up and down.”

She said Tumlin can complain about conservatism in San Francisco, but his own agency has bowed to the whims of supervisors who don’t like Slow Streets in their districts rather than advocating for their importance. 

Supervisors and people in the neighborhoods remember what the city did to Masonic Avenue: removed 167 parking spaces between Fell St. and Geary Blvd. to make bike lanes that few cyclists are now using.

Why would supervisors want the MTA to come in and screw up the streets in their districts?

He[Tumlin] said he intends to finish his five-year contract, which expires in December, 2024. And after that? “I’m here so long as San Francisco is ready for me to make a difference,” he said.

Get lost, Tumlin. Don't let the screen door hit your ass on the way out the door.