The obliterated sign meant to alert drivers to the presence of the island.
Albert Einstein said it best: the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
There’s a great example of this happening at the intersection of the Great Highway and Balboa, where a street sign continues to get obliterated, and then replaced, by the city. Over and over again.
Cars turning left run over the small island that was placed there to assist pedestrians that are crossing the Great Highway. But the sign appears to be so short that no one sees it, and even runs right over it.
The sign has been decimated at least 10 times now, according to Ocean Beach neighbor Hugh who also runs ob-kc.com which hosts a live Ocean Beach webcam.
“Replaced at least 10x. The island is about 8″ tall and has destroyed countless wheels and undercarriages,” Hugh told us in a tweet. This latest installation lasted just three days before it was run over.
One look at the photo and you can see how beat up the island is. Yes, drivers should be boo’d for running over the island in the first place, but given how often this is happening, the solution in place is not helping anyone.
So let’s hope that before the city replaces this sign an 11th time, that someone at SFMTA (or would it be DPW?) makes a decision to install a taller sign (or maybe not put one there at all?).
Bets, anyone?
Sarah B.
The island at Balboa and Great Highway where the sign is embedded.
I dunno…the amount of not paying attention to surroundings that I see in this city (cars, pedestrians, cyclists and otherwise) (and yes, I too am guilty at times) makes me wonder just how far in they’re cutting that left turn. I learned how to drive in New England and even I don’t cut it that close. Especially in an intersection that big, with orange dash lines to guide me.
I’ve seen at least 3 different sign heights but none higher than 4′. Many find this intersection challenging judging by the amount of horn activity. Maybe it’s the divided highway.
This thing is hit so often it is surprising it still stands. One cause is multiple vehicles merging into southbound Great Highway and drivers getting pinched. Another is people don’t see it as the sign rarely remains up for more than a week. And finally many are distracted by the beach activity.
DPW is in the process of replacing the 4 way stops at the end of Fulton (La Playa, 48th) with stop lights. It would not surprise me if this intersection is their next target.
The islands need reflective markers for higher visibility. During evening hours, especially when there’s fog, it’s real easy to miss the tiny islands. Not only do they damage vehicles; they also create a safety hazard for pedestrians and drivers alike. There’s another island near Fulton that’s problematic (you can see all the tire marks). One time, a driver hit the island, and overcorrected steering–I nearly got sideswiped, and we nearly avoided a pileup with all the cars behind us. This is a really poorly thought out design and needs to be fixed before someone gets hurt.
The insanity, to me, is the existence of these asphalt islands. Recent additions on Stanyan aren’t high enough to protect pedestrians but still high enough to injure drivers. Seems like a lose-lose.
SFMTA doesn’t seem to take into account human nature or a variety of drivers. For example, how many accidents were caused by the recent split lane painting on Euclid before they added stanchions? Sure, drivers should know it’s illegal to cross paint exceeding 24″ in width but it only takes one ignorant driver to cause a wreck.
If drivers can’t manage to avoid a concrete island and a highly reflective sign, how can they be expected to avoid a human?
I’m going to go out into left field and suggest a roundabout. Seems like there’s enough room there and it would force people to swing wide while turning left. Apparently we’re all too stupid to follow a yellow line.
There is a similar issue at the triangle island on California at Cornwall/7th Ave…. same thing, the sign is repeatedly run down & I hear crunching as people hit the island.
Over the past 20 years the amount of signage installed has more than tripled to the point it is more polluting than the billboards that were removed in the 1960s. They have become visual pollution nobody pays attention to until they receive a moving violation. As a non-driver and non-cyclist, the signs make it even more dangerous to cross at many pedestrian crossings because there are too many poles. There is no protection to pedestrians when a crosswalk is cut through a former solid divider in order to meet ADA requirements. Replacing signage with boulders or cement filled 55 gallon drums might be more effective as would be replacing traffic signs with large advertisements in lurid colors. Considering that City Hall is more interested in cash flow, the latter might be more to their liking.
susan. we need stop signs and crosswalks on 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th crossing cornwall. half the drivers stop anyway, and half go through at 40mph not worried about pedestrians. crossing on foot on cornwall is dangerous
So if the sign was decimated ten times, wouldn’t we only be down one sign? Doesn’t seem so bad to me!
Ugh you just centimated me with that traffic math Ace !
I don’t recall having made that left turn lately but from the picture, if you can’t expect drivers not to run over that island (at least very often) it seems that most traffic indications must be pretty useless these days…
The yellow line in some of these pictures is a guide for drivers heading “straight” from Pt. Lobos onto the Great Highway. There is an unnatural jog in the road that probably leads some Pt. Lobos southbound drivers right into the obstacle.
The really stupid part is that when cars see the obstacle at the last second, they swerve to avoid the obstacle.
Swerves create risks. They may not see that they are swerving into a pedestrian.
SF needs traffic engineers that keep pedestrians, bikes and cars safe. Instead, we have an anti-car regime that focuses solely on making it difficult to drive. This doesn’t fix anything. It just annoys drivers into doing whatever they can to get around contrived obstacles, sending cars directly into the path of unsuspecting bicyclists and pedestrians.
Safer streets include safe passage for pedestrians, bicycles, AND cars. Stop pretending that cars don’t exist.
“Unnatural jog”? “Swerve”? Unless you’re in the left turn lane, you go perfectly straight. And if you are in the left turn lane (a lane which only appears in the last fifty feet), making a last-minute lane change at speed is the last thing you should be doing.
It’s easy enough to see this on Google Maps if you’re wondering. Here is a link: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7753825,-122.5113782,3a,75y,177.26h,61.22t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1ss4i5XyVSXUaOKOal5fWD_w!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
Anyone who swerves here is either drunk or incompetent.
The basic problem is that 98% of the transportation people at the MTA are Transportation Engineers. They are not Applied Behavioral Scientists with a focus on Transportation. So you get stuff that looks good on paper but does not work in the real world.
They need to put up a sign warning about the island sign, that’ll solve the problem…
Actually I like the idea of traffic circles on the Great Hwy. to calm traffic.
One at Balboa, One at Fulton, One at Lincoln, One at Judah, One at Noriega and One at Sloat.
hmmm, a snarky opinion piece…would’ve been curious to hear the other side of the story in true reporting fashion. MTA went to the last community police meeting, seems the author missed an opportunity to address this – they were very open to inquiries! They can still be contacted via phone though.
Indeed Alai, this has been brought up repeatedly at the police community meetings – many are drunk and police are regularly stationed there to be on the lookout for just that.
The cement at Cornwall is similarly serving as a type of speed bump to protect the immediately nearby island for #44 bus, which is heavily trafficked by pedestrians and bus drivers alike. NOT having a sign seems more dangerous than having one, regardless of poor driving thwacking them (and I agree with others that I see a lot of poor drivers in California, particularly the Bay Area).
However, like I said before, my family could make up their minds better what the solution should be if I saw STATISTICS and heard an explanation from traffic control. For us, at least, hitting these indicators hasn’t been a problem.
Buddy, this whole site is an opinion piece — Sarah is a Richmond district resident who writes and puts this personal blog together on top of her full-time job. She can adopt any tone she’d like as far as I’m concerned — I really appreciate the time, effort, and energy she expends to keep us all up-to-date. Maybe our paid, professional journalists at the Chron and the Examiner could attend the meetings and report back to us and provide the statistics you seek, or maybe you or another neighbor could take that on.
They just built more of these pointless medians on California near 20th Ave. MTA should pay for realignments, rims, and tires due to these inconspicuous obstacles placed under the fog.
People who aren’t paying enough attention to notice concrete medians won’t notice people either. If a realignment and new tires is the worst result of their carelessness, they should be grateful to pay for it.
It looks very effective! If you don’t know how to drive with dotted lines, then you’re out of luck.
Speaking of these bizarre street protrusions and ignorance (I’ll refrain from saying stupidity, but it’s tempting), the ones they (or whomever) just installed on California and 22nd and nearby are really dangerous for cyclists. I am NOT one of those “Idaho Rule, screw the law” bikers, I just ride through the neighborhood and have realized that I am already stuck between the parked cars and the moving vehicles and now I am even more squished between them at these pointless islands. Lake Street has them too and they freak me out – and Lake has BIKE LANES.
The roundabout at 23rd and Anza has perilously threatened my life more than once already – I have to ride into traffic going both ways as I create a circular berth for cars next to me going around it. Are the only two considerations on the road: pedestrians and motorists? I walk and drive too, but seriously??
Can someone in charge please explain why we are narrowing streets instead of creating safe passages and room for everyone?
My bad, @Alai. The weird jogs are at Great Highway and _Fulton_, as well as at Lincoln, _not_ Balboa. The photo angle / cropping made it hard to see the wide arc of the line and I mistook it for my recollection of Fulton. I drive this route every day, so the intersections all start to look the same after all this time.
Before the repaving and re-striping a few years ago a car in the south-bound left lane got very aggressive with me at Lincoln when they thought I had wandered into their lane, when in fact, I remained in the right lane the whole time. They didn’t realize that the jog significantly shifted the lanes to the left. So when they tried to continue straight from the left lane into the right lane, they didn’t realize that _they_ were making a lane change. (New striping through that intersection makes this clearer – yay for MTA!)
That said, I still cannot accept that making roads more hazardous for drivers will somehow make ANYBODY safer. “Anybody” includes everybody nearby – all pedestrians, bicyclists and cars around them, and the passengers and driver in that car.
I’ve not hit this obstacle, or others. But enough people have voted with their tire marks and sign destruction to indicate that this is not seen by a higher than average percentage of drivers.
Regardless of the state of the driver, regardless of whether they’re legal to drive – it doesn’t matter. They are on the road with you, and they’ve hit something. They are going to react. There is a good chance that they will over-correct, which could lead them to steer into somebody that they would have otherwise been able to avoid.
That’s not safe.
– Jon
How about they mount the sign on a rubber covered spring. If it gets run over, it just bounces back up.
Your welcome MTA, please send me a check.
“Can someone in charge please explain why we are narrowing streets instead of creating safe passages and room for everyone?”
Put it this way: where are the streets that are unusually wide in the Richmond? Clement between 34th and 40th. Jordan, Commonwealth and Parker. Is that a good use of space? Are those streets extra safe? I don’t think so– you don’t put speed bumps on a street because it’s so safe, you do it because people are speeding.
And that’s what happens. Make the streets wide and straight and “safe”, and people will take it as an invitation to drive faster and pay less attention.
Maybe the mta should put in a large significant concrete barrier that will stop such craptastic drivers dead in their tracks. That should go a long way toward making our streets safe for people walking. We could put an 8″ high sign on top of a 3′ tall median.
“but given how often this is happening, the solution in place is not helping anyone.”
????? The gaps in logic would perhaps be funny if pedestrian deaths never happened.
The outer Richmond has so much unsafe diving, drag racing and poor visibility that I think these traffic easing are presumptively worthwhile.
Less than a month ago a mother was killed in the crosswalks on Balboa out here but we should smugly mock any efforts to slow drivers because …. reckless drivers are still reckless?
The real problem with that particular median (and the one at fulton) is that once stopped at the crosswalk, the median can fall into the blindspot of the driver (particularly those in taller vehicles with large hoods). If stopped for a while say to allow a group of pedestrians to cross or waiting for the red arrow to turn green, they might forget they saw the median as the approached the stop sign, and cut their turn right over it.
Is MTA reading this blog, or better – using common sense? They have now lowered the obstacle, rounded its top edge so an errant vehicle can roll over its edge with less vehicle damage and less likelihood of overcorrection from hitting the old obstacle. Perhaps most importantly, they moved it a bit to the south to widen the intersection so that cars can use the road to make a safe turn without as much endangerment to everybody in and around the car.
I was amused, however, to see that they’ve given the same treatment to the other end of the same island at the corner of Fulton & Great Highway. I hadn’t noticed that one being hit. It’s not on the far end of any left turns, so I’m not sure what the issue was there.
So far there is no yellow reflective paint. I hope that will come after the concrete has cured.
The above observations were from two days’ drive-by. I didn’t take measurements or pictures. I hope I got it right.
Thank you MTA for realizing that artificially increasing the danger for cars does nothing to improve safety for anybody, whether they are in or out of a car.
Now it’s spray painted yellow. Fun!