Bicyclist Killed in Hit and Run Collision at Masonic and Turk

UPDATE 10:30 a.m. Saturday:

SFPD Officer Samson Chan provided further details about last night's fatality collision at Masonic and Turk. The crash occurred at 10:40 pm and involved a 21-year-old white male and a 38-year-old motorist of a 1989 Mercedes. Chan reported that the "victim died from injuries." He added that "the suspect fled the scene but was later caught by officers and arrested and jailed." Further details on the collision are under investigation.

A bicyclist was killed Friday evening about midnight in a collision with a motorist on Masonic Avenue at Turk Street. A neighbor who lives near the intersection reported to BIKE NOPA that when she returned home last night just after the collision occurred she found most of the block cordoned off with tape and about 20 police officers and police photographers at the site. It appeared to her that a driver in a Mercedes and a bicyclist were involved in the crash. Pieces of the bicycle were strewn about half a block with pieces of shattered wheel under the car, and clothes were shredded down the street. "It looked like things did not end well for whomever was on the bike, " she wrote in an email. This morning SFPD Park Station confirmed that the bicyclist was taken to San Francisco General Hospital and had died. No further information is available at this time, but an investigation is underway.

The neighbor who contacted BIKE NOPA added that there are "always terrible accidents at the Turk and Masonic intersection." During a June 15th community meeting about traffic calming for Masonic Avenue, MTA staff presented collision data for the Masonic corridor. Between 2004-2009, 11 collisions involving motorists, bicyclists, or pedestrians occurred at Masonic and Turk.

Note: an earlier post mistakenly suggested a possible discrepancy in collision data for this intersection; the differences in analysis exist for the Fell and Masonic intersection instead.

Seen While Biking: Crosswalks for Vehicles

Every school day this is how it goes: parents and/or guardians drop off and pick up kids at San Francisco Day School (SFDS) on Golden Gate between Masonic and Central. The vehicular line-up often fills Golden Gate, extends up Central, and onto Turk Street. Many motorists are aware that they should not idle astride crosswalks, especially when the SFDS monitor stands at the corner. Others are apparently oblivious to the idea that they are waiting to pick up their own kids while blocking someone else's kids from safely crossing the street.

SFDS has improved the situation immensely during the last few years. The school instituted more vigilant monitoring of the line-up with crossing guards at the intersections, staggered times for kids leaving school, and reminding parents to be more considerate and more safety-minded. But the waiting motorists continue to block the bike lane and too often straddle the crosswalks. Pedestrians must walk into the street which is overly congested with the queue of waiting motorists. And bicyclists: forget the bike lane on that side of the block; its full of vehicles.

The situation is better than it was before, but if you're a parent, a kid, or even simply a neighbor who wants to cross the street using the crosswalk, "better" falls short of safe enough.

NOPA Gets Its First Bulbout

Bulbouts are cool, and NOPA now boasts one of its own. As part of the street renewal of the Divisadero Corridor, bulbouts will appear at select intersections. First up is the southwest corner of McAllister. The Divis re-design unfortunately retains the skinny sidewalks, but stop by the bulbout and see what some extra breathing and moving space is like.

Bulbouts are all about pedestrian safety. They extend the corner sidewalk and thus shorten street crossing time for pedestrians and permit better visibility of peds by drivers. They also permit more expansive landscaping. With the new pedestrian refuges -- cut-outs in the concrete median -- crossing Divis at a few locations will be decidedly safer. But these sidewalk enhancements don't come cheap. Walk San Francisco estimates that bulbouts cost up to to $500,000 each.

And then there's the law of unintended consequences: bulbouts used for pull-over deliveries with trucks straddling the street and the new extended sidewalk. The fellow in this potato chip truck explained, reasonably so, that the bulbout wasn't there two days ago and it caught him by surprise. Fair enough. But a "surprise" is only good for the first time.

We're already into Week Four of the Divisadero revitalization. Last week the west side of the corridor from Fell to Grove took its turn with the tear-up, and motorists traveling north between Grove and McAllister are perhaps already forgetting how rutted, cracked, and potholed that stretch was just a few days earlier.

The east end of Turk street is about to get its own spiff-over. With the same federal stimulus dollars that cover the Divisadero work, Turk will be resurfaced from Market to Van Ness with sidewalk upgrades and curb improvements as well.

The Dying Trees on Turk Street

What's killing the street trees on the north side of Turk Street? Lack of water and lack of care certainly; lack of a plan evidently. Last January or February that much-too-wide expanse of asphalt, a.k.a. Turk Street, was graced with more than thirty street trees planted between Broderick and Central on the north side. Neighbors noted the 20 foot Ash Fraxines

trees standing tall and erect like a row of soldiers ready to enliven this traffic corridor while they did their environmental duty.

But now the once bright green leaves are browning and most branches have lost all their leaves. The Department of Public Works' Bureau of Urban Forestry used a contractor to plant the trees, but neither the contractor nor the city had a plan for watering the trees. One Turk Street neighbor reports that the trees haven't been watered even once.

Greening San Francisco makes little sense when a project literally goes Brown.

The city maintains trees planted along certain streets but not others. According to the city Street Tree Map, the city is responsible for street trees on both sides of Turk Street from Laguna to Broderick; further west from Broderick, tree care is the responsibility of the property owner. But many of the residences along this stretch are perched high above on the Anza Heights cliff -- not exactly easy to water the trees below. And it's not clear that the property owners were even notified of the new plantings that were placed by a city contractor.

DPW reports that city foresters are aware of the problem. The department's Urban Forester, Carla Short, is now managing the contract and is trying to get the trees watered on a regular basis. But for now, the trees continue to die for lack of water.

If you're concerned about the dying trees on Turk Street, call 311 and request that DPW develop a long-term plan as well as providing immediate relief to save the trees. You can also contact the Bureau of Urban Forestry at 641-2676. Urban Forester Carla Short can be reached at 641-2674.