Three Golden Rules to Improve Scooter Safety

Three Golden Rules to Improve Scooter Safety
By Mona Chiu

The SFMTA has some exciting news for all who use the sidewalk in the city! Starting May 1, 2023, we'll be launching a new safety campaign to promote safe and responsible electric scooter use for both permitted scooter share devices and privately operated scooters. The campaign will focus on three key safety rules that every rider should keep in mind while riding: no sidewalk riding, no speeding and no double riding (two people riding one device). By educating riders about the dangers of sidewalk riding, unsafe speeding and riding, and improper parking, we hope to make the city safer for everyone.

Animation images of cartoon animals riding a scooter. There are two images side by side. The left image shows a rabbit riding a scooter on the sidewalk with a turtle falling and a rhinoceros standing. The right image shows the same rabbit on a stationery scooter with the turtle and rhinoceros standing and smiling.

Sidewalk riding has been a major concern for pedestrians in San Francisco, and it's illegal to ride an electric scooter on the sidewalk.

Animated image of a cat, turtle and rabbit on a scooter with a bear holding up their hand attempting to the stop the riders.

Electric scooters can travel at speeds of up to 15 miles per hour, which can be dangerous if riders aren't paying attention to their surroundings. The SFMTA's safety campaign will encourage riders to be mindful of their speed (riding over 15 miles per hour is illegal) and to obey traffic laws.

The campaign will also focus on emphasizing double riding is illegal. By law, only one rider should ride a scooter at a time.

Animated image of a rabbit on the scooter with a bottle. They are confused and distraught.

To spread the word about this safety campaign, we will be placing posters on Muni buses, displaying ads in Muni bus stops and running ads on social media. This should help us reach as many scooter riders as possible and encourage them to prioritize safety while riding.

Three images showing the side of a bus, a station platform sign and a close up of a car car inside a bus.

The SFMTA already has been actively working to improve scooter safety in San Francisco. We have implemented several policies and regulations, including:

Requiring permitted scooter companies to provide a lock-to system to keep parked scooters out of the accessible path of travel
Requiring permitted scooter companies to develop and implement a plan for safe riding. These plans include rider training, in-app messages with safety messages and sidewalk detection technology on their devices.
Encouraging scooter permittees to adopt an escalating penalty structure for improper riding and parking
Working with the Port of San Francisco to reduce sidewalk riding on the Embarcadero.

The agency has also worked to improve infrastructure for scooter riders. We have installed:

3,000+ racks installed since the beginning of scooter permit program in 2018
11,000+ bike racks available citywide for scooter parking
465 miles of bikeways in San Francisco
78 miles off-street paths
139 miles of bike lanes (Class II)
43 miles of separated bikeways (Class IV)
45 miles of bike lanes and separated bikeways added since 2018
33 miles of Slow Streets

The agency is also working to expand the active transportation network in the city through our new Active Communities Plan.

If you want to report any complaints related to scooter riding, you can call 311 or visit the 311 website.

To learn more about what the SFMTA is doing to promote a safe and useful scooter share system, visit our scooter share permit project page and view our data dashboards.

Published May 01, 2023 at 10:02PM
https://ift.tt/jnFxJBb

Comments

New Customer Information System Signs Coming to a Transit Shelter Near You!

New Customer Information System Signs Coming to a Transit Shelter Near You! By Kharima Mohamed As part of the Next Generation Customer Information System project, over 700 new Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) signs will display real-time information at Muni transit shelters. Approximately one-third of these signs will be double-sided to provide additional visibility at the highest-ridership stops and major transfer points. This week we installed a single-sided prototype at Eddy and Larkin streets. Serving the Tenderloin, an Equity Neighborhood , this sign will feature real-time predictions for the 19 Polk and 31 Balboa routes. The primary purpose for installing this prototype is to conduct in-field hardware testing, especially with rain, wind and colder temperatures. We know there is an urgent need for more effective signage and are excited to roll out the new customer information system later this year. The new LCD signs will eventually replace all existing Next...

New Sculptures Light up Van Ness Avenue

New Sculptures Light up Van Ness Avenue By Luis “Loui” Apolonio Light sculpture at Van Ness Avenue and O'Farrell Street Spectators gathered both online and in person to watch new lighting sculptures on Van Ness turned on for the first time on March 31, 2022. The whimsical and brightly colored sculptures located on the new Van Ness BRT boarding platform between Geary and O’Farrell are made of steel with LED lights inside on a timer set to illuminate at night. The lighting event was kicked off with SFMTA Director Jeff Tumlin and MTAB Chair Gwyneth Borden serving as emcees. Mary Chou, Director of Public Arts and Collections at the San Francisco Arts Commission, spoke about the art installation itself, as well as the process for selecting the artist who would be awarded the project. In addition, Maddy Ruvolo, a member of the SFMTA’s Accessible Services team and a recently appointed member of President Biden’s U.S. Access Board, shared the importance of having accessibility as a ...

Gene Henderson: Honoring Muni’s First Black Division Manager

Gene Henderson: Honoring Muni’s First Black Division Manager By Jeremy Menzies In recognition of Black History Month, we bring you the story of Gene Henderson, the first Black man to become the head of a Muni bus division, Muni’s Kirkland Division. Henderson’s Background Gene Henderson was born in Houston, Texas, in 1916. He married his wife Naomi in 1939 and then served in the U.S. Army during World War II. Following the war, Gene and his family moved to San Francisco where he began his career at the San Francisco Municipal Railway. Early Career On February 1, 1946, Henderson was hired as a streetcar motorman out of Sutro Division, which was located on the corner of 32nd Ave. and Clement St. He was hired just five years after Muni’s first Black transit operator, Audley Cole, had successfully fought to integrate the carmen’s union in 1941. In his early days at Muni, Gene worked one of the three lines running out of Sutro Division from the Ferry Building to the Richmond District o...

Muni’s Equity Toolkit Helps Essential Employees Get to Work

Muni’s Equity Toolkit Helps Essential Employees Get to Work By Mariana Maguire The latest data from SFMTA’s new Equity Toolkit shows that Muni service changes are helping people in neighborhoods identified by our Muni Service Equity Strategy access more jobs and support the city’s recovery. In winter 2020, we launched the SFMTA Equity Toolkit to understand how service decisions are affecting neighborhoods where there is likely a high prevalence of essential workers who rely predominantly on Muni to get to their essential jobs. Our goal is to make better service decisions based on the trends and impacts we see in the Equity Toolkit. Recently, the greatest increases in access to jobs via Muni have been in Hunters Point and Western Addition....

Youth Voices for Vision Zero SF

Youth Voices for Vision Zero SF By Christine Osorio Starting in the month of February, Muni buses and transit shelters will feature youth artwork illustrating Vision Zero traffic safety messages. The students are part of Youth Art Exchange (YAX), an arts-education non-profit based whose mission is to support San Francisco’s public high school students in becoming leaders, thinkers, and artists by sharing creative practices with professional artists. As part of Supervisor Norman Yee’s District 7 participatory budget process, YAX students consulted with SFMTA staff to develop traffic safety messages and artwork that reflect their experiences around traffic safety. Themes highlighted through Youth Voices for Vision Zero SF include general traffic safety such as: Yielding to pedestrians in the crosswalk. Slowing down. Understanding that traffic deaths are preventable. Watching for people biking. Not blocking the sidewalk with a scooter. The student artwork also included Covid-...

Showdown at the Cow Palace

Showdown at the Cow Palace By Lori Phelan Some of the agency’s most skilled transit operators, mechanics and parking control officers recently polished up their silver stars and rode into Daly City for an epic showdown at the Cow Palace. It was a chance to show they were the best of the best. And boy did they deliver! The SFMTA Roadeo had dozens of transit operators navigate through a course containing various obstacle while under a strict time limit. The event was the 32nd Annual Bus Roadeo (and yes, you read that correctly). The name "roadeo" is derived from the better-known horse rodeo competition. The original roadeos, which began in 1937, featured trucks in various categories going through the same obstacles that drivers go through today. The agency took on the moniker in 1974 and held the inaugural event in the parking lot at the former Candlestick Park. It was there a dozen transit operators competed to determine who would lasso the award as best driver. T...

New top story from Time: Louisiana Congressman-Elect Luke Letlow, 41, Dies After Contracting COVID-19

https://ift.tt/3aTJqOA (BATON ROUGE, La.) — Luke Letlow, Louisiana’s incoming Republican member of the U.S. House, died Tuesday night from complications related to COVID-19 only days before he would have been sworn into office. He was 41. Letlow spokesman Andrew Bautsch confirmed the congressman-elect’s death at Ochsner-LSU Health Shreveport. “The family appreciates the numerous prayers and support over the past days but asks for privacy during this difficult and unexpected time,” Bautsch said in a statement. “A statement from the family along with funeral arrangements will be announced at a later time.” Louisiana’s eight-member congressional delegation called Letlow’s death devastating. “Luke had such a positive spirit, and a tremendously bright future ahead of him. He was looking forward to serving the people of Louisiana in Congress, and we were excited to welcome him to our delegation where he was ready to make an even greater impact on our state and our nation,” th...

Top 25,000 defaulting taxpayers to be persuaded to file GST returns by Nov 30, tax officers to send reminders https://ift.tt/3mm19Rt

The Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN) along with tax officials have decided to persuade 25,000 taxpayers, who have defaulted to file their GSTR-3B returns by the November 20 due date for the month of October, to file the same.

New top story from Time: Hurricane Isaias Bears Down on Bahamas and Florida After Battering Puerto Rico

https://ift.tt/2Din2zF (SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico) — New Hurricane Isaias kept on a path early Friday expected to take it to the U.S. East Coast by the weekend as it approached the Bahamas, parts of which are still recovering from the devastation of last year’s Hurricane Dorian. Isaias had maximum sustained winds of 80 mph (130 kph) late Thursday and was centered about 70 miles (110 kilometers) east-southeast of Great Inagua Island in the Bahamas, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. It was moving northwest at 18 mph (30 kph). It was forecast to pass over the southeastern Bahamas during the night, be near the central Bahamas late Friday and move near or over the northwestern Bahamas and near South Florida on Saturday. On Thursday while still a tropical storm, Isaias knocked out power, toppled trees and caused widespread flooding and small landslides in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, where at least 35 people were rescued from floodwaters and one person remained m...

New T Third Connecting Chinatown to Sunnydale Starts Saturday

New T Third Connecting Chinatown to Sunnydale Starts Saturday By Christopher Ward New Muni Metro map. This Saturday the T Third starts its long-awaited new route connecting Chinatown-Rose Pak Station from 4th & King in Central Subway, Mondays through Fridays, 6 a.m. to midnight every 10 minutes and Saturdays and Sundays, 8 a.m. to midnight every 12 minutes. The K Ingleside will now travel between Balboa Park and Embarcadero Station. Customers using Embarcadero & Folsom, Embarcadero & Brannan and 2nd and King platforms should transfer to the N Judah at Powell Station or 4th & King. Watch the new Muni Metro service map animations . The following bus service changes also start this Saturday: The T Third Bus will now run along 3rd and 4th Streets in SoMa and on Stockton Street north of Market Street to align with the new T Third rail line and will no longer travel on the Embarcadero and Market Street. The 6 Haight/Parnassus will now...

My precise view

Search This Blog