Supervisor Melgar and SFMTA Are Ignoring the Voices of West Portal Residents and Businesses

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On March 13, 2024, a family of four was tragically killed by an errant driver on Ulloa Street.  In response to “do something”, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) and District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar sought to address the tragedy by: 

a) dusting off an existing and rejected plan from 2019 to give the West Portal Station a facelift, that in no way addressed the location of the tragedy and 

b) proposing to close Ulloa in front of the horseshoe to all traffic except MUNI and commercial vehicles, shuttering one of three cross intersections in a vibrant commercial corridor and forcing that traffic onto surrounding residential streets and two other intersections that already have more accidents than the intersection they want to close.  

Of note, the questionable street traffic configuration was created by two factors:  

1. the L Taraval LRV being down for the past 5 years so the family was waiting at a "temporary" bus stop (shown top left in green below); 

2. the SFMTA removed bus stops from the tunnel entrance which put bus stops on the streets instead of inside tunnel entrance which necessitates and created the very "conflict' the SFMTA seems so eager to quell by closing Ulloa; transferring transit riders have no choice but to cross multiple intersections.   

To support their plan, the first thing the SFMTA did was to create a survey where residents could weigh in on what design elements they preferred, versus being able to weigh in on the proposal itself. It didn’t go well for SFMTA… 

West Portal residents and business owners were outraged by the proposed changes that significantly reduced vehicle traffic to West Portal, and they pushed back.  This resistance forced Melgar to cobble together The Welcoming West Portal Committee, and schedule community meetings between the SFMTA and a committee comprised of members chosen by Melgar, and by Deidre Von Rock, President of the Merchants Association. 

Over a series of meetings, the SFMTA provided three options that generated varying degrees of reduced vehicle access to West Portal.  A tone-deaf SFMTA deemed the status quo unacceptable— like it or not, SFMTA’s changes were coming.  

As an alternative, participants specifically asked for a stoplight at West Portal Avenue and Ulloa Street.  However, SFMTA said it was too expensive.  Yet, the same money-losing agency is using the subterfuge of this traffic tragedy to window dress the West Portal Station for undisclosed millions?    

As a second alternative, all the participants demanded a simple stop sign at Wawona and Ulloa Streets, but the SFMTA argued that would disrupt the “consistent experience” of transit riders—a vague and meaningless term.  They also insisted that stop signs are not considered traffic-calming, because drivers and cyclists run them all the time, and their only true purpose is to establish right of way.  

I beg to differ: stop signs are inherently traffic-calming. A family was killed by a car that didn’t slow at an intersection just 100 feet away from where SFMTA is refusing to make a simple change, while instead Muni deems the remedy for pedestrian safety is to paint polka dots on the concrete in front of the station over 500 feet away. And where the Welcoming West Portal Committee members almost unanimously supported a change. 

Confined to MTA’s pick-your-poison options, the meeting participants were near unanimous in selecting the option that created the least amount of change.  Is Supervisor Melgar listening? 

As Muni rushes through their plan, several significant issues and unanswered questions exist: 

• At the 6/4/24 SFMTA Board meeting, the SFMTA Project Manager Liz Brisson stated, when asked directly by SFMTA Board Member Heminger, that “It’s possible that none of them (proposed street redesign options) would have” prevented the tragic accident on March 13^th.  Then why remodel West Portal Station 100 feet away? The location of the tragedy doesn’t even appear in some of the SFMTA renderings for their proposals… 

https://x.com/alanburradell/status/1803504015394877865?s=46 

• ·SFMTA is projecting a quarter-billion dollar deficit within two years when federal relief money runs out.  Why the rush to blow money before the fiscal cliff?  On a location that isn’t on the High Injury Network?  

• How can they rely on the results of an incomplete traffic study now, before the L Taraval LRV service resumes? 

• SFMTA has neither published the costs, nor a cost-benefit analysis, on the remodel to West Portal Station.  Why should we trust an agency that can’t provide an accounting or budget? 

• Like SFPD assigned a civilian with a music/public affairs major to act as their chief financial officer, SFMTA also assigned their highest financial position to an urban planning major, Bree Mawhorter.   Why does SF.gov always ensure mediocrity by staffing high-level financial/budgetary positions with staff that has no measurable education or expertise in the subject matter? 

• Julie Kirschbaum is the director of SFMTA Transit and is largely “responsible for day-to-day Muni operations.”  Kirschbaum has an MIT master’s degree in “city planning.” (Perhaps this is why SFMTA spent over $1 billion per mile for the central subway, while streetcar operations under Kirschbaum still rely on computer floppy disks.)  Again, why has SFMTA assigned someone to run their operations who apparently does not possess measurable education in transit engineering or general engineering? This is the same person who chose Operational Issues for MUNI drivers over the safety of transferring transit passengers by pulling bus stops out of the horseshoe. 

• SFMTA is so detached from the economic impact their proposals have on residents and businesses that they see no need to conduct economic impact studies.  Instead, SFMTA relies on nonscientific and unverifiable anecdotal surveys of pedestrians on a commercial corridor.  Why does this sound so similar to SF’s self-fulfilling homeless censuses and tent counts?  Garbage in—Garbage out.   

For a city that is approaching a financial cliff, this is the wrong time to be initiating multimillion dollar make-work beautification projects to appease the anti-car activists that think no cars on West Portal will put a dent in global warming, including Supervisor Myrna Melgar who has stated that she'd like to see all cars removed from West Portal.  The residents and businesses of West Portal need a pause, a temporary timeout, to digest MTA’s Blitzkrieg.  

• What are the costs to taxpayers for the station remodel?  

• How will reduced vehicle traffic affect West Portal businesses? 

• How will the proposals affect car traffic and parking on the periphery of West Portal? 

• How can they rely on the results of an incomplete traffic study now, before the L Taraval LRV service resumes? 

• How will the elderly access West Portal? 

• How will non-electric biking parents transport their young children to the schools surrounding West Portal?  

• WHY CAN’T WE EXPERIMENT WITH A TEMPORARY STOP SIGN AT ULLOA AND WAWONA STREETS?  I can go to the SF Sign Shop tomorrow, pick up an arterial sign, and have it up by the weekend.  

How can we trust an SFMTA that never listened to the Valencia corridor merchants and residents regarding the center suicide bike lane.  Now, after the SFMTA spent $1.5 million of taxpayer funds on just eight blocks to construct the center bike lane, they are pulling a 180 and going to re-envision with even more taxpayer dollars. The original project alone equates to more than 10% of the SFMTA’s current deficit. How is that in any way, shape or form fiscally-responsible? 

The purpose of district elections is for supervisors to represent their neighborhoods. Supervisor Melgar, I don’t think you’re listening to your voters’ voices.