Assessing Public Outreach about Slow Streets in San Francisco

Abstract

In April, 2020, one month into COVID-19 lockdown, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) announced its new Slow Streets program. This emergency response closed select city streets to thru traffic, providing more space to physically distance for those who want to travel by foot, bike, wheelchair and other modes.

Moving forward, the city now has to decide how to build a Slow Streets program that will be sustainable in the long term. To help with this plan, SFMTA issued a public questionnaire that asks where respondents live, what their opinion is of Slow Streets and if they recommend certain corridors for future Slow Streets. This capstone project set out to analyze citizen responses to interpret the project’s effectiveness in communicating to San Francisco residents. Relying primarily on a spatial analysis of questionnaire responses and a qualitative analysis of one-off emails about the program, I examined whether citizens liked and understood the program, and how far-reaching the city’s outreach had extended. I found that many citizens believed the Slow Streets program was for commercial corridors, rather than residential, which is part of the program’s criteria. I also found that responses were absent from neighborhoods with large percentages of low-income populations and high representation of communities of color. Based on these findings, I recommend that SFMTA adjust its messaging to communicate about the residential land use designation of the Slow Streets corridors. I also recommend that the city prioritize future outreach in areas of the city that were not well-represented in the original questionnaire.

About the Project

In response to the increasing need to socially distance on the streets, many cities nationwide — and especially in California — have installed Slow Streets that prohibit thru traffic on roads. However, because Slow Streets are new, few cities have extensive data about resident responses to these new walkways. SFMTA has issued a questionnaire to better understand resident attitudes and understandings of Slow Streets. This project will perform a qualitative and quantitative analysis to provide insight into the responses from San Francisco residents.