Howard Near-Term Improvements Open House

The Folsom-Howard Streetscape Project will bring amenities to make these streets safer and more pleasant for everyone. This week SFMTA will be hosting open houses on Thursday and Saturday to highlight plans for near-term changes to Howard Street from 6th to 11th streets and one block of Folsom Street from 5th to 4th. If approved, safety improvements will be installed this winter.

Why make short-term changes to Howard? Howard Street is a part of San Francisco’s High Injury Network, the 12 percent of city streets where 70 percent of San Francisco’s severe and fatal traffic injuries occur.  In 2016, Katherine Slattery was killed while riding a bicycle at Howard and 7th Streets.

The longer-term changes of the Folsom-Howard Streetscape Project will require finalizing the design, coordinating with utility work, changing signal times, pouring miles of concrete and making other changes. That work is expected to take until at least 2022.

When talking with neighbors, local businesses and those who use Folsom and Howard, the SFMTA made a commitment to look at near-term safety improvement. Near-term improvements will be similar to those installed on Folsom Street earlier this year and will include:

• A parking-protected bikeway.
• Daylighting intersections to improve visibility.
• Increasing the number of loading zones on Howard.

The Folsom-Howard Team has met with over 30 businesses and community groups on Howard Sreet to gather input. Now, the SFMTA will host two open houses to share the designs of the Howard Street Near-Term Improvements and request feedback:

Open House #1
Thursday, August 16, 2018, 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Open House #2
Saturday, August 18, 2018, 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Both open houses will be held at Bayanihan Community Center at 1010 Mission Street.

We hope that you will be able to join us for an open house. Feel free to drop by anytime.

We believe that these changes will make it safer and more pleasant to bike, walk, load and unload on Howard.  They will provide a separated space for bicyclist, more visibility for pedestrians, and more spaces for merchants to load and unload.  These changes will help prevent conflicts between the different ways people use Howard Street. By adding new protections for bicyclists and pedestrians, these improvements support San Francisco’s Vision Zero goal of eliminating traffic fatalities.