Today, we joined Mayor Ed Lee, District 6 Supervisor Jane Kim, city officials and partners from the San Francisco Safe Routes to Schools Coalition at Bessie Carmichael Elementary School at 7th and Harrison to celebrate Walk and Roll to School Day.
Walk and Roll to School Day is a citywide event that encourages the creation of safer routes to school, enhances kids’ health by encouraging physical activity, reduces traffic, and protects the environment.
Throughout the city, nearly 90 schools and over 14,000 students celebrated Walk and Roll to School Day, the highest number of participating schools and students ever.
In addition to a “walking school bus” which took place at Bessie Carmichael, nine Supervisors walked to their districts’ schools with students.
Today we’re proud to announce that we’ve been able to complete four school safety projects in the past four months across the city. From Jefferson, Sunset and West Portal elementary schools on the city’s westside to Bessie Carmichael Elementary in the heart of SoMa, we’ve created safer streets near schools using a variety of proven safety measures. Enhancements like sidewalk bulbouts, newly marked crosswalks, new bike lanes, increased school signage and improved signal timing help calm traffic and protect kids walking or biking to school.
You might have also seen our latest safety campaign out on the streets: Safe Streets SF. With nearly two-thirds of all pedestrian collisions caused by failings to give pedestrians their legal right-of-way, we want to be clear our new ad campaign: all intersections are crosswalks. Whether it is a marked or unmarked crosswalk, please give the right-of-way to people walking!
More info on our school area safety initiatives and the Safe Streets SF campaign here: http://www.sfmayor.org/index.aspx?page=846