South San Francisco Adopts Vision Zero Goal

A big thanks and round of applause to City of South San Francisco Council for adopting a Vision Zero Goal at their Council meeting on Feb. 24: Vision Zero goal to achieve zero traffic deaths and serious injuries on city streets by 2025.

Getting a Vision Zero policy for South San Francisco was one of the first goals of the newly activated North San Mateo County Local Team. The North SMC team has been meeting monthly under the new Biketivist Forums. In December, the first forum topic was about each team setting a work plan with 3-5 goals.

The team also set some goals to meet with new city councilmembers. Team members met with new Councilmember James Coleman and shared their goals, including Vision Zero. Coleman was extremely interested and agreed to bring it to council.

SVBC staff in the past has also presented on the Vision Zero Toolkit to South San Francisco’s Planning Commission and Bike/Pedestrian Advisory Committee. We also presented at the SMC Council of Cities last year at which SSF Councilmembers were present.

Finally, SVBC met with South San Francisco staff to review the steps to achieving Vision Zero, including setting a strong policy (now done), creating an internal working group among different departments, and creating an action plan.

The resolution on Feb. 24 was passed with great support from all the Council members (thanks to Council member Coleman for bringing this on the agenda) along with overwhelming backing from community members (there were 16 public comments in favor of this agenda item). SVBC and the North SMC team look forward to working with the city on further steps.