SF Speed Cameras, First in the State, Turn on Today. Here’s Where They Are

Updated 4:34 p.m. Thursday

If you drive in San Francisco, now might be a good time to slow your roll.

Twelve of the city’s 33 new speed cameras began operating at the stroke of midnight on Thursday amid efforts to reduce traffic fatalities following a particularly deadly year for the city’s pedestrians.

Installed in high-injury corridors where speeding is common, the cameras will automatically snap photos of the rear license plates of motorists traveling 11 mph or more over the posted speed limit.

For the next 60 days, speeding drivers in the camera zones will receive no-fee warning notices.

“These cameras will immediately begin issuing warnings to educate drivers on the importance of lower speeds,” Michael Roccaforte, a spokesperson for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, told KQED in an email.

The city plans to start issuing real citations in late May, with penalties ranging from $50 for drivers caught going 11 to 15 mph over the posted speed limit and going as high as $500 for the rare 100 mph instance. Tickets will be processed by Verra Mobility, the contractor the city hired to install and maintain the devices.

The remaining 21 cameras will be activated on a rolling basis over the coming weeks, according to the SFMTA, which is overseeing the program and intends to update its website daily to show which camera locations are live.

San Francisco is the first city in California to install automated speed-enforcement cameras, long an aspiration of street safety advocates frustrated by the city’s lack of progress in reaching its long-term goal of eliminating traffic deaths and serious injuries.

“It’s a big moment for all of us who’ve been pushing for this technology to be allowed in San Francisco,” said Marta Lindsey, a spokesperson with Walk San Francisco.

The activation of the cameras comes more than a year and a half after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 645 authorizing the devices in San Francisco, Oakland, San José, Los Angeles, Long Beach and Glendale.

Since New York City implemented the country’s first red-light safety camera program in 1992, more than 300 cities across the U.S. have installed traffic safety cameras, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a nonprofit research group.

“We have been so eager for this solution to come to San Francisco, especially when it’s proven so successful in places like New York City, where it’s just dramatically shifted behavior and, most importantly, reduced traffic crashes,” Lindsey said.

Speeding is consistently the primary cause of severe and fatal traffic crashes, she noted.

“If you want to end these tragedies on our streets, you have to go after speed,” Lindsey said. “Drivers slow down, and then the crashes go down.”

Last year, San Francisco experienced its highest traffic death toll in nearly two decades, with 41 people killed in vehicle collisions, 24 of them pedestrians.

The spike in fatalities has led to widespread calls for the city to intensify its traffic safety efforts, as activists, the public and some members of the Board of Supervisors increasingly criticize the SFMTA for falling behind on its ambitious program aimed at rapidly improving conditions for people walking and rolling at more than 900 locations across the city by the end of 2024.

About three-fourths of those projects, including improving crosswalks and resetting traffic signals to give pedestrians more time to cross, have been finished.

At a Dec. 17 meeting of San Francisco County transportation officials, Supervisor Rafael Mandelman asked Shannon Hake, SFMTA’s Vision Zero program manager, why the cameras were being deployed in March, even though the agency had set a target of February.

“There is a problem when we articulate a public goal and are very clear about it and respond to people who are concerned about whether we can make that goal and over and over again to reassure them that we can — and then don’t,” Mandelman said. “That’s something that I think drives our public a little nuts.”

Hake attributed the extended deployment timeline to factors like identifying a contractor to run the system, completing electrical and structural engineering and working out an agreement with the city’s Public Works agency to mount the cameras on light poles.

“Speed cameras are a powerful solution. [They] will prevent tragedies, like what happened to my family,” said Jenny Yu, who became a pedestrian safety advocate after her mother was struck and permanently disabled by a speeding motorist in San Francisco 14 years ago.

Speaking at a press event on Thursday in the city’s North Beach neighborhood, Yu said her mother had been crossing Anza Street and Park Presidio Boulevard in the Richmond District and had the walk sign when an SUV made a left turn and collided into her. Yu’s mother suffered a ruptured spleen, multiple fractures and a traumatic brain injury and now requires round-the-clock care.

“I still sometimes wonder where my mother was going when she was hit by a speeding driver,” said Yu, who co-founded San Francisco Bay Area Families for Safe Streets.

“I don’t want this to happen to anyone else,” she continued, holding back tears. “But we’re going to need more solutions for the city to make Vision Zero the success story it can be.”

Lindsey similarly acknowledged that more needs to be done. But she emphasized that the new cameras marked a major milestone in the fight for safer streets.

“So many of the people who have pushed so hard for this are people who have had their loved ones hurt or killed by speeding drivers,” she said. “And I have been in the room with some of those folks in Sacramento with them, pleading with legislators to support this.

“This is their win.”