Prioritizing Safer Streets for San Francisco’s Children
By Krissa Corbett Cavouras and Jen Nossokoff
It was a typical October Monday school night in the Inner Richmond when the messages started coming in – a child on the back of a cargo bike had been struck by a person driving a car at 7th Avenue and Balboa, and had been taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries. Jen immediately dreaded it would be someone from her daughter’s elementary school, less than a block away from the intersection. She didn’t yet know it would be kindergartener Bowie and his dad Nick until she arrived at the scene, saw their bike, and texted around the school parent network to confirm whose it was. Less than an hour before, she and her daughter had been playing soccer with Bowie on the school sports field, and now he was hospitalized. It was unfathomable. Now, three weeks later, we are relieved that Bowie is home with his family and making a full recovery, but the trauma to his family and community will take longer to heal.
We both ride with our young children on our cargo bikes every day. We’ve built a life in San Francisco around our bikes; we crisscross the city on Saturday adventures, we deliver our kids to school, we wave at friends also riding their bikes. Jen, in her advocacy for safe streets in the Inner Richmond and now in her candidacy for District 1 Supervisor, and Krissa in her work here at SFBike, both live these values daily; our work-life balance is people-powered.
We choose to bike with our children out of a deep sense of joy and optimism, believing in a better world where our streets are safe for everyone. We teach our children to be confident cyclists, to navigate the streets with care. But it’s a choice fraught with anxiety, as the current street design in our city prioritizes speed and driver convenience over the safety of those walking or biking.
This crash is a heartbreaking reminder of how vulnerable we are as road users. We rely on our skills, our familiar routes, and the city’s limited protected bike lanes – but only 8% of city streets currently meet that designation. Without a citywide, interconnected bike network, our sense of safety is fragile, shattered in an instant by incidents like the one that left Bowie hospitalized.
There is a future where crashes like this are rare memories, and our children can move freely and safely on protected, people-first corridors. Traffic calming, speed reduction, road diets, modeshifting are all proven strategies to reduce and even eliminate traffic violence, and nowhere are these strategies more crucial than around our schools. But this crash, occurring less than a block from McCoppin Elementary School, highlights the city’s lack of commitment to prioritize the safety of children and families.
San Francisco’s officials must act urgently to make our streets safe for everyone. The intersection where Bowie was hit has long been flagged by neighbors as dangerous, yet no action has been taken. This is not an isolated incident—within just six months, multiple serious crashes have occurred within the same small area in the Richmond, including Park Presidio and Fulton, 8th and Cabrillo. Across the city from September 2023 through August 2024, there have been 147 motor vehicle crashes involving pedestrians and people on bicycles that resulted in severe injury or fatality – that’s one every 2.5 days. This ongoing pattern underscores the urgent need for comprehensive safety measures and a reimagining of our neighborhood streets.
In particular, schools and the streets immediately connecting to them should be the safest places for children to walk, bike, and roll. The city must prioritize the creation of school streets—car-free zones around schools—and expand traffic-calming measures around them. We need a fully separated, crosstown bike network so that families can safely navigate the city using active transportation for these daily activities, which is essential to achieving the city’s own sustainability goals, including shifting to 80% sustainable trips by 2030.
The reality is, while the driver who hit Bowie does bear responsibility, this is also a systemic failure—a failure of outdated designs and a lack of political will to change them. Streets and intersections are designed for people driving, leaving children, seniors, people with disabilities, and people who bike exposed.
As a city, we’re at a crossroads from which we could pave the way to safer streets for families like ours. The SFMTA is in the final stages of developing the Biking and Rolling Plan, the city’s first update to its bike plan in 15 years. The agency’s outreach this summer and fall has identified schools as crucial hubs requiring enhanced safety. Through this plan, school streets and safe routes to our schools must become non-negotiable components of the city’s transportation planning.
As parents, San Franciscans, and voters, our message is clear: every elected official must support a visionary Bike and Rolling Plan. Anything less prioritizes car convenience over the safety of children and families. This November’s election, and every election going forward, is a chance for voters to demand action. We call on policymakers to take immediate steps to create a safer, more sustainable city that puts people—not cars—first.
If you agree, and want to join us in demanding that from our elected officials, we encourage you to join our SF CYCLES campaign as we push for a visionary, transformative Biking and Rolling Plan.
Krissa Corbett Cavouras is the Director of Marketing & Communications at SFBike, and a public school parent.
Jen Nossokoff is a licensed medical professional and a public school parent living in the Richmond District, and a passionate community advocate for safer, more livable streets in San Francisco. She’s running for District 1 Supervisor and has been endorsed by our Board of Directors.