About Vision Zero in San Francisco
Vision Zero is the effort to end traffic fatalities. San Francisco adopted Vision Zero as a policy in 2014, declaring that no one should die while traveling on city streets.
Vision Zero SF is co-chaired by the Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA) and the Department of Public Health (DPH). Working with the Mayor’s Office, Board of Supervisors, and other city agencies, Vision Zero SF applies a data-driven, public health lens to build better and safer streets.
Sustained Vision Zero efforts can help move cities towards fewer fatalities and injuries.
About benchmarking
The City Charter requires the Controller’s Office to compare San Francisco to other cities with benchmarking. Benchmarking presents data across San Francisco and peer cities. The goal is to provide a sense of San Francisco’s efforts or progress on key metrics alongside its peers. The City Performance team completed this Vision Zero Benchmarking.
Comparison cities and metrics
For this Vision Zero benchmarking, we compared San Francisco to 12 peer cities. We selected the peer cities based on similarity in population size and density. We also prioritized Californian cities and other major cities in geographic regions across the US. The peer cities include:
- Boston, MA
- Chicago, IL
- Long Beach, CA
- Los Angeles, CA
- Miami, FL
- Minneapolis, MN
- New York, NY
- Oakland, CA
- Portland, OR
- San José, CA
- Seattle, WA
- Washington D.C.
We have 7 metrics showing progress on key Vision Zero indicators or efforts. These include:
- Injuries
- Fatalities
- Commute Methods
- Separated Bike Lanes
- Annual Public Transit Trips
- Street Network Speeds
- Traffic Citations
Some limits to benchmarking
Our benchmarking allows you to look at San Francisco’s data alongside the peer city data. However, there are some limits when interpreting it.
- Benchmarking cannot prove any causality or statistically significant differences.
- Benchmarking is not research into the causes or prevention of traffic crashes. We are only presenting the data reported by various sources and experts. We are also presenting our high-level takeaways from the data presented. To learn more about expert research on Vision Zero and traffic safety, visit:
- The League of American Bicyclists Benchmarking Report
- UC Berkeley Safe Transportation Research and Education Center’s Vision Zero Research
- US Department of Transportation’s Safe System Approach
- The National Vision Zero Network’s Resource Page
- US Department of Transportation’s Proven Safety Countermeasures
- Benchmarking reports the best data available but may not be perfect. We have tried to ensure the data and analysis is as consistent as possible across our peer cities, but comparisons are not always apples-to-apples. Some cities may have differences in their processes or data reporting that we are not aware of. When possible, we will discuss any data limitations for each metric.
How to use this website
Each metric includes a dashboard or visual and text explaining the key takeaways. The text for each dashboard also discusses the data sources and any limitations.
Explore the metrics
Visit the Vision Zero Benchmarking home page to learn more about the effort and explore the metrics.