Vehicle-Pedestrian Injury Collisions in San Francisco’s Central Corridor

The San Francisco Department of Public Health conducted an HIA to predict how anticipated changes to land use and transportation would affect the number of vehicle-pedestrian injury collisions at intersections with traffic signals in San Francisco’s Central Corridor project area. The HIA used an existing model to identify several statistically significant collision predictors, including traffic and bus volumes, the number of streets joining at intersections, trees, employee and resident populations, bus stops, street slope, average household income, and single-resident-occupancy hotels. Further, the model estimated, based on the case study data, that increasing residential and employment density and traffic volume in the Central Corridor neighborhood will result in a greater number of vehicle-pedestrian injury collisions and that those accidents will occur disproportionately at several specific intersections.

The findings illustrate that predicting changes provides an opportunity to proactively incorporate safety considerations into land use and transportation plans. Interventions to improve health might include promoting walkable neighborhood design and reducing traffic volume and speed.