SF WorksMobility Safer School Trips Improving The Bike NetworkSafer School Trips Citywide Scenarios The Public CommentCitywide ScenariosYour School

Where Students Live and How They Get to School

SFUSD and charter school students only. Private schools aren't included yet.

500 ft school zone, from the school grounds

Impact Citywide

Budget

Safe Trip in 15 Minutes

What Each Change Does on Its Own

Each bar is one change alone against today, with our low to high estimate in brackets. Changes overlap, so bars don't add up. A walk or bike trip on an ordinary street carries more risk than a car trip, so a change that moves kids onto those streets can add injuries.

In SFMTA's DraftOur Addition

Sort by
Kids Out of Single-Family Cars
Fewer Kids Hurt a Year
Fewer Kids Hurt per $1M a Year
Kids Out of Cars per $1M a Year
Cost a Year

A year's cost is the yearly cost plus the one-time cost spread over 4 years. SFUSD assignment has no cost here.

Where Its Students Live

Within 15 minutes on safe streets Not yet Bikeways today New bikeways and this school's connector 500 ft school zone, from the school grounds

Impact at This School

Budget for This School

Today
Balanced

WalkBikeCarDashed where it's off safe streetsSafe streets todayMade safe by the scenarioHomeSchool

Submitted to SFMTA on October 12, 2026, as public comment on the Safe School Connections draft approach.

See the Citywide Scenarios, Your School, and About this Data for more details on how we came up with realistic scenarios below, built on public data from the city, research studies from elsewhere, and existing SFCTA recommendations.

Comment on the Safe School Connections draft

To: SFMTA, Safe School Connections team
Re: Safe School Connections Draft Approach, September 2026
Date: Monday, October 12, 2026

This is the comment as we sent it. The tool's figures have changed since, so where they differ, the tool is current.

Thank you for drafting the Safe School Connections Plan. I want every trip, for kids, caregivers and everyone else, to be safer, more joyful and more convenient.
The plan is a good start, but the city needs to deliver faster, with more ambition, accountability and budget to match.

With the changes below, by 2030 the city can:

  • Cut the number of kids hurt during school trips by 20%
  • Get close to Safe Routes' own goal of 30% of school trips in single-family cars
  • Save time for the parents of about 4,000 kids who no longer have to do the school run themselves

You can do all of this with a budget of approximately $15M a year in infrastructure and $10M in programs.

Thank you for considering these changes!

Main Gaps in the Plan

  • No measurable targets or dates
    The plan proposes detailed solutions and priorities before it sets clear outcomes.
  • Every school should be considered, not just those near the network
    Prioritizing by schools a block from the network ties your hands too soon.
  • School Connectors work better if there's a network to connect to
    Kids need a safe route all the way from home to school, or else they won't bike and roll.
  • List of tools is too limited and missing top SFCTA recommendations
    At least half a dozen cost-effective tools are missing, and most work at any school regardless of whether it's one block from the network.

Recommended Plan Changes Backed by Data

With Claude's help, I spent a few days on San Francisco's public data, published studies from other cities, and other city departments' recommendations that haven't been implemented yet.

Set Measurable Targets

  • Reduce the number of kids hurt in traffic on weekdays from 6AM to 6PM by 20% by 2030
    In any travel mode, from about 107 kids a year (2021-22 to 2024-25)
    • This supports the Mayor's Street Safety Initiative and the Board's Street Safety Act
    • Safe Routes' 50% is the right long term goal. 20% by 2030 is the first step. My data says it's achievable with strong execution.
      • Nearly half of these kids are hurt more than 1/4 mile from a school, so changes near schools can only go so far
  • Reduce school trips made in single-family cars to 30% of school trips by 2030
  • Reduce number of caregivers who need to take their kid to school by 10% by 2030
    • It answers caregivers' top two complaints in SFCTA’s 2023 survey: school trips take too long and are at an inconvenient time.

Deliver Outcomes Faster

  • Deliver outcomes at 10 pilot schools this school year, with budget of $250k per school
    • Pick 10 pilots spread across the city, including high injury and equity-priority areas like the southeast, Excelsior, Mission, and Sunset
    • Meet the car mode share and caregiver targets at these schools by June 2027
    • Track a leading indicator, like parents' near-miss reports and sense of safety, instead of waiting years for injury counts
    • Start where the school community and district supervisor are ready
  • Roll out individual changes faster
  • Get more community feedback
    • Ask families, neighbors, merchants and advocates before the first change, then report progress and ask again every month

Investigate a Wider Palette of Effective Tools

Your list of tools isn't enough to reach these goals. These would help:

  • Do SFCTA's top-tier basics (School Access Plan, p. 39)
    • Walk audits at 20 schools a year, about $1M a year
    • Pickup and drop-off guidance for every school
    • Transportation coordinators at school sites, as SFCTA's caregivers asked
      • They connect families to carpools, bike pools, walking school buses, explain each school's drop off rules, and pass feedback to SFMTA
      • An app built by volunteer SF parents, like Solve SF for school trips, could help each coordinator reach more families.
      • Aim to shift 4% of school trips out of single-family cars
  • Grow Muni ridership, as SFCTA recommends
    • Muni training for K-5 kids, via Safe Routes coordinator
    • Make sure families know about discounted fares, then expand them
      • e.g. free Muni for a caregiver riding with a kid to or from school, about $1.1M a year in new riders' fares plus the fares caregivers already pay. Of caregivers who find the school trip stressful, 21% named its cost, close to the 25% who named safety (SFCTA, p. 33)
    • Use data to pick more routes for MTAP to expand to
    • Aim to shift 2% to 4% of school trips to Muni
  • Fund an expansion of SFUSD's yellow bus service, as SFCTA recommends
    • This could shift 2% to 4% of school trips, depending on how many seats SFUSD adds

My data also points to bikeways:

  • Build out key segments of Biking and Rolling Plan
    • Prioritize segments that give the most kids who now ride in cars a safe bike trip (less than 1000 feet of gap on all-ages and abilities bikeways and within 5 minutes of how long a car trip takes)
    • Sorted this way, the top 25 miles take about 4 times as many kids out of single-family cars per dollar as School Connectors to schools within a block of the network.
    • About $6M a year of the $15M builds about 50 miles of these segments by 2030.
    • Top segments include:
      • 30th Avenue in the Outer Richmond
      • 41st Avenue in the Sunset
      • Huron Avenue in the Outer Mission
      • 23rd Street in Noe Valley

Thank you for considering these changes.

How we built this: About School Trips