City leaders are calling for more protected bicycle lanes along San Francisco's Howard Street after a female bicyclist died Friday morning in a collision with a vehicle in the city's South of Market neighborhood.
The collision occurred on Howard Street at Sixth Street around 8:20 a.m., according to police.
The victim was riding a rental Ford GoBike when a truck struck her, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition said.
The victim was pronounced dead at the scene and the truck's driver is cooperating with the investigation, police said.
"The tragedy on Howard Street is heartbreaking and my thoughts are with the victim's family and friends," Mayor London Breed said in a statement.
"This is yet another example of why our streets need to be made safer for all users. There are long-term safety improvements coming to Howard Street, and I am pushing to move those forward as fast as possible."
Supervisor Matt Haney said on Twitter, "It's heartbreaking. We have to do so much better to protect cyclists and pedestrians. There should already be a protected bike lane on all of Howard," he said, adding the fatal collision left him "devastated."
"This is the first bicycle fatality of 2019 and the latest in a series of tragic traffic collisions over the last couple of weeks. This crash at Sixth and Howard was less than a hundred feet away from a protected bike lane that would have saved this woman's life. Where infrastructure stops, people die," bicycle coalition officials said in a statement.
"Howard is a known high-injury corridor, the location of several delayed street safety projects, and one of San Francisco's most traveled bicycle corridors in one of our city's densest neighborhoods," bike coalition officials said.
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Currently, dedicated bike lanes exist on Howard starting at 11th Street, ending at Sixth Street. Those lanes were just unveiled in January.
The coalition is calling on the city to extend the protected bike lane to Fifth Street and to add a dedicated bicycle signal at Sixth Street.
They're also seeking to accelerate the Folsom and Howard Streetscape project, which aims to redesign the area, making it more pedestrian- and bike-friendly.
The coalition also wants the city to remove mixing zones, parts of the roadway where vehicles can enter the bike lanes to makes turns, from Howard between Sixth and 11th streets and replace them with signal protected intersections.
On Wednesday, Breed announced she was implementing new measures to fast-track traffic safety projects on the city's high-injury corridors, including expediting safety enhancements and increasing police traffic enforcement.
