Report: Street design didn’t cause crash
In its first detailed report on the West Portal intersection where a driver crashed into a bus stop and killed a family of four, San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation Agency did not indicate any design flaws that could have contributed to the tragedy.
The site of the crash has “high visibility” sidewalks, the agency’s report noted, as well as signs instructing drivers to watch for trains and refrain from passing. “In recent years, pedestrian safety zones with delineators were added,” according to the report posted on SFMTA’s Vision Zero website, where the agency tracks traffic deaths of pedestrians.
Neither SFMTA nor San Francisco Police Department investigators have publicly discussed the cause of the crash, other than to say that they do not believe the configuration of the street was to blame.
In recent days a steady stream of mourners has flowed to the site where, on March 16, Mary Fong Lau, 78, allegedly veered into an oncoming lane of traffic at high speed, plowed onto the sidewalk and nicked the library before barreling into the bus stop where the family of four was waiting on its way to the San Francisco Zoo.
Diego Cardoso de Oliveira, 40, and 2-year-old Joaquim were killed on impact. Matilde Moncada Ramos Pinto, 38, and newborn Cauê later died at hospitals where they were being treated for injuries.
Traffic engineers will continue to evaluate the intersection where the crash occurred, SFMTA spokesperson Michael Roccaforte said Monday. The agency is providing support to transit workers who witnessed the crash and its aftermath, he said.
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said her office was waiting for more information — including the results of a toxicology report and a review of the sport utility vehicle’s operating systems — before making any charging decisions. Residents said the site of the crash is often congested with idling cars and delivery vans, as well as confused drivers attempting to navigate around the transit station, where Muni trains enter a tunnel on their way downtown.
“The intersection is very problematic,” Deidre Von Rock, president of the West Portal Merchants Association, said in an interview.
While Von Rock does not believe the intersection’s design contributed to last week’s “horrific” crash, she described the area as “really chaotic” during busy daytime hours. Construction for the L Taraval Improvement Project, which for more than four years has rerouted lightrail riders to temporary bus routes, has further worsened congestion in the neighborhood, Von Rock said, creating a constant flow of people shuffling from nearby bus stops to the transit station.
“That there hasn’t been an accident, with endless pedestrians getting off the bus and rushing to the tunnel, really is the shocker,” she said. “It’s really dodgy.”
The family, who lived in the Mission District, was traveling to the zoo at the time of the fatal crash, relatives said in a statement released last week. Police said they were waiting next to the transit station at Lenox Way and Ulloa Street, one of the temporary bus stops that takes L Taraval riders west to the zoo.
The $90 million overhaul of the L Taraval Muni line has been underway since 2019, with residents and merchants increasingly weary of ongoing construction and neighborhood upheaval. As part of the nowdefunct LK light-rail route that ran between the zoo and Balboa Park Station, a large wooden wheelchair ramp was temporarily installed at the bus stop in 2020 and removed two years later. Von Rock said the crash has prompted a much-needed conversation about infrastructure repairs on San Francisco’s west side, which she said have historically proceeded haphazardly and with little of the urgency given to the city’s denser eastern corridors.
“We have a lot of wonky intersections,” she said. “No one expects it to be in perfect working condition, but we get neglected.”