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TRANSACTIONS NEWSLETTER ONLINE

Street scene with 'Senior Xing' sign
Thanks to the Senior Action Network, "Senior Xing" signs are sprouting at key locations.
November 2002

Doris W. Kahn Accessible Transportation Award:
Senior Action Network They might hand you a flyer that reads, “Cars have been targeting seniors, but we are not the target!” Or, you might hear them on the streets chanting, “God bless pedestrians; drivers take care; stop on red lights; don’t turn right!”

They are the tenacious troops of the Senior Action Network (SAN), which mobilizes to improve the fate of pedestrians in San Francisco. This active grassroots organization is the recipient of this year’s Accessible Transportation Award, named for the late Doris W. Kahn, an MTC commissioner who advocated on behalf of the senior and disabled communities. SAN is an umbrella coalition of 122 groups representing more than 30,000 San Francisco seniors from all neighborhoods and ethnic and economic backgrounds.

More than a decade old, “SAN became reinvolved in early 2001 in advocacy for greater pedestrian safety when the numbers of those killed and seriously injured, especially seniors, again spiked in San Francisco,” said Bill Price, SAN president.

SAN’s Pedestrian Safety Project has won a commitment from San Francisco to expand the time allotted for pedestrians to cross at signaled intersections and to replace traditional “walk” signals with countdown signals that indicate how many seconds remain to cross. SAN also has advocated the placement of “Senior Xing” signage at intersections frequented by the elderly.

And, said San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly, “SAN was responsible for convincing the Department of Parking and Traffic, along with my colleagues on the Board of Supervisors, to fund large-scale repainting of crosswalks with broad yellow bands in a ‘ladder’ fashion so as to increase pedestrian visibility.”

Already, said Ana Validzic, pedestrian and traffic safety project coordinator for the S.F. Department of Public Health, “SAN’s activism for pedestrian safety and traffic calming through media advocacy, education and public policy initiatives has saved many lives.”

In the words of Theresa P. Burke of the San Francisco Department of Public Works, “Senior Action Network is the type of nonprofit, grassroots advocacy organization that former MTC Chair Doris Kahn would have loved.”

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