A new law lets the city reduce speed limits in school zones to 15 or 20 miles per hour, as public schools are set to resume instruction on Monday.
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency installed new speed limit signs near Leonard R. Flynn Elementary School on Aug. 14, 2026. With nearly 50,000 students returning to school on Monday, the SFMTA announced several measures to make their commutes safer.
(Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman/KQED)
Public school will be back in session in San Francisco in a few days — and city leaders are introducing several strategies to make sure students get to class safely.
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency on Friday shared its plans to bolster safety for students’ commutes to school, including enforcing a 2025 state bill that allows the agency to reduce the speed limit in school zones from 25 miles per hour to 15 or 20 when children are present.
“Street safety is public safety, and there’s really no higher priority than keeping our school children safe in the city,” SFMTA spokesperson Madhu Unnikrishnan said on Friday. Unnikrishnan joined other city officials at Leonard R. Flynn Elementary School to announce the news.
Flynn Elementary, which sits on the border of the city’s Mission District, is among the first of San Francisco’s schools to see the speed limit on its surrounding streets reduced. The SFMTA said it is working to reduce speed limits at more than 230 public and private schools in the city by 2028.
Mayor Daniel Lurie outlines street safety initiatives ahead of the new school year in front of Leonard R. Flynn Elementary School on Aug. 14, 2026.
In addition to the new speed limit law, leaders touted other measures meant to make streets safer, including the SFMTA’s crossing guard program, automated speed safety camera program and infrastructure changes like intersection daylighting and high-visibility crosswalks.
The announcement comes as San Francisco continues its efforts to prevent traffic injuries and deaths in the city. Last year, Mayor Daniel Lurie launched the Street Safety executive directive, which aimed to increase coordination between city departments involved in transportation.
The directive followed the city’s Vision Zero initiative, which aimed to reduce deaths to zero over a 10-year period. It ended in 2024, which marked the deadliest year for traffic collisions in the city since the initiative began, with 42 traffic fatalities on record.
Crossing guards Luzmery Betancur and Jose Guillen help San Franciscans cross the street safely.
The time allotted for pedestrians to cross Cesar Chavez Street is about five seconds too short to get a large quantity of children across the street safely, according to Ryan Hazelton, director of the Mariposa Kids afterschool program at Flynn Elementary. Hazelton, who is also running for a seat on the San Francisco School Board, said the crossing guards play a crucial role in keeping them safe.
“ They provide us with that security envelope that we need, and the parents feel really confident in our ability to get the kids from school to our off-site location because we have those crossing guards,” Hazelton said.
San Francisco Police Department Chief Derrick Lew said the department plans to conduct “high visibility enforcement” around schools to make sure drivers are following speed limits.