Let that sink in. Thirty-five minutes. In the densest city in California, blocks from multiple fire stations and hospitals, a person sat in a crumpled car on a freeway ramp for over half an hour before paramedics rolled up with a gurney and neck brace.

The driver appeared to be in relatively stable condition — no visible blood, alert enough to exit the vehicle — which is fortunate, because if this had been a more serious trauma, that response time could have been the difference between recovery and catastrophe.

We don't know the full details of what caused the crash, and we're glad the driver seems okay. But the response time raises questions that San Franciscans have been asking with increasing frustration: where are our emergency resources, and why do they take so long to deploy?

The Fremont/Folsom exit area isn't exactly the middle of nowhere. As one local put it, the neighborhood is "actually a really great, centrally located area" — close to Hayes Valley, the Mission, the Castro, and Lower Haight. It's surrounded by city infrastructure. There's no excuse for an ambulance taking 35 minutes to reach a freeway on-ramp in the heart of San Francisco.

This exit has a history of accidents, and residents in the surrounding blocks know the risks. One SF resident noted that "left turns off of or onto Duboce are very tricky, especially when people are impatient — I've nearly been in an accident there a couple times."

Maybe the city needs better signage, better ramp design, or better enforcement on this stretch. But at the very least, when someone does crash, they shouldn't be sitting in a wrecked car long enough to listen to an entire podcast episode before help arrives. That's not a city that has its priorities straight — it's a city that's spending billions and still can't get the basics right.