What are some examples of non-ticket based traffic safety, and how will they help reduce dangerous behavior?

Or just, instead of traffic specific police, put them back on beat patrols where they walk around and interact with the community in positive, peace and order, encouraging ways.

Managing traffic at distinct locations - especially if it’s known that violations aren’t enforced elsewhere - will have minimal impacts on overall driving habits. It’s the specter of omnipresent monitoring that will change behavior (to say nothing, of course, about actual engineering solutions). But that specter has to be grounded in reality, which right now it isn’t. The cops have given up, and people are starting to catch on.

Even the time spent on traffic enforcement is not spent wisely. Is SFPD this inept? Are there perverse incentives? I don't get it.

It makes some sense: if a cop is at a corner directing traffic, people aren’t going to flagrantly break the law, and the cop probably can’t really leave their post to deal with whatever does occur.