City of Tucson exploring Vision Zero: Could it work?

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May 11

What is Vision Zero?

At the Mayor & Council study session this past week the Mayor introduced the idea of Tucson becoming an official affiliate of the Vision Zero Network which would help the City of Tucson be ready to take advantage of funding earmarked specifically for Vision Zero through the new Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) federal grant program, a new $1B/year pot of funding for Vision Zero planning and implementation. As part of the recently passed national Bipartisan Infrastructure Law it will support safety initiatives at the local, regional and Tribal levels.

Vision Zero (VZ) is a systematic framework for eliminating traffic deaths and serious injuries that focuses heavily on the design of roadways to prevent crashes. Rather than denying human error, it instead anticipates human error and accommodates for it in the way a street is designed. Here’s a great summary of how Vision Zero is different from a traditional approach to traffic safety:

“Vision Zero recognizes that people will sometimes make mistakes, so the road system and related policies should be designed to ensure those inevitable mistakes do not result in severe injuries or fatalities. This means that system designers and policymakers are expected to improve the roadway environment, policies (such as speed management), and other related systems to lessen the severity of crashes.”
- Vision Zero Network

Vision Zero originated in Sweden in the ‘90s where it has been highly successful. Since then many US cities have adopted Vision Zero goals and seen some progress, though none have eliminated traffic fatalities entirely. Still, one thing that makes VZ especially impactful is that it seeks to eliminate ALL traffic deaths and that includes crashes that involve solely cars; it’s not just about biking, walking, and transit. It seeks to make streets safer for everyone using them.

Here at Living Streets Alliance we’ve been advocating for many elements of Vision Zero over the years, drawing attention to the needless loss of life on our streets on World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims, pushing for Complete Streets policies and practices that prioritize safety over speed, and sharing humanizing language that shifts our thinking about this incidents as something that is preventable (“crash” not “accident”). Through partnerships and collaborations, we’ve coordinated Safe Routes to School activities and programs to ensure that kids know how to anticipate driver behavior and, hopefully, to ensure that they’ll pay closer attention if and when they’re of driving age. We’ve also been tracking and mapping fatalities to see if we can capture data that isn’t typically tracked and recorded in traffic reports.

So what now, what next?

Clearly, there’s a good foundation to build from in Tucson. (You can see a list of plans and initiatives the City already has in place via the Memo to Mayor & Council from May 3rd.) The City of Tucson has a Complete Streets policy, a long-range mobility master plan (Move Tucson), funding through Prop 407—and hopefully 411—to build-out safer networks for people on foot, on bike, on motorcycle, rolling, using transit and driving.

The approach to implementing Vision Zero utilizes systemic strategies to eliminate serious traffic crashes. This helpful fact sheet from the Vision Zero Network outlines how engineering (the design of our streets), education (informing people how to maneuver safely no matter how they get around), enforcement (focused on enforcing speed limits), evaluation (using data to target areas for improvement and tracking result) and encouragement (providing programs and services to encourage safe travel) are typical of most VZ plans. Two more Es are critical: equity and engagement. These last two are causing many cities to revisit and reshape their approach with all of the other Es to ensure that communities and populations most impacted by unsafe streets are centered and prioritized in any VZ goals and solutions. This is really important in Tucson, and something the City is well positioned to do having recently hired their first Chief Equity Officer.

At the conclusion of the May 3rd Study Session, Mayor & Council made a motion to “...direct staff to return to the Mayor and Council with a strategy to pursue becoming a Vision Zero Community that includes the following:

A systems-based approach focused on the built environment that takes into account existing plans, programs and policies that influence behavior;
An assessment of the Vision Zero action plans that exist in other cities; and
A priority on equity when targeting areas of need for infrastructure investment to improve safety for all modes of travel.”

What will it take for Vision Zero to be successful in Tucson?

There’s a lot to consider and here are three key things that we see as critical to Vision Zero’s success in Tucson:

1. Safety over speed

This image shows the change in likeliness of a person on foot surviving a crash based on the speed of the vehicle involved in the crash:

Data has shown over and over again that reducing speeds reduces the number and severity of traffic crashes, and that’s true for all modes of transportation. So, prioritizing safety over speed in roadway design would have an immediate impact in reducing fatal crashes.

This video captures why safety and speed are incompatible in roadway design; if you prioritize one you are inherently sacrificing the other.

Reducing speed is possible through the combination of posting reduced speed limits and designing roadways to self-enforce reduced speeds. In other words, solely lowering speed limits won’t change driver behavior.

One challenge for Tucson with reducing posted speed limits is that in many cases it requires approval at the state level, a pretty daunting task. Still, Tucson leadership found a way to reduce speed limits on bicycle boulevards, proving that it can be done if the political will is there. That’s definitely encouraging!

2. Rethinking “Enforcement”

Enforcement has been part of the Vision Zero approach in U.S. cities who adopted it early on. Understandably, in recent years, there’s been a lot of push back about the legitimacy of policing streets as part of the VZ effort, challenging the notion that it makes streets “safer” for all. This is a big—and critical—one to unpack, and merits a whole separate blog post, but here’s a couple considerations for VZ in Tucson:

Tucson’s police force is already stretched thin and doesn’t have the capacity to do more traffic enforcement
Designing and building streets to self-enforce safe behavior is a way to greatly decrease the need for policing the streets and enforce traffic behavior.

So, in other words, the more aggressive Tucson is about building safer streets, the less it will need to rely on police to reinforce safe behavior. Though likely at extreme opposite ends of the spectrum, that should appeal to everyone; it would result in (1) potential tax saving and/or refocusing of those resources for police and fire to respond to more urgent things, and (2) the establishment of solutions that completely remove the possibility of inherent bias in implementation.

This can look many different ways and there are plenty of tools in the box for unbiased enforcement. Just a couple weeks back the AZ Daily Star’s Tim Stellar wrote an article revisiting red light cameras and whether they can/should be brought back. That would certainly be one way to eliminate extreme and deadly behavior at certain intersections. Some cities have used those traffic fines to fund traffic calming measures around schools and other public destinations. Tucson could do this too, or use them to fund Safe Routes to School or other programs that help young people learn how to navigate their surroundings safely on foot and on bike.

This is just one example of how enforcement can be done creatively and without bias, but there are many tools in the box. Tucson would be wise to utilize as many as possible with its Vision Zero program.

3. Political will + accountability

A recent CityLab article highlights some key differences between the U.S. and other countries that resulted in very different levels of success with Vision Zero:

“It's an easy thing for a politician to say that they’re committed to Vision Zero,” said Jeff Paniati, the executive director of the Institute of Transportation Engineers, “without actually doing anything different from what they were doing before.”
U.S. mayors generally hear few objections when they commit to Vision Zero. “It’s hard to be opposed to safety,” said Corinne Kisner, the executive director of the National Association of City Transportation Officials. But a Vision Zero campaign supported in the abstract is likely to meet headwinds when it comes time for implementation.

By far and away the biggest challenge to U.S. cities looking to implement successful Vision Zero plans is decades of car culture in America. As Gil Penalosa, founder of the Open Streets movement says: change is hard. To make Vision Zero a success in Tucson will take strong political will and strong adherence to doing what is safest even when it’s politically unpopular. But it will save lives. It’s proven.

At Living Streets Alliance we’re hopeful that Tucson will proceed with becoming a Vision Zero city and move forward thoughtfully, courageously, and collaboratively. We’re here for it.

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