The Road Not Taken | a response to a letter to the editor in the Washington Post about DC, traffic deaths and traffic safety

There's a letter to the editor in yesterday's Washington Post, "D.C. must step up on road deaths."  It's a good letter.

I started writing a response in the comments, but it was too long.  So a blog entry is better.  

Definitely this is another example of DC government's failure to focus and to be innovative.  It's amazing how much I've written about this topic, providing guidance for something that could have been great.

Ward focused traffic safety programming.  Years ago I wrote a piece ("Outline for a proposed Ward-focused (DC) Councilmember campaign platform and agenda," 2015) about what would be an ideal approach to a truly ward-focused Councilmember election and governance platform, including having a dashboard on ward-specific data on traffic safety.  

And that there should be ward-specific subcommittees of the pedestrian and bicycle advisory committees to put greater focus on ward specific improvements (this was something I wrote into the Pedestrian and Bicycle Plan I did for Baltimore County in 2010).

Safe routes to school programs.  Separately, the State of Washington Safe Routes to School program recommends that all cities create traffic safety committees to address such issues as they relate to schools, and SRTS improvements simultaneously benefit neighborhoods.  The state requires that SRTS maps be created for all elementary schools, and some cities go beyond and do it for all schools.  Seattle's Feet First advocacy group is a great resource for such programs.  The City of Tacoma separately has an SRTS plan that is first rate.

-- "Why isn't walking/biking to school programming an option in Suburban Omaha? | Inadequacies in school transportation planning," 2022
-- School Walk and Bike Routes: A Guide for Planning and Improving Walk and Bike to School Options for Students
-- Safe Routes to School program, Washington State
-- City of Tacoma SRTS program, including SRTS Action Plan
-- Starkville in Motion

A failed job interview with DDOT.  I interviewed for a job with DDOT (still don't understand why I didn't get it) to liase with ANCs on these kinds of issues.  I prepared a sample data-focused infographic that could be a kind of dashboard for ward-specific transportation as part of my interview.  

For years I wrote that the DDOT safety dashboard was crap ("DC DDOT transportation access portal doesn't really say anything," 2010).  It has since been significantly improved.

ANCs need transportation/traffic safety committees.  In preparing for that interview, I looked at the websites for all of the city's Advisory Neighborhood Commssions (ANCs are block and neighborhood specific councils that weigh in on matters before DC government) and just a handful had transportation/public space committees.  All should, with support from DDOT, the Office of Planning, and the police department traffic and data analysis units. 

And public health.  In Ontario for example, public health officials have been leaders in analyzing traffic deaths and addressing the issues (Office of the Chief Coroner for Ontario: Pedestrian Death Review), and in Toronto ("Dozens of cycling deaths probed," Toronto Star).

It was a great interview, the lead walked me out and we talked, and then.... nothing.

FWIW, I also didn't get a job at Utah Department of Transportation on Vision Zero related issues, although I was a finalist.  They said I wasn't innovative enough!  Maybe they were right. Maybe I just come across badly. But I don't think so.  However, I did mess up the interview a bit, and I had a mistake in my cover letter...

Then again, traffic safety related deaths in Utah, including bicyclists and pedestrians, are falling but only slightly, and in cities especially pedestrian deaths aren't abating ("Deaths on Utah roads down from 2022 but road rage still a concern," ABC4).

-- "Yard sign, Person running for District Six Council in Salt Lake using traffic safety as a campaign issue," 2023

Transportation management districts.  Since 2005 or 2006 I have been recommending that the city create Traffic Management Districts as a way to coordinate transportation management and improvements at the commercial district scale (e.g. for Downtown, H Street NE, Capitol Hill, etc.).  

The city did create "pilot parking districts" but they weren't super well structured and are limited.  The plans created for them impressed me in terms of how ad hoc and unstructured they were.  And they never functioned the way I suggested (e.g., see the discussion on transportation wrt Eastern Market, "Eastern Market DC's 150th anniversary last weekend | And my never realized master plan for the market," 2023).

Urban design/walkable community plans at the neighborhood scale. Out of the Silver Spring Purple Line writings:

Creating a Silver Spring "Sustainable Mobility District from 2017:
-- "Part 1: Setting the stage
-- "Part 2: Program items 1- 9
-- "Part 3: Program items 10-18

I got interested in the concept of urban design plans for neighborhoods, sparked by Dupont Circle and the opening of the Wharf in SW DC.

-- "Planning urban design improvements at the neighborhood scale: Dupont Circle, DC," 2019
-- "More about making 17th Street between P and R a pedestrian space on weekends," 2019

Later I realized it's not about the mode--creating a pedestrian plan, but creating broader walkable community plans.

-- "Planning for place/urban design/neighborhoods versus planning for transportation modes: new 17th Street NW bike lanes | Walkable community planning versus "pedestrian" planning," 2021

... and freeway/tunnel decking. Like the neighborhood initiative in Bloomingdale ("Bloomingdale Village Square Initiative will be holding its third Community Forum on the proposed North Capitol Deck-over Park," 2020), similar discussions in Dupont Circle, the SE-SW Freeway, etc.  

It's a travesty that the planning units in DC think this should be done by the neighborhoods, not the city.

Pedestrian safety audits.  Similar to Safe Routes to School.  FHWA publishes materials on Pedestrian Road Safety Audits.  There is the PEDSAFE: Pedestrian Safety Guide and Countermeasure Selection System to see if there are urban design improvements that can be made after analyzing a crash (also for biking).  

-- All About Walk Audits, America Walks

WalkDenver has done interesting work in this arena too, such as the Walk Audits on Colfax Avenue, including a report on West Colfax.

Vision Zero.  Focused on DC, I've written tons over the years about Vision Zero initiatives to reduce traffic deaths and traffic safety.  

-- "A more radical approach to Vision Zero," 2019
-- "A reminder about how the entitlement of automobility is embedded into law and democratizes death by accident," 2014
-- "A "Vision Zero" agenda for DC," 2014
-- "DC and Vision Zero Revisited," 2015
-- "Updating Vision Zero approaches," 2016
-- First global benchmark for road safety in cities published by International Transport Forum," 2018
-- "Traffic safety," 2022
-- "It's a mistake to remove "Enforcement" from the "E's framework" of bicycle and pedestrian planning," 2022
-- "D.C. cuts speed limit to 20 mph to curb pedestrian deaths: a step forward but not enough | New thoughts on a comprehensive Vision Zero agenda," 2020

In "Revisiting Vision Zero in DC and NYC" (2021) I made these points:

1.  How to measure and benchmark traffic deaths?
2.  The issues are unchanging.
3.  Government has a bias for inaction.
4.  Planning for mode versus planning for place and livability.
5.  Not treating the road system as a network.
6.  Traffic deaths can be broadly categorized into three segments.
7.  How do you get reckless drivers off the street? 
8.  Traffic enforcement.
9.  Oversight Committees at the City/County and District/Ward scales.
10.  Systematic review of crashes/accidents in a public fashion.
11.  Mapping pedestrian, bicycle, transit and car accidents

Lots of links within each section.

Street design and pavements.  The fact is, except for overly wide avenues, the L'Enfant Plan design for the city and its network of streets and sidewalks prioritizes sustainable modes--walking, biking, and transit.  

But roads and cars are overengineered to allow cars to drive at high speeds regardless of land use context.  

That's why I've argued for years to have differentiated pavements for commercial districts, and areas by parks, libraries, schools, and transit stations, to better match desired operating speeds of vehicles with land use context.

-- -- "A more radical approach to "Vision Zero" is needed: reconstructing streets out of different materials to reduce speeds," 2019
-- "Pedestrian fatalities and street design," 2019

Note that one element of the L'Enfant Plan, radial avenues, was a big innovation for pedestrians and bicyclists as it makes it faster to get from place to place by moving diagonally, instead of in squares and rectangles.

Reckless driving.  In DC, most traffic related injuries and deaths in DC are related to reckless driving, not street design.  This is something that advocates don't really get, as after each high profile crash and death(s), they say it's because of street design.  Sometimes there are issues, admittedly, but mostly it's recklessness.

I've mentioned this for years ("Social marketing and aberrant driving," 2020, "When the car lobby encourages law breaking," 2012), but only recently after some high profile deaths is the city addressing this ("Reckless drivers in spotlight as D.C. hits 16-year high on traffic deaths," Washington Post).