Revisiting Vision Zero in DC and NYC

 The Washington Post reports ("D.C. pledged to cut traffic fatalities by 2024. Deaths are up, and now the program is under audit") that advocates are complaining that DC's traffic safety initiative, Vision Zero, is ineffective as the number of traffic safety deaths has increased since the program started.  In NYC, Mayor De Blasio faces similar complaints ("Things were looking up for Bill de Blasio. Then crises started piling up," Politico).

Thinking about this, one of the problems in getting a grip on the problem is that comparatively speaking, the number of traffic-related deaths in DC is relatively low, and even the same can be said for NYC, given its population.

Here are 11 points:

1.  How to measure and benchmark traffic deaths?  Because traffic-related deaths in cities like DC are comparatively low, I've found it difficult to get a handle on how to think about this.  

This blog entry, "First global benchmark for road safety in cities published by International Transport Forum," calls our attention to the metric promoted by the ITF, fatalities per 100,000 residents.

Using that approach, it means that last year NYC had 2.76 traffic deaths per 100,000 residents, while DC had 5.28.  By that measure, NYC is bad, but not heinous, while DC's traffic death is one of the worst in the world (against other major cities, but not that bad in terms of the US, sadly, see "[US] Cities with the Most Pedestrian and Cyclist Fatalities," ValuePenguin).

From the 2018 blog entry:

They used the measure "deaths per 100,000 residents."  Stockholm had the fewest deaths on that score, 0.9 per 100,000, while Montreal had 1.8.


But with 700,000 residents, that means that DC's fatality rate is 4.28, almost five times higher than Stockholm, which has a population about 25% larger than DC, or 952,000 residents.  The study recognizes that better measures, including daytime population numbers--nonresident workers and visitors--are necessary to get a better handle on what the data means.

DC has a high daytime population, but so do most of the other comparison cities.  So now I see, comparatively speaking, DC's road-related fatality rate is pretty high.

The study finds that in cities, walking and cycling death rates are lower compared to countries as a whole, and within metropolitan areas, center cities are safer for vulnerable road users. Interestingly, the risk to men is about double that of women. Younger and older age cohorts are more vulnerable as well.

The report, Safer City Streets: Global Benchmarking for Urban Road Safety, makes some important recommendations.

2.  The issues are unchanging.  Basically what I wrote about this issue last year is still completely relevant, pretty much explains what's going on.

-- "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"

3.  Government has a bias for inaction*.  A big issue is that transportation agencies (and government agencies more generally), even very good ones like NYCDOT, aren't always that proactive, and tend to not have "a sense of urgency" when it comes to action.  

Janette Sadik-Khan was NYC Commissioner of Transportation under Mayor Bloomberg, who was committed to sustainable mobility.

It varies depending on the mayor.  It's fair to say that in NYC Mayor De Blasio cares a lot less about this than former Mayor Bloomberg ("A Playbook on the Politics of Better Streets," Bloomberg), and in DC, most elected officials are from "the outer city" where the automobile remains dominant ("DC as a suburban agenda dominated city," 2013).

That's why too often, improvements are implemented after someone dies rather than systematically addressing problems beforehand ("Salt Lake City paints crosswalk where children were struck on way to school," Salt Lake Tribune).

A key point in the iterative improvement of my writings on Vision Zero is focusing initiatives in terms of the "6 E's" of sustainable mobility planning ("Updating Vision Zero approaches," 2016). 

 One of the reasons for failures in improvement resulting from Vision Zero "initiatives" is the lack of a systematic approach.

* A bias for inaction is a riff on the "bias for action" element of forward-looking corporations as discussed in the book The Search For Excellence.("Putting a Bias for Action into Planning Agency Management: A Practitioner's Perspective," Public Administration Review, 1986).

4.  Planning for mode versus planning for place and livability.  More recently, I wrote a piece, "Planning for place/urban design/neighborhoods versus planning for transportation modes: new 17th Street NW bike lanes | Walkable community planning versus "pedestrian" planning," making the point that there is a difference between planning for sustainable modes like walking or biking, versus planning an environment that is pro-walking, pro-biking, and pro-transit from a sustainable mobility standpoint more generally ("Extending the "Signature Streets" concept to "Signature Streets and Spaces"" "50 Reasons Why Everyone Should Want More Walkable Streets: from the Arup report, Cities Alive – Towards a walking world," "Further updates to the Sustainable Mobility Platform Framework").

Just focusing "on walking" or "biking" or "transit" is too limiting.  Transportation agencies need to plan for "urbanity", "livability, "placemaking," and "quality of life."

A good example is how applying Safe Routes to School approaches have broader benefits for the neighborhoods where the school is located.

-- School Walk and Bike Routes: A Guide for Planning and Improving Walk and Bike to School Options for Students, Washington State DOT

5.  Not treating the road system as a network. I've come to understand that looking at individual elements of the transportation infrastructure rather than the network is a problem.  Often there are streets referred to as "Boulevards of Death" ("'Boulevards of death': why pedestrian road fatalities are surging in the US," Guardian, "A more radical approach to "Vision Zero" is needed: reconstructing streets out of different materials to reduce speeds," 2019, "Pedestrian fatalities and street redesign," 2019).  That's because the failures are systematic and result from urban design.

While it's not uncommon to at least mention this with biking ("1979 Delft cycling master plan," Bicycle Dutch blog) it's rare for traffic engineers to consider major streets as a sub-network element and consider intersections as a whole ("Barnes Dance Intersections as possible "solutions" to Wisconsin & M, 14th and U intersections," 2014).

While the Smart Transportation Guidebook doesn't call for treating streets as systems and networks, it does provide a great framework for thinking about some of these issues in terms of:

• land use context
• whether roads are local or regionally serving
• desired operating speed of traffic, and 
• roadway and roadside characteristics in terms of (1), (2) and (3)

6.  Traffic deaths can be broadly categorized into three segments.  In reading the Politico article, it occurred to me that from "a big data" perspective, in center cities you can segment traffic-related deaths in three broad categories:

• drivers generally unfamiliar with driving in cities, in "mixed traffic," that is alongside pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit users, where pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit users make up a preponderance of traffic.  Such drivers don't think of non-automobiles as being legitimate users of the right of way.  As a bicyclist in DC, a majority of the incidents I had with motor vehicles had non-DC license plates.
• traffic engineering and design that promotes automobility over pedestrians, bicyclists and transit users, when those users make up a preponderance or majority of traffic.  This can be as simple as pedestrian timing signals that don't provide enough time to get across the street, and putting bicyclists and motor vehicles in conflict by the way roads are designed.,
• reckless driving by motor vehicle operators.

One and three are behavioral and difficult to address.  One way is to accord more responsibility to motor vehicle operators for accidents involving pedestrians and bicyclists ("A reminder about how the entitlement of automobility is embedded into law and democratizes death by accident," 2014).

7.  How do you get reckless drivers off the street?  Reckless driving is common to the incidents mentioned in both DC and NYC.  In DC, at least from what I seem to recall reading, it seems as if a majority of the traffic deaths are the result of reckless driving.  

NYC seems to have a law that takes away driving privileges from repeat reckless driving infractions--not that this prevents people from driving--but it wasn't imposed against the person in the incident there, despite the person having 160!!!!!! citations.

From a "Big Brother" perspective, people are reticent to approve of using algorithms in policing, but applying the approach to reckless drivers should be considered.

8.  Traffic enforcement.  For a long time I've argued that traffic enforcement should be placed in a "special police department unit" that only focuses on traffic safety, as typically police departments slack on dealing with enforcement in the face of other duties, unless they use it as a way to stop and arrest people for other crimes ("Traffic without the Police," Stanford Law Review, 2021).

This is done in San Francisco, although it's been pointed out to me that was a way to get transportation department monies to subsidize the police department.

This could go a long way towards dealing with the "bias" of police officers evaluating traffic accidents, who have a tendency to blame pedestrians and bicyclists first ("Preventable Deaths -- Asking all the wrong quesions," Urban Country).  

The Toronto Star's investigation of traffic enforcement in that city found a severe decrease in enforcement associated with an increase in collisions ("Toronto Star coverage of traffic enforcement in Toronto").

9.  Oversight Committees at the City/County and District/Ward scales.  The Washington State SRTS program recommends but does not require that school systems create a "traffic safety" committee for their districts, linking schools, advocates, planners from planning and transportation agencies, and the police department.  (They require SRTS maps for all public and private elementary schools, but not junior and senior high schools.  Most school districts don't do systematic planning for transportation outside of busing, which is something that should be addressed by state law.  See "International Walk and Bike to School Day.")

Most communities have city or county wide bike and/or pedestrian committees.  I came up with a stratagem in Baltimore County that I am proud of.  That the County-wide committee should have subcommittees for each ward/council district.  

They stripped that out of the plan, but I lobbied and got it put back in, but it's optional.  But the two Council Districts that did create the equivalent of subcommittees have more bicycle and pedestrian improvements than the other districts.  

That's because of how the Pedestrian and Bicycle Access Plan set up the process as recommendations were listed by council district rather than alphabetically.  So they were presented with an agenda for change, and advocates were brought together with representatives from the legislative and executive branches.

I think that's how these committees should be set up.  It's not enough to have councilmembers appoint a representative to these city/county committees, there needs to be an "action agenda" and mechanism for implementing improvements at the sub-city level, the way I outlined it for Baltimore County.

10.  Systematic review of crashes/accidents in a public fashion.  Most communities do this sort of analysis, as it is a requirement for receiving funds from the federal highway safety program.  Using various "countermeasure" evaluation systems like PEDSAFE and BIKESAFE, you can make specific recommendations for improvement.

But typically this isn't a process with much public involvement, and because of the bias of inaction, it can take a long time to make change.  So open it up, make this a function of the Bicycle and Pedestrian Committee.

Again, in Baltimore County, I recommended that a subcommittee of the County Bicycle and Pedestrian Committee be tasked with reading and evaluating these reports, and making recommendations for systematic improvements.  

The recommendation called for agency representatives from planning and transportation, the police department's traffic safety and enforcement functions, and the police department's data analysis section dealing with traffic safety reporting.  

In Ontario, the coroner at the provincial level (Office of the Chief Coroner for Ontario: Pedestrian Death Review), and in Toronto ("Dozens of cycling deaths probed," Toronto Star) have done systematic reviews of pedestrian and/or bicycle deaths, and made recommendations for change.

Map of pedestrian and bicycle accidents in San Francisco over a multiyear period.  "Maps Show Where Thousands of S.F. Cyclists, Pedestrians Hurt or Killed," KQED/NPR).

11.  Mapping pedestrian, bicycle, transit and car accidents.  Systematic collection and publication of accident data is key to doing the kind of analysis where you can make extraordinary improvements through urban design changes (blog entry, 2009)..  

In the Baltimore County study, we got this data from the police department but we didn't have time to analyze it and make recommendations (and the County wasn't willing to spend a little bit of money on us for a couple more months to do the analysis and further fine tune the study).

Locations with multiple incidents are the place to start, and generate the quickest improvements when addressed.