Photo by erin m
Mayor Muriel Bowser and the D.C. Department of Transportation gave updates today on the administration’s goal of eliminating all traffic-related fatalities and injuries by 2024.
Over the past year, more than 25 city agencies have collaborated on Vision Zero, a traffic safety program announced by Mayor Bowser in December 2015.
According to a DDOT progress report on Vision Zero released today, nine pedestrians were killed in 2016 in traffic-related incidents, a part of 28 overall traffic fatalities in D.C. last year—that’s an increase of two people from 2015. But while there have been more traffic fatalities, fewer of them have been pedestrians.
Additionally, crash injuries increased in D.C. last year from 12,122 to 12,430, including 439 incidents in which “serious injuries” were reported.
During the city’s first Vision Zero Summit this morning, Bowser said officials started clearing snow from bus stops after storms—something that she initiated in her administration recognizing that if she wanted to get the city open after an emergency situations, “there’s certain things that we have to do.”
Calling out short-term rental company car2go, she said that the city has gotten more stakeholders involved in educating people about traffic safety. In addition, D.C. Public Schools have educated some of our “youngest travelers on how to safely cross the street” in a program that’s taught 4,000 2nd graders how to ride bikes. And the D.C. council passed a bill that makes it easer for bicyclists to collect damages after a crash.
Bowser also noted areas for growth while explaining that any time there’s a fatality in the city, she gets a call. “And I’m always struck by the number of calls we get when we have a high speed car accident where somebody is killed and the very unfortunate circumstances when a pedestrian is killed.”
She said that city officials have collected data on where these incidents have taken place and are identifying streets with potential safety risks to make changes “before those intersection or areas can result in death.”
Indeed, DDOT spokesperson Terry Owens told DCist in December 2016 that Vision Zero was focused on “better data collection and evaluation, better interagency coordination, and physical improvements to roadways and intersections.”
D.C. gets about 900 new residents each month, Bowser said, and the daily total of people in the city swells to over a million with those who work and visit the District. Because of this growth, “the transportation patterns have been challenging in some cases and we have had to catch up to what we want to do and where we want to go,” Bowser said.
The report names more than 60 safety strategies in the categories of street design, protecting vulnerable users, preventing dangerous driving, and transparency.
To reach zero traffic-related deaths and fatalities, the city needs a 35 percent reduction each year through 2024, according to the report.
