Cities Must Follow Through on Road Safety Plans. Here's How.

[marmar]

Cities Must Follow Through on Road Safety Plans. Here’s How.
There’s a way to overcome the political backlashes and bureaucratic delays that keep cities from implementing safety-focused street changes such as bike lanes.



Angie Schmitt
April 4, 2022, 12:15 PM EDT


(Bloomberg CityLab) Not long ago, Los Angeles seemed ready to take on its notorious traffic congestion and build a more balanced, walkable and safer city — or at least improve on the status quo.

Approved in 2015, the city’s Mobility Plan 2035 staked out an ambitious vision for transformation: Over the next two decades, 1,500 miles of streets were to be overhauled for safety and walkability. Mayor Eric Garcetti also made a commitment to Vision Zero, the international traffic safety movement that emphasizes redesigning roads to dramatically reduce transportation-related fatalities.

But in the last seven years, only 3% of the plan has been completed. At this rate, it will take 200 years to realize, not the 20 that the plan calls for, the Los Angeles Times recently noted. And instead of going down, traffic deaths have gone up, increasing 21% in 2021. A pedestrian is killed within the city’s boundaries about every three days.

This is a pattern repeated in city after city, where plans to build safer streets sit on shelves, get mired in endless red tape, or are reversed after backlashes — often led by business owners and drivers who fear traffic impacts or object to parking disruptions.

In Philadelphia, for example, the city recently quashed plans to reconfigure Washington Avenue, a crash-prone five-lane thoroughfare, despite an extensive engagement process in which 5,400 people participated, offering 71% support for the proposed lane reduction. “The city’s Washington Avenue head-fake reveals the sham of ‘community engagement,’” said a Philadelphia Inquirer editorial the following week. ..............(more)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-04/the-best-way-to-beat-a-bike-lane-backlash?srnd=premium