5 Key Takeaways from Vision Zero Conference 2017
On Wednesday, March 1, the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia and Uber presented the the Vision Zero Conference at Thomas Jefferson University. Vision Zero is a policy approach that recognizes traffic fatalities as preventable and aims to reduce all traffic deaths through engineering, education, and enforcement. Originating in the 1990s in Sweden, Vision Zero is based on the belief that the loss of life is not an acceptable price to pay for mobility. As of January 2017, 23 U.S. cities have committed to Vision Zero.
In 2016, there were 76 traffic fatalities in Philadelphia. Of those deaths, 36 were pedestrians, 8 were children, and 4 were cyclists. While Vision Zero is still a relatively new concept for Philadelphia, Mayor Kenney took the first step in recognizing these traffic deaths as a public health crisis by issuing the city’s first-ever Vision Zero Executive Order in November 2016. The executive order established Philly’s new Office of Complete Streets and a Vision Zero Task Force. With the goal of eliminating traffic fatalities to zero by 2030, the Task Force released a Vision Zero Draft Three-Year Action Plan on March 7, 2017. Additionally for the first time, the City has dedicated significant funds to Vision Zero in the proposed 2018 budget.
The conference, the third of it’s kind to be organized by the Bicycle Coalition, featured presenters and panelists with a wide range of expertise. These experts included traffic safety researchers, trauma surgeons, city planners, and heads of government agencies, as well as everyday road-users. With the City ready to move towards zero traffic fatalities, here are our 5 takeaways on how to implement Vision Zero in Philadelphia [quotes have been edited for clarity]:
5. Everything revolves around data … better capture & utilization is needed to improve communities. – Dr. Stanton B. Miller, Founding Director of Jefferson Center for Injury Research and Prevention
Data is vital for implementing Vision Zero strategies, but data is often spread across agencies and organizations. For example, police collect crash data, trauma surgeons track crash injuries, PennDOT monitors traffic information, the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia counts bicyclists, etc., but these organizations don’t often share their findings with each other. By involving all the stakeholders, data can be better shared, analyzed and compared so that the right policies and improvements can be made and lives can be saved.
4. Our city is poor. – Mike Carroll, Deputy Managing Director for Office of Transportation and Infrastructure Systems
Most of us are aware that Philadelphia is the poorest big city in the U.S. There are kids going to school hungry and gun violence is devastating communities and families. So, why should people care about Vision Zero? Emiko Atherton, Director of the National Complete Streets Coalition, said it best: “Investment in Vision Zero is an investment in the community with huge returns.” Not only is it an economic opportunity that can provide safe, affordable, and convenient access to jobs, but it also can help improve public health. By making it safe to bike, walk, and take public transit, people can adopt exercise behavior into their everyday life. Additionally, replacing car trips with those sustainable modes of transit can improve air quality. Instead of taking away from efforts to address other community issues, Vision Zero can help progress those issues.
Futhermore, funding for safety improvements can be hard to find. But, as WSP/Parsons Brinkerhoff and AECOM showed in their corridor design presentations, low-cost, small scale projects completed over time can greatly improve safety for all road-users.
3. Vision Zero network needs to be context sensitive. What works for one community may be different elsewhere. – Emiko Atherton, Director of the National Complete Streets Coalition, a program of Smart Growth America
Vision Zero is not a one-size-fits-all solution to traffic deaths. It was conceived in Sweden, a very homogenous country whose government works very differently than ours, so what works there might not necessarily work in the United States. Similarly, what works in one U.S. city may not work in another. Vision Zero policy makers need to understand the communities in which they are working and, as Dr. Miller said, they need to recognize the varying cultural perceptions of traffic safety.
2. Priority should be to invest in design first: set table for good behavior. Then education, then enforcement. – Kelley Yemen, Philadelphia’s Director of Complete Streets
Engineering, education, and enforcement are Vision Zero’s three main strategies to end traffic fatalities. Engineering focuses on street design. Education aims to not only inform the public about street safety, but also to unify neighborhoods around Vision Zero goals. Enforcement is the use of police strategies to target dangerous traffic behaviors. For communities of color, police encounters can be life threatening. Black men and women are more likely to be subjected to excessive force, touched, handcuffed, pushed to the ground, or pepper-sprayed by a police officer. Philando Castile, Walter Scott, and Samuel Dubose were all fatally shot after getting pulled over by police for minor driving infractions. As Yemen stated, enforcement should be the last resort for Vision Zero.
1. Be kind. – Charles Horton, Executive Director of Commission on People with Disabilities
It’s often forgot that all of us are trying to get safely from point A to point B, and sometimes even points A, B, C, D, and all the way to Z. So, not only is Horton’s message applicable for road-users, but also for those implementing Vision Zero. It can easily feel like Vision Zero is only helping cyclists and pedestrians. Vision Zero should make people feel like they can be the solution to traffic violence, not the cause of it. Vision Zero, when applied correctly, can benefit all road-users and communities. And as moderator Andrew Strober pointed out, “Streets are our most important public space. At least, they should respect human dignity. At best, delight.”
