Warning Lights on City's Vision Zero Framing?

I thought we might be done with serious topics for a few days, but maybe not.

Yesterday's City newsletter

The City included a blurb on the Vision Zero grant in yesterday's newsletter, and the framing and rhetoric already looks a little problematic. It is a narrowing contrary to Vision Zero.

First off, the image. That's a bike lane from 2016 on Church Street near Chemeketa. The City used that in a 2023 Year in Review video, and so now maybe we have to ask, Is this going to be the iconic image for the Vision Zero project and its bundle of associated activities?

If so, while bike lanes have some general traffic calming effect, and indirectly improve things for people on foot, that's not the best image to illustrate "eliminating pedestrian deaths."

But what it does do, and this is the real source of concern, is that it frames the project as something special for people on foot and people on bike. The safety project becomes an expression of special interests. That's what the City's headline says, right?

Earlier this month

The paper echoed this a little in their announcement, with the headline on "pedestrian deaths," and as illustrating it with a focus on a crosswalk. The car is blurred, and in motion, but the focus, especially online and in color, was on the crosswalk sign, on the special facility for people walking.

But Vision Zero has not historically been limited this way. This is either a misunderstanding of Vision Zero or it is a substantial revision and limiting of it that requires more discussion.

Eugene's draft Vision Zero plan (2017)

Eugene's draft plan in 2017 underscored both the special peril of vulnerable road users, and the more "routine" danger to those encased in cars with internal safety features:

While over 90 percent of crashes involve only drivers and their passengers, people walking, biking and riding motorcycles are disproportionately likely to be seriously injured or killed on our streets—an unacceptable inequality for a city that prides itself on healthy, active, accessible transportation options.

Drivers and their passengers are also in danger. Over 57 percent of all fatal or serious injury crashes involve drivers and their passengers.

Here are three places and crashes where Vision Zero has something to say. The benefits are for drivers and passengers also.

2022

Cordon Road, 2019

Fairway Ave., 2019

Vision Zero is not be completely agnostic to vehicle and mode of travel, but it is broader and more inclusive than merely a focus on "pedestrian deaths" and a focus on "those using neighborhood streets." It is about safety for everyone, including drivers and passengers, and  on every street. It's not a special interest. It is a universal interest for the entire traveling public.

Vision Zero "Core Elements"

The Vision Zero network focuses on "traffic fatalities and severe injuries," not merely death, and also stresses "safety for all road users." (This is one instance where "balance" may be more useful.)

High crash corridors

And, again, pedestrian deaths, and traffic deaths generally, aren't happening on neighborhood streets here in Salem. They are generally on busier streets, like those in the high crash corridor list the MPO safety project published recently. There is right now a mismatch in the rhetoric of speed reductions on neighborhood streets and reducing pedestrian deaths.

It's early in the Vision Zero process, but already the City framing looks like it might silo off pedestrian safety, keep it from the streets the most need it, and make it a special interest rather than safety for everyone. This is something to watch.