Metropolitan Transportation Safety Action Plan should focus more on Speed

At the MPO, after all of 2023 in quiet activity, in the last month or so they finally created a page and then published materials for the Metropolitan Transportation Safety Action Plan. This is great to see finally. 

And in light of Councilor Stapleton's motion for a much smaller downtown safety study, it is interesting to check in on the MPO's discussion of downtown sites as well as a little about its overarching themes and emphases.

October 2023

The the plan has committed to a "safe system approach," which starts in some helpful directions, but the balance does not seem right yet, and is too caught up in false equivalence and both-sidesing. To be very successful in actual results, it needs adjustment in emphasis and proportion.

It says we must "accommodate certain types of human errors" and that "responsibility is shared" with "every individual play[ing] an important role."

You may recall at Strong Towns "The Twelve Days of Safety Myths":

A child, all of 100 pounds, is mowed down by a person driving a 4,500-pound pickup truck. What will you likely hear from police officers, highway safety engineers, Governors Highway Safety Association, and state DOTs? “Now, remember, children, safety is a shared responsibility!”

Bull pucky. Shared responsibility on the road isn’t a valid expectation of people who walk and bike until they are given equal consideration in road design and equal opportunity to move safely throughout the system.

In an October "Safety Analysis and Solutions" memo there is still too much weight on shared responsibility, on forgiving driver error, and not enough on forgiving walking and biking error.

In a review note at the Vision Zero Network, "What We’re Getting Wrong about Vision Zero & Lessons for 2024: 'Why is Vision Zero failing in the U.S.?'" they center speed by drivers, and place that in the context of a safe system approach:

Minding the realities of physics to advance Vision Zero means recognizing the frailty of the human body and re-designing our transportation system to respect these inalienable physical vulnerabilities. Our most promising way of reducing the frequency and severity of crashes is by reducing speeds, especially where there are a mix of people traveling both inside and outside motor vehicles. As the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) states in its 2023 report, Safe System Approach for Speed Management: “To achieve safer speeds, [t]he Department believes it is important to prioritize safety and moving individuals at safe speeds over focusing exclusively on the throughput of motor vehicles.”

For a community serious about advancing Vision Zero, it starts with recognizing the physics: Vehicle speed at the time of impact correlates directly to whether a person will live or die....

Moving past a piecemeal approach to safety requires applying the physics of safe mobility – prioritizing safety over speed – not just in a few token places but holistically.

While there is value, especially initially, in focusing Vision Zero efforts swiftly and pointedly on the most problematic injury locations, this “spot treatment” is only a starting place. Comprehensive change – reducing speed limits and designing Complete Streets fully, community-wide – is needed in all places where people are moving by a combination of walking, driving, biking, etc. This means moving from a project-by-project approach to one that makes wholesale change.

The consultant at an April meeting even highlighted those outside of cars in themes from public comment.

Those outside of cars worry (April 2023)

It's the cars and drivers and speed. Always this should be centered.

10 case studies

For the October Analysis and Solutions memo, the consultant and committee chose ten locations for case studies. Two focused on walking safety and one of these was downtown, the intersection of Liberty and Ferry, an important gateway into downtown proper with connections from the Civic Center. Turning errors by drivers led the way.

Liberty and Ferry

"Conflicts between pedestrians and turning vehicles" makes it sound like there is a negotiation of equals going on in the intersection. But frequently it is drivers failing to yield to a person with a lawful and moral claim to the protection of a crosswalk.

Liberty and Ferry

Restricting turns on red and installing a protected, leading phase for crosswalks were at the top of the list of potential countermeasures. (But nothing directly about speed.)

These were echoed in one of the case studies for intersections, a nearby site at Commercial and Marion, a key access for the bridges. Again, turning movements were a leading factor.

Commercial and Marion

But it also emphasized "conflicts between all road users" and submerged the primary factor of driver error. That makes it seem like both parties have an equal claim to the road space and it is difficult or impossible to adjudicate between them. But right- and left-hooks by drivers are frequently an error in yielding and recognizing a valid claim to road space by those on foot or on bike. And even when a person on foot makes an unambiguous error, they will pay a much greater and disproportionate price in injury or death.

Commercial and Marion

There were two case studies on system-wide problems, and one of these was for "fixed object crashes.

Fixed object crashes

Here they advocate for an "educational campaign," and give equal weight to "traffic calming." They also suggest "remove" or "relocate" roadside fixed objects.

Fire Station 11 on Orchard Heights (2014)

Look, drivers can't even avoid crashing into Fire Stations and into other large, highly visible fixed objects like buildings!

Traffic calming is the key. Slower speeds. If drivers have problems with hitting buildings, with hitting other "fixed objects," and hitting people walking and biking, the main problem is with the cars, drivers, and speed.

If a person biking during daylight hours is wearing high visibility jackets and using front flashing lights, and a person charged with enforcing our laws still kills her, the problem is not with improper walking or biking. The problem again is cars, drivers, and speed.

If a person is in a crosswalk, marked or unmarked, and a driver does not yield, the problem is cars, drivers, and speed.

Cars, drivers, and speed should be our fundamental categories for analysis and solutions. Nearly everything else is secondary.

But because of our commitments to congestion relief, we shy from cars, drivers, and speed. While some crashes occur on smaller streets, not really those we think of in a "congestion relief" frame, our whole approach to traffic remains dominated by that frame. Our mode of analysis with "levels of service" ratings, with "volume/capacity" ratios, with 85th percentile speed setting, with "congestion mitigation and air quality" improvement funding from the Feds, the whole dominant traffic paradigm still prioritizes speed and throughput. Congestion is the main problem to solve. Safety is not yet the main problem to solve.

Until we are ready to alter and replace this paradigm, many safe system approaches will not give sufficient attention to cars, drivers, and speed as the keystone problem and we are going to fail.

As we look at other places in the City, as appropriate we'll return to the remaining case studies.