Portland's Audit of Vision Zero can Point to a Better Instance Here

Only partial progresss

There's been a good bit of coverage for the City of Portland's formal Audit of the Vision Zero program.

City of Portland Audit

If if hasn't hit your news reading yet, here are good pieces:

• A BikePortland, "City Auditor gives PBOT mixed report card on Vision Zero"
• At Portland Mercury, "As Traffic Crash Fatalities Rise, Portland Auditor’s Office Recommends Changes to Vision Zero Program"
• And at OPB, "As traffic deaths surged, Portland transportation bureau fell short of safety goals, audit says"

Above all, they say, there's no feedback/assessment loop, insufficient "evaluation and monitoring." Did this countermeasure or intervention work? Did it make a difference?

Many of the observations apply equally to our Metropolitan Transportation Safety Action Plan. 

As the City of Salem updates our Transportation System Plan and develops its own Vision Zero Plan, it would be helpful to anticipate the critique in Portland's Audit and proactively incorporate its suggestions into our own plans and execution of them.

We'll come back to this in more detail later!