Streets safety efforts are gaining encouraging momentum across the country, with cities like New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Mateo, Austin, Seattle, Portland, Boston and Chicago, and even the State of Montana, having adopted their own iterations of Sweden’s Vision Zero Initiative.
These municipal and state initiatives are the result of local calls for safety improvements, and each is unique in its implementation, education and enforcement efforts. And while that allows for the flexibility to design a program that caters to local issues and needs, there is no standard for comparison, and no American success story on which to base local policy. As a result, the roll-out of these programs hasn’t been exactly flawless; New York has seen its fair share of criticism, Chicago seems to have split into warring factions over the city’s red light camera program, and other cities are in the process of examining the ups and downs of their programs so far.
This week marks the launch of the Vision Zero Network, a collaborative effort “to help communities meet their goals of Vision Zero, or zero traffic fatalities and severe injuries.”
Focusing initially on leading-edge cities demonstrating commitment and potential, the Network will bring together local leaders in health, traffic engineering, police enforcement, policy and advocacy to develop and share winning strategies and to support strong, distributed leadership for policies and practices that make Vision Zero a reality.
Leah Shahum, former executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, is leading the charge as director of the Network, with support from Kaiser Permanente. Ms. Shahum explained that the organization seeks “to make sure that there’s a meaningful standard to being a Vision Zero city,” because as of now, Vision Zero is still a new enough concept that benchmarks and best practices do not yet exist. With many smaller cities and suburban and rural areas considering drafting and adopting their own Vision Zero policies, having a standard for measuring success would go a long way toward encouraging widespread adoption of street safety initiatives. It could very well help to ensure a future where the Vision Zero mantra of “No loss of life is acceptable” is the foundation for all community design and engineering.
