Changing Atlanta’s traffic strategy to reduce injuries and strengthen safety
In mid-April, Atlanta became the latest city to adopt a Vision Zero plan aimed at eliminating traffic facilities and injuries. The plan was unanimously adopted by the City Council on April 20 (Legislative Reference №20-O-1239).
Post 3 At-Large Council member Andre Dickens introduced the legislation, which lowers the default speed limit on local roads to 25 mph and seeks to implement certain design standards to improve public safety and health.
“Vision Zero is going to make our city safer. Vision Zero is about having a vision to have zero pedestrian and cyclist deaths in this city,” Dickens said following the unanimous decision by Council to approve the legislation. “We want to get that down to zero and the way to do that is by designing streets safe, but also lowering the speed limit on streets in Atlanta.”
More than other 40 U.S. cities have committed to the Vision Zero campaign, including Minneapolis, Seattle, New York City, San Diego, and Washington D.C.
During a virtual town hall in April hosted by Dickens and Atlanta Department of Transportation Josh Rowan, Minneapolis Public Works Director Robin Hutcheson noted that the Minneapolis City Council adopted Vision Zero as policy in 2017 and the city accelerated work on its infrastructure to make walking and biking safer.
“First things first, we went to the data. Seventy percent of fatal crashes were on nine percent of the streets,” Hutcheson said during the town hall about identifying high injury streets as part of the plan. “In looking at this data, speed was almost always a factor in the crash, especially as it related to severe injury and death.”
Elements in the plan for Minneapolis included a combination of changes such as reducing speed limits, redesigning intersections, and rethinking traffic enforcement.
Vision Zero strategies are designed with the goal of making it possible for everyone to move safely in their communities. It’s also built around the idea that infrastructure designers and policy makers share the responsibility of ensuring safe systems for travel.
According to Vision Zero Network, a collaborative campaign to help communities reach their traffic safety goals, the Vision Zero framework recognizes that people will make mistakes, so the road system and related policies should be designed to ensure those mistakes don’t result in injuries or fatalities. Through Vision Zero policies, the goal is to lessen the severity of all crashes and make all travel safer — whether it’s a child biking to school, a senior walking through a crosswalk, or a driver making a delivery near a busy intersection.
In Atlanta, 73 traffic fatalities occurred in 2019, a traffic death rate three times greater than peer cities such as Boston and Seattle. While new technologies and innovations — such as electric and self-driving cars — have changed the driving experience, vehicle speed continues to play a critical role in crashes. Speed contributed to 52 percent of Atlanta’s traffic fatalities in 2019, according to local crash data.
The Vision Zero plan seeks to establish the right engineering and policy decisions to reduce those crash rates, cut down on speeding, and lower injury rates throughout the city.
