On Monday, March 4, 2024 Mayor Ed Gainey, in partnership with the Department of Mobility and Infrastructure (DOMI) and Councilmember Barb Warwick, announced the city is adopting Vision Zero.

This announcement is a pledge to reduce traffic fatalities and serious injuries for all who use city streets to zero.

The Mayor has since signed a resolution passed by City Council, further solidifying this commitment.

A safe and equitable transportation system is a shared responsibility and requires multiple agencies and all roadway users to work together. Vision Zero brings city and partner organizations together to advance to our goal of zero traffic deaths through a holistic approach to roadway design, education, policy and other changes that uphold a commitment to safety.

Mayor Gainey’s 2024 budget nearly doubled the city’s investment in traffic safety capital projects and operations. The city’s commitment to Vision Zero will support this renewed investment in public safety on our roads through several immediate actions:

• Establishing an interdepartmental working group dedicated to eliminating the occurrence of severe injuries and fatalities due to traffic crashes.
• Forming a fatal crash response group to act quickly when fatal crashes occur, solving to root cause, and developing short- and long-term solutions.
• Prioritizing both capital project solutions and low-cost, effective countermeasures, at scale, and at locations that will have the greatest impact on residents.
• Using a data-driven approach, the city will rely on the High Injury Network map as a guide to prioritize this work.

Follow this page for more updates as the City’s work on Vision Zero advances in the coming months.

Vision Zero is an international movement to prevent traffic fatalities and serious injuries through a safe system approach.

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, a Safe Systems Approach acknowledges the following principles:

• Death and serious injuries are unacceptable
  • This approach prioritizes the elimination of crashes resulting in death and serious injuries.
• Humans make mistakes
  • People will inevitably make mistakes and decisions that can lead or contribute to crashes, but the transportation system can be designed and operated to accommodate certain types and levels of human mistakes, and avoid death and serious injuries when a crash occurs.
• Humans are vulnerable
  • It is critical to design and operate a transportation system that is human-centric and accommodates physical human vulnerabilities.
• Responsibility is shared by all
  • All stakeholders—including government at all levels, industry, non-profit/advocacy, researchers, and the general public—are vital to preventing fatalities and serious injuries on our roadways.
• Safety is proactive
  • Proactive tools should be used to identify and address safety issues in the transportation system, rather than waiting for crashes to occur and reacting afterwards.
• Redundancy is crucial.
  • Reducing risks requires that all parts of the transportation system be strengthened, so that if one part fails, the other parts still protect people.