REPORT TO BICYCLE AND PEDESTRIAN ADVISORY COMMITTEE
SUBJECT
Title
Santa Clara Vision Zero Working Group Representative (He)
Report
BACKGROUND
Vision Zero is a strategy aimed at helping to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries, while also promoting safe, healthy, and fair mobility for everyone. It recognizes that people will sometimes make mistakes, so the road system and related policies should be designed to ensure those inevitable mistakes do not result in severe injuries or fatalities. Vision Zero is a multidisciplinary approach, bringing together diverse and necessary stakeholders to address this complex problem.
The objective of developing and implementing a Vision Zero Plan is listed in both the City’s Bicycle Plan Update and Pedestrian Master Plan. In December 2023, the City Council received the Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) grant funding from the Federal Highway Administration to establish a Santa Clara Vision Zero Plan. The City Council approved an agreement with Kimley-Horn and Associates, Inc. for professional services for the Santa Clara Vision Zero Plan on May 28, 2024.
The Santa Clara Vision Zero Plan (Plan) kicked off in July 2024. This effort will involve extensive community engagement and a thorough citywide safety analysis to identify the most frequent types, locations, severity, and demographics of collisions in the City. The Plan will develop a collision countermeasure toolbox, which will include programmatic measures and roadway improvements that address traffic safety issues. Additionally, the Plan will identify a priority list of potential traffic safety improvements and implementable actions to guide the City’s efforts to achieving Vision Zero.
DISCUSSION
The development of the Plan will be built upon the framework of a Safe Systems approach. The U.S. Department of Transportation adopted the Safe System Approach as a guide to address roadway safety. Compared to the traditional approach, the Safe System approach anticipates human mistakes and emphasizes collaboration across all safety stakeholders. The approach includes six principles:
1. Death and serious injuries are unacceptable.
2. Humans make mistakes.
3. Humans are vulnerable.
4. Responsibility is shared.
5. Safety is proactive.
6. Redundancy is crucial.
The Plan will include the following components and activities:
1. Leadership Commitment and Goal Setting: Identify a goal and timeline with either a target date for achieving zero roadway fatalities and severe injuries, or an ambitious percentage reduction of roadway fatalities and severe injuries by a specific date with an eventual goal of eliminating roadway fatalities and severe injuries.
2. Strategic Planning: Establish a working group or similar body that guides and advises the Plan development, implementation, and monitoring.
3. Policy and Process Changes: Assess current policies, plans, guidelines, and/or standards to identify opportunities to improve how processes prioritize transportation safety.
4. Safety Analysis: Systemic and data-driven analysis of existing conditions and historical collision trends that provides a baseline level of crashes involving fatalities and serious injuries in the city. Based on the analysis performed, a geospatial identification of higher-risk locations is developed, also known as a High-Injury Network.
5. Collaboration and Community Engagement: Robust engagement with the public and relevant stakeholders including the community groups, that allows for both community representation and feedback. Information received from engagement and collaboration is analyzed and incorporated into the Plan.
6. Equity Considerations: Identify underserved communities and vulnerable populations. Analysis includes both population characteristics and initial equity impact assessments of the proposed projects and strategies.
7. Strategy and Project Selections: Develop a countermeasure toolbox and a comprehensive set of projects and strategies that will address the safety problems described in the Action Plan. There are two major categories of project/program recommendations: (1) strategies and programmatic measures for Engineering, Education, and Enforcement; and (2) project prioritization or location-specific engineering recommendations. These strategies and countermeasures focus on a Safe System Approach, effective interventions, and consider multidisciplinary activities.
8. Strategies for Implementation and Evaluation: Identify next steps to implement the priority projects and programmatic measure and how to measure the progress in the Plan. The measurement of progress over time will be done after a Plan is adopted by the Council.
Community Engagement
The City will engage the public in plan development through online surveys, interactive mapping, community workshops and pop-up events, and via the City’s communication channels. The consultant will provide a verbal report on project overview, schedule, and upcoming community outreach activities.
There are multiple methods for staying up to date on the project and providing input:
• Web: Visit the project webpage link and subscribe for project updates at SantaClaraCA.gov/VisionZero <https://www.santaclaraca.gov/our-city/departments-g-z/public-works/engineering/traffic-engineering/vision-zero>
• Voicemail: TBD
• Email: TBD
BPAC’s Involvement
Throughout the development of the Plan, staff will gather input from the BPAC and community at key milestones, including the following BPAC meeting dates (tentative):
1. Project overview and schedule, and select a representative to serve on the Santa Clara Vision Zero Working Group (August 2024)
2. Review and feedback on collision analysis and High-Injury Network (January 2025)
3. Review and feedback on the countermeasures and strategies (March 2025)
4. Review and feedback on the draft Plan (June 2025)
5. Recommend the final Plan document to City Council for adoption (August 2025)
The Plan requires a multi-sector, multi-disciplinary and multi-jurisdictional collaboration. To achieve this, the project will form a Santa Clara Vision Zero Working Group that includes a representative from the BPAC, other City departments such as Fire and Police, and external stakeholders including but not limited to the Valley Transportation Authority, County of Santa Clara, Santa Clara Unified School District, and Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition. The representative from BPAC will have the opportunity to interact with other representatives in the Santa Clara Vision Zero Working Group to guide Plan development.
RECOMMENDATION
Recommendation
The BPAC to select a representative to be placed on the Santa Clara Vision Zero Working Group.
Staff
Written by: Nicole He, Associate Engineer, Public Works
Reviewed by: Carol Shariat, Principal Transportation Planner, Public Works
Reviewed by: Steve Chan, Transportation Manager, Public Works
Approved by: Michael Liw, Assistant Director/City Engineer, Public Works