Item 32 - Santa Ana Vision Zero Plan

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1.1 What is Vision Zero? Traffic Safety in Santa Ana The City is undergoing an update for the 2016 Safe Mobility Santa Ana (SMSA) Plan, now being called Santa Ana Vision Zero Plan (SAVZ), to evaluate mobility priorities and identify innovative transportation solu- tions for an all-around safer Santa Ana. This Vision Zero plan starts from and builds upon the original SMSA plan to further progress Vision Zero projects in Santa Ana to align with the City's mission of zero traffic fatalities. Project locations from SMSA are showcased in Figure 1-1. Due to motor vehicle collisions, there have been 40 fatalities and 149 serious injuries amongst pedestrians and bicyclists during the years 2017 to 2021. When including drivers and passengers, there have been a total of 603 killed or seriously injured roadway users in Santa Ana during this same time period. Pedestrians and bicyclists make up about nearly one third of all collisions resulting in fatalities or serious injuries. This Plan addresses these traffic -related collisions and pro- poses countermeasures to enhance roadway safety for all users using the FHWA's "Safe Systems" approach, which has a significant focus on people walking and bicycling. This study will evaluate mobility priorities and take proactive steps to innovative transportation solutions for a safer Santa Ana. Vision Zero Overview This Santa Ana Vision Zero Action Plan is an initiative to eliminate traf- fic -related fatalities and serious injuries in Santa Ana by 2040. It is guided by "Vision Zero," a traffic safety concept that aims to achieve a roadway system with no fatalities or serious injuries involving road traffic. The main principle of Vision Zero is that life and health can- not be exchanged for other societal benefits, such as a conventional cost -benefit analysis. In the 1990s, Sweden developed "Vision Zero" and the Netherlands concurrently developed "Sustainable Safety" (aka "Vision Zero Plus"), and the concepts have been widely embraced around the world. In the United States, the concepts were first adopted in New York City (NYC) which, mainly due to the widespread implemen- tation of innovative, low-cost pedestrian safety measures, has seen the lowest number of pedestrian fatalities in the first year of enactment since 1910. After NYC, Vision Zero spread to dozens of cities across the country. Within the region, the Cities of Los Angeles, Long Beach, El Monte and Los Angeles County have all enacted Vision Zero plans, and the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) has made a commitment to zero deaths. Notably, the City of Hoboken, New Jersey became the first US city of its size to reach Vision Zero. Vision Zero vs. Traditional Safety Research Vision Zero is proactive rather than reactive. In practice, this means it is necessary to identify and remedy dangerous roadway conditions and characteristics before serious injury or fatality occurs. Recent research points to the benefits of identifying the types of roadway characteris- tics that lead to more pedestrian -involved collisions and recommends proactive measures to mitigate safety issues at those locations. Even when there are no known collisions at the location of, for example, the intersection of two four -lane roads, the research recommends proac- tively introducing safety measures at that type of location as a preemp- tive measure against collisions. The 94% Myth At the heart of the traditional approach to traffic safety is the myth that human error causes most car collisions. Individual road users, bad driv- ers, careless bicyclists, and distracted pedestrians have historically been presented as the problem and seen as the cause of collisions. Unlike in Europe, which accepts that society at large is responsible for safer streets, in the United States historically, the responsibility for road safety largely falls on the person walking, bicycling, or driving, which is slowly shifting. American transportation departments, licens- ing agencies, and media outlets frequently cite that most collisions — "94% of them," are solely due to human error. Blaming poor decisions of roadway users implies that nobody could have prevented these "accidents" Even using the term "accident" versus "crash" implies an incident that is not preventable. Many agencies in the United States focus on getting bicyclists to be "more visible" and pedestrians to be "less distracted." Data suggests the focus should be in other places, such as re -engineering roadways. 4