Visualizing No Traffic Deaths
Strong Towns Metro MKE Welcomes Vision Zero Director Jessica Wineberg.
Our Local Conversation was honored to host the Director of Milwaukee’s Vision Zero initiative, in which the plan is nothing less than zero traffic deaths by 2037. If this sounds pie-in-the-sky, we’d refer you to a place in the United States where it has already happened.
The entire plan is worth your time, but Jessica hit the critical points:
The status quo is wrong. Traffic deaths shouldn't be accepted as inevitable, much less baked into our traffic planning as a cost of doing business.
Street space is for everyone. If a ten year old can’t use the street safely, what needs to change?
We don’t have traffic accidents, we have crashes. Accidents are unpredictable and thus unavoidable. The same cannot be said of car crashes.
Safety on the streets is a function of a well-thought-out system and not a responsibility placed entirely on the individual, whether that person is a pedestrian, a cyclist, or a driver.
We've already invented the nearly fatality-free method of transportation - mass transit.
People of Color are killed in car-pedestrian crashes at rate twice that of white people, and Milwaukee’s racial disparity in this regard is among the worst in the Midwest.
A safer street for pedestrians and cyclists is safer for the drivers too.
And some good discussion topics resulted:
What happened in 2014-2015 (see pic above) that cause traffic deaths here to jump and never really come back down?
What are some of our widest residential streets? Why are they that way? What can we encourage the City to do about them?
Why do drivers get tested once and never again?
Vision Zero is two years into its ongoing work to end the stress traffic deaths place on our families, friends, neighbors, and emergency workers. Follow the page at the link above; in June a list of projects going on now is expected to be published. And as always, get involved. In the City of Milwaukee itself, Mayor Johnson has made Vision Zero a point of emphasis. He deserves our support in this regard. And as for our local conversation….learn more.
Finally, a shout out to first time attendees Riley, Tom, Manzur, Emma, Ben, and Danielle.