DATE: April 7, 2026
TO: Mayor and City Council
FROM: Director of Public Works
SUBJECT: Adopt a Resolution Approving the Speed Management Plan to Reduce and Manage Traffic Speeds Citywide
RECOMMENDATION
That the City Council approves the attached resolution (Attachment II) approving the Speed Management Plan (CIP Project No. 06943) to Reduce and Manage Traffic Speeds Citywide.
SUMMARY
The Safe System Approach for Speed Management is a Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) approved road safety framework that involves proactively identifying locations where operating speeds are high compared to desired target speeds. The City’s Speed Management Plan uses this approach to achieve safer speeds and prioritize projects for areas with excessive speeding in Hayward.
The City began working on the Speed Management Plan on December 16, 2024. Staff updated the Council Infrastructure and Airport Committee (CIAC) and received feedback on the plan’s development on June 25, 20251. After completing the related Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) and Stakeholder Advisory Committee (SAC) meetings, a draft Plan was presented to CIAC on February 25, 20262, and recommended for approval to the City Council.
A work session on traffic safety was held at the City Council meeting on March 24, 2026, to discuss pedestrian fatalities in 2026, short-term implementable traffic safety actions, and the overall strategy to achieve Vision Zero. The Speed Management Plan will assist staff in carrying out the strategies and actions in the Council adopted Local Road Safety Plan (LRSP); therefore, many of the strategies and guidance contained in the Speed Management Plan will also support the individual projects discussed in the City Council work session.
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Staff are recommending approval of the Speed Management Plan to be adopted by the City as a comprehensive strategy to reduce speeds in Hayward and reduce the likelihood of collisions resulting in severe injury and fatalities.
FISCAL IMPACT
This item will not impact Measure C or the General Fund.
The Speed Management Plan is primarily funded by a grant from the USDOT SS4A program ($187,000). To complete this Plan, the City Council previously authorized an allocation of $235,000 from Fund 460, the Transportation System Improvement Fund. The authorization included $49,000 in City matching funds comprising $25,000 from Fund 213, the Measure BB Pedestrian & Bicycle Fund, and $24,000 from Fund 410, the Route 238 Corridor Improvement Fund.
BACKGROUND
City Council adopted the LRSP on June 27, 20233, which assesses and identifies locations and strategies to improve road safety throughout the City. Along with identifying the City’s High Injury Network, the LRSP recommends a set of strategies and countermeasures to address and prevent severe injury and fatal collisions. Council also committed to Vision Zero by 2050, a goal of eliminating fatalities and severe injuries on the City’s roadways by 2050.
Action Item 2 of the LRSP recommends the near-term action of pursuing Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) grant funding. Launched by the U.S. Department of Transportation in 2022, the purpose of the SS4A grant program is to improve roadway safety by significantly reducing or eliminating roadway fatalities and serious injuries through safety action plan development and refinement and implementation focused on all users. The program provides funding to develop the tools to help strengthen a community’s approach to roadway safety and save lives while meeting the needs of diverse local, Tribal, and regional communities.
Recognizing the effort needed to achieve Vision Zero by 2050, the City applied for supplemental planning funds from SS4A to develop a comprehensive approach to reduce speeds (Speed Management Plan) and conduct a set of corridor-specific safety plans focused on the City’s High Injury Network. The Speed Management Plan will help address the LRSP focus area of unsafe speeding and aggressive driving, which play a significant role in generating serious injuries and fatalities.
The Safe System Approach for Speed Management is an FHWA approved road safety framework that involves proactively identifying locations where operating speeds are high compared to target speeds. Target speeds can be based on various factors including road
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and land use context, impact statistics, safety goals, and other factors. This framework builds on the Safe System Approach identified in the City’s LRSP by using a five-stage approach, which the City will use to develop the Speed Management Plan to achieve safer speeds and prioritize projects for areas with excessive speeding. The five stages are:
establishing a vision and building consensus for speed management, collecting and analyzing speed and safety data, prioritizing locations for speed management, selecting speed management countermeasures, and conducting ongoing monitoring, evaluation, and adjustment.
On October 27, 2023, the City was awarded the full amount of the $3,252,000 requested in its application to the SS4A grant program. On February 6, 20244, City Council adopted a resolution accepting the funding and allocated $813,000 in City matching funds. On November 19, 20245, the City awarded $210,000 to Fehr & Peers to develop the Speed Management Plan. The consultant contract with Fehr & Peers was executed on December 4, 2024.
A work session on traffic safety was held at the City Council meeting on March 24, 2026, to discuss pedestrian fatalities in 2026, short-term implementable traffic safety actions, and the overall strategy to achieve Vision Zero. Although not specifically mentioned in the work session, the Speed Management Plan is aligned with the LRSP, which is the City’s guiding traffic safety document. The Speed Management Plan will assist staff in carrying out the strategies and actions in the LRSP; therefore, many of the strategies and guidance contained in the Speed Management Plan will also support the individual projects discussed in the City Council work session.
DISCUSSION
Work began on the Speed Management Plan on December 16, 2024. The project team, made up of City and Fehr & Peers staff, studied existing conditions and gathered relevant information over the first quarter of 2025. Relevant data analyzed included observed speed, posted speed limit, collision, land use, and roadway attribute data. In addition, the project created the project’s TAC and the SAC. The TAC consists of internal stakeholders from various City departments, including the Police, Fire, and Development Services Departments. The SAC consists of community-based organizations and stakeholders such as Bike Hayward, California State University East Bay, Hayward Unified School District, and La Familia. The TAC and SAC had their first outreach meetings on February 26, 2025, and March 21, 2025, respectively. Work continued throughout 2025 to develop the Target Speed Framework, Speed Reduction Toolbox, prioritization of projects, and policy recommendations. The Draft Speed Management Plan was completed in December 2025.
The Speed Management Plan is organized into five main sections:
Speeds in Hayward Today: Analysis of speed and crash data in the City.
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Target Speed Framework: Setting desired speeds Citywide based on roadway and land use context.
Speed Reduction Toolbox: Countermeasures to apply where speeds exceed desired speeds.
Speed Reduction Corridors: Priority projects for implementation.
Institutionalizing Safe Speeds: Policy recommendations to institutionalize safe speeds.
Speeds in Hayward Today
The project team reviewed and surveyed existing spot speed and collision data that was available for the City. Between 2017-2022, unsafe speed was found to be the most cited contributing factor for injury collisions, accounting for 361 collisions, or 21% of all injury collisions. Unsafe speeds also made up the largest share of driver fatalities and severe injuries, accounting for 50 drivers being killed or severely injured in that period.
Using 85th percentile speed data from StreetLight, an aggregated Global Positioning System (GPS) data company, the project team obtained additional speed data for the month of October 2024, which allowed for an analysis that looked at speeding throughout the City at a level that was previously not possible from spot data. One of the key findings was that the City’s arterials and collectors experience speeds over 40 mph while several major streets consistently exceed 40 mph across all time periods. In addition, segments operating over 35 mph make up approximately 25-40% of the roadway network but account for nearly 60-75% of all fatal and severe injury collisions.
Furthermore, it was found that the share of pedestrians and bicyclists that are killed or severely injured in collisions occurring where observed speeds are less than 35 mph is almost double the share of drivers or passengers that are killed or severely injured at the same speeds, emphasizing that people walking, biking, or rolling are disproportionately impacted by unsafe speeds.
Target Speed Framework
Desired speeds were established Citywide using roadway context and the purpose of the street. Some streets are more focused on vehicle throughput with higher vehicle volumes and lower land use activity, while other streets are more focused on placemaking and economic activity with lower vehicle volumes and higher volumes of people walking and biking. The four street types are as follows:
• Connector Streets represent arterial and collector streets outside commercial areas with high traffic and lower land use activity. Many of the City’s streets in the industrial area, such as Industrial Parkway and Whipple Road fit in this category. • Core Streets represent arterial and collector streets inside commercial areas or near schools with high traffic levels and land use activity, such as Mission Boulevard and Jackson Street.
• Place Streets category are streets with lower traffic volumes and high land use activity, and they typically makeup streets inside Downtown and local streets inside commercial areas, such as B Street and Dixon Street.
• Neighborhood Streets are local streets outside commercial areas and make up the majority of the City’s roadway network in lane miles. Neighborhood Streets are streets with low traffic levels and land use activity, typically in residential neighborhoods.
Target speeds for each street type were identified taking into account types of potential conflicts, particularly with vulnerable users (e.g. people walking, people biking, youth), and speeds at which collisions are likely to result in a severe injury or fatality (see Figure 1).
The chart illustrates that there is significant risk of a fatal collision involving a pedestrian at speeds as low as 30 miles per hour (mph).
Figure 1. Risk of Fatality in a Collision based on Vehicle Speed
Source: Federal Highway Administration (FHWA)
The FHWA’s A Safe System-Based Framework and Analytical Methodology for Assessing Intersections suggest desired travel speeds based on the types of conflicts and was used to develop the Speed Management Plan target speed framework. All downtown streets, except for Foothill Boulevard, will use a 20-mph target speed. Table 1 on the following page shows the target speed for each street type. On many city roadway segments, the observed speeds exceed the target speeds by 10 mph or more.
Table 1. Target Speeds
Street Type Target Speed (mph) Examples
Connector 35 Industrial Pkwy, Whipple Rd
Core 301 Mission Blvd, Jackson St, A St
Place 202 B St, Dixon St
Neighborhood 153 Calaroga Ave
Notes:
1. Target speed of 25 mph in front of schools.
2. Target speed of 25 mph on Foothill Boulevard.
3. Target speed of 25 mph in industrial areas.
The project team gathered feedback on the street types and target speeds from the TAC and the SAC in the months of May and June. Both advisory committees provided feedback that the excessive speeding shown in the data aligned with observations. The project team did not receive feedback about changing the proposed street types or target speeds. Some stakeholders had concerns with the difficulty of implementing effective countermeasures to manage speeds throughout the City, specifically pointing to resistant driver behavior and resident opposition to past traffic calming projects in the City. In addition, existing street designs encourage speeding, and in some cases, will take a lot of work to implement.
On June 25, 2025, the project team presented the Target Speed Framework’s draft street types and target speeds to CIAC for feedback. CIAC gave positive feedback on the proposed street types and target speeds with comments mainly focused on understanding how to minimize impact of cut-through traffic that could occur on other streets and ensuring that traffic calming improvements are spread around the City and not focused on one area.
On February 25, 2026, the project team presented the draft version of the Speed Management Plan to CIAC. Feedback was received regarding the designation of certain arterial streets and their target speeds, including the cost effectiveness of each countermeasure and that staff should consider that as a factor with implementation.
Additional discussion took place regarding the Red Light Cameras recommended action, but no details were available to discuss at the time. Staff revised the draft plan based on the feedback received and general contextual information was added for red light camera programs. The countermeasure appendix was revised to include estimated cost information.
Speed Reduction Toolbox
The toolbox of countermeasures in the Speed Management Plan contains recommended strategies and infrastructure treatments for reducing speeds. The purpose of the toolbox is to serve as a resource and reference for practitioners who will be implementing the Speed Management Plan. The tools are organized into two location categories: intersection strategies and street segment strategies, and within each location category, there are several different treatment types to manage speeds. Examples include intersection control,
traffic signal operations, geometric features, pavement markings, roadway narrowing, and enforcement. Overall, the toolbox contains 44 different speed management countermeasures. These countermeasures can be used in combination to provide a comprehensive speed management implementation on a corridor. A detailed description of each countermeasure is included in Appendix B of the Speed Management Plan.
Speed Reduction Corridors
The Speed Management Plan introduces the concept of Speed Reduction Corridors. Speed Reduction Corridors were identified as having a high discrepancy between observed speeds and target speeds. The plan defines speed reduction corridors as segments where observed speeds exceed target speeds by 10 mph or more across all time periods. Of the existing Speed Reduction Corridors, five priority Speed Reduction Corridors were selected by staff to have a preliminary conceptual plan developed. The five corridors, listed below, were selected based on a combination of different street types, high speed discrepancy, and were either on the established High Injury Network and/or areas near schools or disadvantaged populations:
• Hesperian Boulevard between Turner Court and Sleepy Hollow Avenue • Industrial Boulevard between Tennyson Road and Baumberg Avenue • Huntwood Avenue between Tennyson Road and Schafer Road • Calaroga Avenue between Peterman Avenue and Tennyson Road • Santa Clara Street between Winton Avenue and Jackson Street
The Speed Management Plan includes preliminary conceptual plans for the corridor segments. They are not intended to be detailed design documents and could be subject to change. Each concept should be considered a standalone project, which would require its own planning, detailed design, and construction phases.
Institutionalizing Speed Management
The project team conducted a policy review to assess and evaluate how speed management could be institutionalized in the City of Hayward. Existing policies and programs were compared to benchmark safety policies to assess the level of implementation and institutionalization of speed management practices in Hayward. From this policy review, six priority action categories to support safe speeds were developed to address the gaps found in the policy review. The six actions are listed below:
1. Stakeholder Collaboration
2. Training & Education
3. Policies & Procedures
4. Enforcement
5. Evaluation & Prioritization
6. Monitoring
Within each category, recommended speed management actions are included with an assigned lead department. In total, there are 18 recommended actions. The 18 actions are listed below in Table 2. Descriptions of each action are included in the plan.
Table 2. Recommended Actions
Recommended Action Lead Department
1. Stakeholder Collaboration
Safety Task Force Public Works – Transportation Division
2. Training & Education
Safe Systems Training Public Works – Transportation Division Safety Demonstration Projects Public Works – Transportation Division Traffic Collision Reports Public Works – Transportation Division
3. Policies & Procedures
By-Right Safety Projects Public Works – Transportation Division Update Standard Details Public Works – Engineering Division Objective Design Standards Public Works – Transportation Division Update City’s General Plan Public Works – Transportation Division Context-Specific Speed Limits Public Works – Transportation Division Safety-Optimized Signal Timing Public Works – Transportation Division Update City Vehicle Procurement City Manager’s Office
4. Enforcement
Safe System-Aligned Enforcement Police Department
Automated Speed Cameras Public Works – Transportation Division Red Light Cameras Public Works – Transportation Division
5. Evaluation & Prioritization
Speed Reduction Corridors Prioritization Public Works – Transportation Division Safe System Project Evaluation Framework Public Works – Transportation Division
6. Monitoring
Speed & Collision Data Collection & Reporting Public Works – Transportation Division Collision Investigation & Monitoring Public Works – Transportation Division & Emergency Services
ECONOMIC IMPACT
Implementation of Speed Management Plan strategies will reduce vehicle speeds in the City, which will help reduce the likelihood of serious injuries and fatalities. Vehicle crashes have a significant economic cost, both to those directly impacted and to other users of the transportation system. By helping to avoid these impacts, the Speed Management Plan will have a significant economic benefit for Hayward residents and visitors.
STRATEGIC INITIATIVES
This agenda item supports the Strategic Priority to Enhance Community Safety & Quality of Life and the Strategic Priority to Invest in Infrastructure. This item is not specifically
related to a project identified in the Strategic Roadmap. Staff are bringing forward this new item to advance implementation of the City Council adopted LRSP.
SUSTAINABILITY FEATURES
Implementation of Speed Management Plan strategies will reduce vehicle speeds in the City, which will help reduce the likelihood of serious injuries and fatalities. Vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians and bicyclists, who are more at risk from these collisions, will benefit from the implementation of the Speed Management Plan strategies. This will help encourage more sustainable modes of travel throughout the City.
PUBLIC CONTACT
The project team introduced the Speed Management Plan and the development of street types and target speeds to CIAC on June 25, 2025. Meetings with the TAC and SAC were held four times each throughout the development of the Speed Management Plan to receive comments and feedback. The Draft Speed Management Plan was presented to CIAC on February 25, 2026 and approved to be presented to City Council for adoption.
NEXT STEPS
Staff will implement the Speed Management Plan after approval and adoption by the City Council.
Prepared by: Byron Tang, Principal Transportation Engineer
Recommended by: Alex Ameri, Director of Public Works
Approved by:
_______________________________
Jennifer Ott, City Manager