City Council
Staff Report
From: City Manager
Report Type: STUDY SESSION
Lead Department: Transportation
Meeting Date: March 3, 2025
Report #:2409-3522
TITLE
Review Draft Safe Streets for All (SS4A) Safety Action Plan; CEQA status – not a project.
RECOMMENDATION
Review and provide feedback on the Draft Safe Streets for All (SS4A) Safety Action Plan and Resolution.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This report presents the draft Safe Streets for All (“SS4A”) Safety Action Plan and requests feedback on the plan and associated resolution. The Safe System Approach is described below, including future tradeoff considerations that come from the shift to the new roadway safety approach.
BACKGROUND
In late 2023, the City of Palo Alto and its consultant, Fehr & Peers, began the Safe Streets for All (SS4A) Safety Action Plan. Council received two prior informational reports about the SS4A Safety Action Plan; the first introduced the plan and provided background on the Safe System Approach while the second provided an overview of the collision analysis and stakeholder engagement.1
The primary goal of this planning effort is to identify proactive, citywide opportunities across the Safe System elements (safe users, safe speeds, safe roads, safe vehicles, and post-crash care) to improve safety for all road users in support of the Vision Zero goal of reducing roadway fatalities and serious injuries by 2035, 2040, or another target year to be adopted by the Council.
1 City Council, November 27, 2023; Agenda Item #18 , SR #2309-2039, https://cityofpaloalto.primegov.com/api/compilemeetingattachmenthistory/historyattachment/?historyId=36025 c95-52b1-4da0-bc8b-fad9df86f7e8 and City Council, April 29, 2024; Agenda Item #3, SR #2404-2839, https://cityofpaloalto.primegov.com/api/compilemeetingattachmenthistory/historyattachment/?historyId=79d7c 1d2-b1a1-4eb9-acca-039fab914f74
This Plan complies with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA)’s SS4A requirements for a safety action plan2 and will make Palo Alto eligible for implementation funding from the annual $1 billion Safe Streets for All federal funding program as well as other state grants that require such a plan.
ANALYSIS
Safe System Approach
The Safe System Approach is the USDOT’s
recommended framework to reach zero
fatalities and serious injuries on US roadways.3
The major tenants of the Safe System
Approach are – death and serious injury is
unacceptable, humans make mistakes, humans
are vulnerable, responsibility is shared, safety
is proactive, and redundancy is crucial. The
Safe System Approach highlights the need for
the commitment and leadership by City
leaders, City staff, and the community to align
policies and create a physical environment that
accommodates the reality that humans make
mistakes and crashes happen, but none have
to lead to a death or serious injury. Communities following the Safe System Approach are also advised to adopt the FHWA Safe System Roadway Design Hierarchy, which focuses on managing speeds to community context and then separating users in space and time.4 FHWA has also provided alignment tools for adopting communities to use to assess how projects and policies should be adjusted to be consistent with the Safe System framework.5 This Plan reflects these recommended practices.
2 US Department of Transportation, SS4A Action Plan Components, https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2022-06/SS4A_Action_Plan_Components.pdf 3 US Department of Transportation, National Roadway Safety Strategy, https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2022-02/USDOT-National-Roadway-Safety-Strategy.pdf 4 US Department of Transportation & Federal Highway Administration, Safe System Roadway Design Hierarchy, https://highways.dot.gov/sites/fhwa.dot.gov/files/2024-01/Safe_System_Roadway_Design_Hierarchy.pdf 5 Federal Highway Administration, Safe System Project-Based Alignment Framework, https://highways.dot.gov/safety/zero-deaths/safe-system-project-based-alignment-framework, and Federal Highway Administration, Safe System Policy-Based Alignment Framework, https://highways.dot.gov/safety/zero- deaths/safe-system-policy-based-alignment-framework
Tradeoff Considerations
Following the Safe System Approach and prioritizing multimodal safety and accessibility in Palo Alto represents a paradigm shift in how transportation decisions will be made in the City. The policies, programs, and procedures recommended in this Plan are more proactive and systemic in nature, and the tradeoff decisions associated with project prioritization and design will reflect the City’s commitment to reducing safety risk factors in the transportation system.
Program level strategies include:
•Developing a citywide speed management approach and prioritizing interventions to reduce speed in locations with vulnerable road users
oThis could streamline project implementation and focus community engagement on speed reduction treatments and non-safety based decisions. oThis could lead to additional delay for single occupant vehicles traveling in Palo Alto due to traffic calming strategies applied.
•Developing default tools for separating users in space and time based on the volume, speed, and configuration of the roadway
oThis could streamline project implementation and focus community engagement on speed reduction treatments and non-safety based decisions. oThis could lead to a reallocation of vehicle travel lanes and/or on-street parking to active transportation facilities.
•Prioritizing safety in all roadway projects planned, funded, and built in the city, including routine maintenance efforts
oThis could lead to auditing and eliminating or re-envisioning projects that add new safety risk to the system.
•Considering safety upstream, with a focus on land use planning, accessibility to key services, transportation demand management, and partnerships with transit providers oThe City’s Housing Element and transit services within the City will be seen as safety focus areas for staff, following a public health-based, population-scale approach.6
When these efforts are collaborative and proactive, and especially when they lean on emerging technologies and clear goals and performance metrics, they will allow staff to identify challenges and look for win-win solutions. In other communities, challenges arising late in the process have included concerns regarding emergency vehicles and evacuation, as well as ample and transparent access to project and planning processes and tradeoff decision-making bases.
Additionally, communities have faced challenges aligning efforts with the Safe System Approach when they have commitment statements in a Safety Plan but have not accompanied this with sufficient efforts to institutionalize the commitment and reduce barriers to adoption. This staff 6 Thinking & Acting Differently for Vision Zero: Applying the Health Impact Pyramid to Roadway Safety, https://visionzeronetwork.org/applying-the-health-impact-pyramid-to-roadway-safety/ report, in particular, seeks to provide the transparency on how this Plan will shift staff priorities, focus areas, and the decision-making processes. The public review and community engagement efforts for this draft Plan offer the opportunity to influence the tradeoff process that the final Plan will direct staff to follow.
Draft Safety Action Plan Public Review
The Draft Safety Action Plan was published on the City’s website on December 13, 2024. Staff distributed information about the Draft Plan through the City’s project website and citywide communication channels. Public comments will be accepted via the project website through February 14, 2025.7
Next Steps
The Palo Alto Safety Action Plan will return to Council for adoption in Spring 2025. For consistency with Federal funding requirements from the SS4A Self-Certification Eligibility Worksheet8, staff intend to recommend a resolution that contains a policy that commits to eliminating traffic deaths and serious injuries by a specific date. The draft resolution can be found on page 3 of the draft plan.
When the project was first brought to the City/School Transportation Safety Committee, Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee, and the Planning and Transportation Commission, collectively referred to here as BCCs (board, committees, and commissions) and shared with Council via informational reports, the zero-goal year was identified as 2030. Discussions with stakeholders and City staff identified that more time is needed to align internal processes and protocols and implement safety projects. This starts with more systematically addressing key risk factors and barriers to safety that exist in Palo Alto and fortifying the City’s commitment to make design, maintenance, and operation decisions in alignment with the Safe System Approach. With the policy, planning, design, and implementation needed to create a roadway system that is self-enforcing and proactively reduces speeds, staff recommends that the BCCs and Council identify a zero-goal year of 2035 or 2040 with the final Plan adoption.
Once feedback is consolidated from the community, BCCs and Council, staff and the City’s consultants will update the Draft Plan and resolution and bring them back to City Council for final review and adoption.
FISCAL/RESOURCE IMPACT
On June 19, 2023, to fund the development of the Safety Action Plan, Council approved CMR 2305-1525, the funding agreement with FHWA and related budget amendments to the Fiscal 7 Safe Streets for All (SS4A) Safety Action Plan website, https://www.cityofpaloalto.org/Departments/Transportation/Transportation-Projects/Safety-Action-Plan 8 Safe Streets for All (SS4A) Self-Certification Eligibility Worksheet, https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2024-02/SS4A-FY24-Self-Certification-Worksheet.pdf Year 2024 Adopted Capital Budget for the Transportation and Parking Improvements Project (PL-12000) to increase both revenue and expense appropriation by $160,000 to reflect the grant revenue and project cost. As explained in CMR 2305-1525, an additional $40,000 in project cost, which is the 20% City match portion required in the funding agreement, will be absorbed by existing appropriation within the same project (PL-12000) as a part of the FY2024 Adopted Capital Budget, with no additional budgetary action required. To date, there has been no indication that federal funding for the Safe Streets and Roads for All program will be reduced.
STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT
Community Engagement for Plan Development
Chapter 2 of the draft plan details the community engagement conducted. Since Fall 2023, engagement opportunities included an online survey, an interactive web-based map, and tables at Bike Palo Alto and the May Fete Fair. For each phase of outreach, the project team met with various boards, committees, and commissions (BCCs), including the City/School Transportation Safety Committee (CSTSC), the Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee (PABAC), and the Planning and Transportation Commission (PTC). In addition, the Human Relations Commission (HRC) received a presentation on the draft plan at their January 9, 2025, meeting. As noted in the Background section, informational reports sharing interim deliverables and summarizing committee feedback were provided to Council for each phase of the project. Committee feedback on the Draft Safety Action Plan can be found in Attachment B.
Staff have noted a few consistent comments about omissions in the plan and will make the following changes to the Draft Safety Action Plan:
•Safe Routes to School (SRTS) education and encouragement programs will be detailed further in the plan.
•The Safe System Pyramid in the plan will be modified to reflect Palo Alto’s SRTS work more accurately.
•The City’s forthcoming San Antonio Area Plan will be included in the plan.
Safety Action Plan Task Force
Ongoing stakeholder engagement is required for the implementation of the Safety Action Plan.
Rather than create a new body to oversee plan implementation, staff propose to use existing BCCs staffed by the Office of Transportation: the City/School Transportation Safety Committee, the Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee, and the Planning and Transportation Commission. Plan progress and collision data would be shared with the three bodies that would make recommendations to the City Council about Plan activities.
ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW
This study session is not a project as defined by CEQA because it does not involve any commitment to any specific project which may result in a potentially significant physical impact on the environment. CEQA Guidelines section 15061(b)(3).
ATTACHMENTS
Attachment A: Draft Palo Alto Safety Action Plan
Attachment B: Summary of BCC Feedback
APPROVED BY
Lily Lim-Tsao, Interim Chief Transportation Official