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TEPublicComment
Smith, Ryan; Laveroni, Kyle
BPAC Public Comment for May Sixth Transportation and Environment Committee Thursday, May 2, 2024 9:42:23 AM
Dear City Clerk and Transportation and Environment Committee, Would you kindly reply to this email so we know that you have received this? The following is public comment from the City of San José's Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee:
I will be presenting this at the May 6th meeting's following public comment opportunities.
Thank you,
Diane Solomon,
Member, City of San José Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee Public Comment for 1. Vision Zero Traffic Safety Status Report My name is Diane Solomon, I’m here on behalf of your Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPAC).
Our mission is to help you improve bicyclist and pedestrian safety within our City, based upon our experience.
Last year, traffic fatalities exceeded homicides in San Jose. Over half of those killed by motorists were pedestrians or bicyclists.
The Vision Zero Action Plan’s elements must well-monitored to make sure that the actions that are taken are effective and that the data collected is understood.
First, We respectfully request that future oversight of the Vision Zero Program by the transportation and environment committee and the Department of Transportation includes the BPAC as part of your oversight, monitoring, and community engagement elements.The BPAC is here to help you help us and all San Josèans bicycle and walk safely within our city.
Second— intelligent individuals attend our monthly BPAC meetings, who have found that the fruit of the Vision Zero program Action Plan’s “robust data analytics tool” is not discernable on this program’s website.
Diane Solomon
2 We thank you for the crash data that is reported online. However, it’s highly summarized and it’s our understanding that this data is from many sources.
We respectfully request a more user-friendly avenue into the online crash information. (and we have volunteers who can help you with this]
With respect to the data that is posted online, we also respectfully request a way for the public to provide feedback about this Program’s online user interface. We request this because if the interface is more userfriendly, visitors will be able to find the information they seek which will enable them to understand the major learnings that this data provides for this Program.
Thank you…
Meeting’s Last Item--- General Public Comment:
My name is Diane Solomon, I am here on behalf of your Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee:
First, Many of our members and the Community members who attend our meetings recount the danger and injuries they have experienced when bicycle lanes are blocked with yard debris, garbage cans, and other hazards.
The BPAC's meetings with the Street Sweeping Team and Integrated Waste, did not yield more specific and certain help with this matter. Can you help the BPAC with this matter by: Taking this up as a T&E initiative or by putting Ryan Smith, our BPAC's City Staffer, in contact with someone who can specifically help with this issue?
Second, Although we know that our City has limited financial resources and DOT staffers are working mightily to obtain grant funding, we urge you to prioritize the funding of the following programs:
Better Bike Plan 2025
Vision Zero
The Speed cameras Project - We look forward to attending the community meetings you will have on this and the King Road Complete Streets Program
Third, Please designate King Road as a "Grand Boulevard". It should be treated as an equal among San José's other Grand Boulevards. When the King Road Complete Streets Program has been put in place, it will be even grander ;-)
Fourth, Thank you for using the Vehicle Miles Traveled [VMT] metric. You can do more for our City! Please seek to decrease VMT. You can do this and do it quicker if you prioritize building out the bicycle network Thank you
CC: Ryan Smith, Active Transportation Manager, City of San José Department of Transportation Kyle Laveroni, District 9 Deputy Chief of Staff, City of San José This message is from outside the City email system. Do not open links or attachments from untrusted sources. 3 From:
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Jordan Moldow
Sunday, May 5, 2024 11 :30 PM
TEPublicComment; Aqendadesk
Public Comment - T&E 5/6 - Item (d)1. "Vision Zero Traffic Safety Status Report." San Jose traffic fatalities and injuries per-capita have yet to return to pre-2015 levels. Since 2015, annual fatalities have never been below 50 for any two consecutive years, and the number of annual fatalities has never decreased more than two consecutive years. When it comes to Vision Zero, fatalities and injuries per-capita are the primary metric for success. Sadly, our data clearly shows that ten years of Vision Zero in San Jose, and 3.5 years with the Task Force, have not made any net progress.
T&E's abilities "to refer items to the full City Council" and to give official staff direction is claimed to be a key ingredient for the success of Vision Zero moving forwards. Vision Zero has always gone through T&E, both before and during the years of the Vision Zero Task Force, and as we've established, no net progress has been made in either of those timeframes. So sunsetting/dissolving the Vision Zero Task Force is not some magic ingredient for a more effective Vision Zero bureaucracy.
You, the members of the T&E committee, must step up and actively do everything in your power to make Vision Zero happen, especially in the face of the Task Force abdicating its responsibilities. What do you plan on doing to achieve real, lasting progress on the primary metrics for success?
It has been stated that "City staff have spent significant time producing and hosting the Task Force meetings with duplicated efforts and similar reporting to the Transportation & Environment Committee". Apparently this time is large enough that it non-trivially detracts from "implementing proven strategies that will move the needle on traffic safety".
This, to me, suggests that the framing of the Task Force has been wrong, which has set it up for failure. It also doesn't bode well for the future arrangement being any better.
Each meeting of the Task Force has the ability to leverage department leaders and subject matter experts from across the City, County, and the Community. All that expertise, meetings together as equals, is a fantastic resource that should have been extremely valuable. This Task Force should have been capable of robust worksessions, deep dives, brainstorming, retrospectives, and more. With all due respect, T&E meetings can not possibly match the effectiveness of what the Task Force should have been.
Preparing for a Task Force meeting could be (but didn't necessarily have to be) a significant effort, but with a good Task Force meeting, the benefit should have been much greater than the effort. But when the effort is spent on "similar reporting to the Transportation & Environment Committee" rather than deep dives, retrospectives, etc. tailored to the Task Force environment, of course the effort wasn't worth the benefit. And this is also why simply getting rid of the Task Force, and presenting only to T&E, isn't going to magically yield any improvements: because the scope of the agenda items isn't changing at all from the status quo.
As a personal observation: I attended the last two Vision Zero Task Force meetings. In September 2023 (my first San Jose Vision Zero meeting; and the last meeting before the Sunsetting announcement), the meeting largely seemed ineffectual 1 and performative. There were presentations, but no tasks. Many task force members were not engaged and had littleto-no participation in the meeting. And there was little-to-no actual discussion; nearly all of the agenda items were informational. For a "Task Force", I had hoped that most, if not all, of the agenda items would be cross-department workshopping. With so many high-profile people in the room, it's a huge waste of time to not spend most of that time breaking down silos that might exist between departments, and Getting Shit Done.
Given that the Task Force is being dissolved and the Action Plan is being re-worked, without any sustained improvement in traffic fatalities, a big focus right now should be on meta, organizational/bureaucratic improvements. The Task Force should conduct a retrospective, and ask itself tough questions: Why haven't traffic fatalities trended downward since the start of the Task Force? Why have cities like Fremont, CA and Hoboken, NJ succeeded so quickly, while San Jose is moving much more slowly? What differences are there in what types of projects get funded, or how they get funded? What differences are there in how the bureaucracies operate to conceive of, approve, and implement projects? What bureaucratic roadblocks regularly get in the way of making fast progress, and how have other cities avoided those roadblocks?
And of course, the retrospective should also reflect on what the City has done well! And how to double-down on the things that it does well, while also striving to improve on the things it doesn't do well.
Shutting down the Task Force isn't necessarily a bad thing or a good thing, but it is a red flag for me. I do think it is very important to conduct this retrospective that I mentioned, before finalizing any handover. It could be that with some hard, painful reflection, perhaps a better path forwards can be discovered, besides just dissolving the group. On the other hand, if no retrospective is conducted, the City will not learn any valuable lessons from the mistakes of the Task Force.
Thanks,
Jordan Moldow (speaking on behalf of himself)
District 3
95112
I This message is from outside the City email system. Do not open links or attachments from untrusted sources. 2 [External Email]
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TEPublicComment; Agendadesk; Ristow, John; Hoshii, Heather; Mintz-Roth, Jesse; Shab, Brian District4; District 6; District5; District8; District3
Public Comment - T&E 5/6 - Item (d)1. "Vision Zero Traffic Safety Status Report." Monday, May 6, 2024 9:12:45 AM
Speed data analysis
The slides note 86% of fatalities on major roadways with posted speed limits of 35 mph or higher. This leads to a few data analysis questions that should be answered:
How many fatalities were on roadways with an 85-percentile effective speed of 35 mph or higher?
Has the City been increasing the number of +35mph roads, or decreasing the number? How have the number of miles of +35mph roadways changed over time? How have the number of lane-miles of +35mph roadways changed over time? How has the ratio of +35mph lane-miles to <35mph lane-miles changed over time?
In the past ten years of Vision Zero, how many Vision Zero corridors have had their speed limits reduced?
In the past ten years of Vision Zere, how many Vision Zero corridors have had their effective speeds reduced by more than 5mph?
Which Vision Zero projects have successfully reduced the effective speed? Which Vision Zero projects, if any, intended to reduce the effective speed, but failed to have the fully intended impact? Do we know why this might have happened?
How many fatalities were on a roadway with a posted speed limit below 35 mph, but with a motor vehicle going above the speed limit at the time of collision? What about the motor vehicle going at/below the speed limit?
Given how highly speed correlates with fatalities and injuries, it is alarming that this isn't being reported on more deeply to the Council and to the Pubilc. We all deserve to know the full extent of what the city is doing to reduce speeds. And if the answer is "not enough", then T&E needs to intervene to make sure that speed reduction and speed limit reduction is being prioritized, and to make sure that the Council is passing any needed legislation to make this a reality.
Injury data analysis
Another big gap in the report is that we do not see any of the following pieces of data over time:
Total fatalities + severe injuries (we only see a cumulative by month graph for this year) Total fatalities + all injuries
Total severe injuries
Total injuries (we only see a cumulative by month graph for this year) Jordan Moldow
Crashes, injuries, and fatalities caused by infrastructure (e.g. collisions with trash bins in bikeways; collisions with other debris in bikeways; falls caused by bad sidewalks; collisions with broken infrastructure), such as the crash with debris in a bike lane that claimed the life of a man in May 2023:
https://www.sfgate.com/news/bayarea/article/man-injured-in-scooter-crash-last-weekdies-18118606.php This data is important. Every fatality is always a tragedy, and should certainly be studied closely. But when a vulnerable pedestrian or cyclist is severely injured by a fast, heavy motor vehicle, the injury can be life changing. The experience can create a life-changing trauma, for the injured people and the driver. And every collision - no matter how minor - between a vulnerable human and a heavy motor vehicle is an unacceptable failure of our City's infrastructure.
2023 is for sure an improvement from 2022, when viewing total fatalities. But there are two important, unanswered questions here:
Why was it an improvement? This is not yet a sustained trend, as 2020 through 2023 saw a sustained upwards trend. So only time will tell if something we did caused an improvement, or if it's just statistical noise. But surely the City has data we can use to speculate. What Vision Zero projects, if any, can be shown to have likely resulted in the decrease in fatalities?
Was it actually an improvement, in the wider context of all injuries and all collisions? If fatalities decreased while severe and/or life-altering injuries increased, then the improvement is somewhat negated in magnitude. This is another reason why it's so important to include that missing data in these reports.
Without presenting data to answer these two questions, the report is incomplete and somewhat performative. This data and these reports need to serve multiple purposes. Yes, looking at fatalities data can tell us if we're succeeding or failing. But perhaps more importantly, all of this data combined should be used in a feedback loop, in order to determine what is working and what is failing, and to serve as a continuous input to tweak priorities and tactics. That's not to say that the City should constantly be rewriting its action plan, as we know that some of these initiatives take multiple years to pan out. But with 5+ years of data now, and with a new Action Plan for 2025 being drafted, it is no longer reasonable to continue forwards without evaluating the full data set and using it to inform changes to the program.
So please, perform a more complete analysis with all of these additional datasets.
Comprehensive quick-build strategy
The report provides the locations of various past and upcoming quick-build projects, but does not specify what the quick-builds entail, or if there is any common theme across all of the quick-builds.
Is the city prioritizing bikeways? Tighter turning radii? Left-turn calming? Right-turn calming? Narrowing lanes? Reducing lanes? Closing slip lanes?
This information is important to evaluate the program. The Council and the public need to know whether there is an effective, comprehensive strategy being followed across all of the projects, and during the site prioritization process.
This is especially important now that we have a huge list of +30 priority corridors.
Thanks,
This message is from outside the City email system. Do not open links or attachments from untrusted sources.
Jordan Moldow (speaking on behalf of himself)
District 3
95112
Public Comment - T&E 5/6 -
Item (d)1. "Vision Zero Traffic
Safety Status Report."
Jordan Moldow (speaking on behalf of himself)
Public Comment - T&E 5/6 - Item (d)1. "Vision Zero Traffic Safety Status Report." Jordan Moldow (speaking on behalf of himself)
1 Good things in this report
Leading pedestrian intervals. This helps not only pedestrians, but also cyclists, who are authorized by state law to treat pedestrian signals as if they were green lights. Like pedestrians and cyclists all benefit from being able to safely pass through an intersection before car traffic starts up.
Signal retiming (give more time to pedestrians; discourage drivers from speeding / red light running)
Traffic calming
Signal head visibility
Accessible pedestrian signals
Quick builds. But we need more of them, and faster. Why only 2 in one year? Public Comment - T&E 5/6 - Item (d)1. "Vision Zero Traffic Safety Status Report." Jordan Moldow (speaking on behalf of himself)
2 Public crash data isn’t realtime
Crash map has no 2024 data:
https://csj.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=82fb343e6536439 d98378d21e324184c
Crash dashboard has no 2023-2024 data:
https://app.powerbigov.us/view?r=eyJrIjoiMGI5MGU1YjgtM2JjNi00YzllLWJmMzgt MWJiM2I5N2JhZTBhIiwidCI6IjBmZTMzYmUwLTYxNDItNGY5Ni05YjhkLTc4MTdk NWMyNjEzOSJ9
Public data doesn’t include analysis of bad/missing infrastructure that may have contributed to crash. Staff retrospective of crash isn’t made public.
Other cities release data that is delayed by weeks at minimum, 4 months at max.
SF releases staff retrospectives of infrastructure at crash site.
Public Comment - T&E 5/6 - Item (d)1. "Vision Zero Traffic Safety Status Report." Jordan Moldow (speaking on behalf of himself)
3 Tracking completed/in-progress/planned infra
People deserve more info than generic “Pedestrian Safety Enhancements” Project tracking isn’t available to public outside of T&E staff memorandum Cumulative counts of project types aren’t available, eg. number of “No Right On Red” installed, lane-miles removed, miles of reduced speed limits, etc.
No public GIS map of completed/in-progress/planned projects No public data regarding correlations between completed projects, and changes in crashes/fatalities/injuries near the locations of the projects.
Public Comment - T&E 5/6 - Item (d)1. "Vision Zero Traffic Safety Status Report." Jordan Moldow (speaking on behalf of himself)
4 NYC public dashboard
Public Comment - T&E 5/6 - Item (d)1. "Vision Zero Traffic Safety Status Report." Jordan Moldow (speaking on behalf of himself)
5 SF public dashboard
Public Comment - T&E 5/6 - Item (d)1. "Vision Zero Traffic Safety Status Report." Jordan Moldow (speaking on behalf of himself)
6 Aggregate data tracking
All charts and tables in the staff report and presentation should be available as live public dashboards.
Public datasets cut off after five years. Aggregate counts from further back need to be made available.
Vision Zero reports in 2020-2021 provided much more data compared to present.
Councilmembers and the public should be able to view trends without waiting for the next staff report.
Public Comment - T&E 5/6 - Item (d)1. "Vision Zero Traffic Safety Status Report." Jordan Moldow (speaking on behalf of himself)
7 Why haven’t speed limits been reduced?
86% of fatalities occur on roads with posted limits of +35 mph ● How many fatalities on roads with effective speed of +35 mph? ● Has the City been decreasing the number of +35mph roads? ○ How have the number of lane-miles of +35mph roads changed over time?
○ How many Vision Zero corridors have had their speed limits reduced? What about effective speeds reduced?
Public Comment - T&E 5/6 - Item (d)1. "Vision Zero Traffic Safety Status Report." Jordan Moldow (speaking on behalf of himself)
8 Number of bike projects doesn’t matter
Mileage matters
Connectivity matters
Protected intersections matter
Cleanliness / being clear of obstacles matters
Quality of the buffer / protection matters
It matters that the bike facility is appropriate for the conditions of the roadway Sharrows don’t improve safety
Plastic posts are just “vertical paint”. Not all Class IV bikeways are “protected” Public Comment - T&E 5/6 - Item (d)1. "Vision Zero Traffic Safety Status Report." Jordan Moldow (speaking on behalf of himself)
9 Quick builds
Need more of them, and faster. Why only 2 in one year?
Need some honest reflection+discussion in the Council chambers and/or VZTF about why we’re not getting more quick builds done
Council needs to take reasonable steps to remove Municode barriers, provide more funding, and give staff direction to make these happen quicker Quick builds on VZ corridors need to be scheduled on their own merit if there isn’t a scheduled repaving happening within 2 years
Try out “Super quick builds” like what Jersey City did. Temporary 1-week changes to collect data and get neighborhood feedback
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-12-28/it-s-been-a-deadly-year-on -us-roads-except-in-this-city
Implement daylighting with bike racks, bikeshares, posts, etc.
Public Comment - T&E 5/6 - Item (d)1. "Vision Zero Traffic Safety Status Report." Jordan Moldow (speaking on behalf of himself)
10 Leading pedestrian intervals
“four seconds” is that the minimum at all 848 locations, or is that only true at newly-retimed locations? Anecdotally, I feel like I’ve encountered very short LPIs Even four seconds is very short unless the intersection is particularly narrow “installed in 100% (848) of the City-operated signalized crosswalks with a pedestrian-vehicle turn conflict.” What is a signalized crosswalk that doesn’t have a pedestrian-vehicle turn conflict? How many of those are there? Why wouldn’t we install LPIs at all signalized crosswalks, period?
Public Comment - T&E 5/6 - Item (d)1. "Vision Zero Traffic Safety Status Report." Jordan Moldow (speaking on behalf of himself)
11 Julian (eastbound) bikeway is incomplete and unusable Missing posts.
Bikeway covered in parked cars.
Missing green thermoplastic paint.
● In fact, all repaved roads from 2023 seem to be missing green thermoplastic paint.
● You’ll see the letter “G” spraypainted in bike boxes and other conflict zones. ● Unpainted after 6+ months.
Public Comment - T&E 5/6 - Item (d)1. "Vision Zero Traffic Safety Status Report." Jordan Moldow (speaking on behalf of himself)
12