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Jordan Moldow
TEPublicComment; Agendadesk; District4; District 6; District5; District8; District9; Cohen, David; Davis, Dev; Ortiz, Peter; Candelas, Domingo; Foley, Pam; Laveroni, Kyle; Harkness, Kip Ristow, John; Hoshii, Heather; Mintz-Roth, Jesse; Cruz, Lam; Scherry, Nqui Public Comment - Item (d)4. "Vision Zero Action Plan Status Report." - T&E 11/04 Monday, November 4, 2024 11:36:10 AM
Abridged Copy for T&E 2024-11-04 - Vision Zero Action Plan 2025.pdf Attached is an abridged version of the public comment letters submitted in August by 16 safe streets advocates, including myself, for the draft Vision Zero Action Plan 2025.
Thank you,
Jordan Moldow (speaking on behalf of himself) - District 3 (95112) Below is an abridged version of the public comment letters submitted in August by 16 safe streets advocates, including myself, for the draft Vision Zero Action Plan 2025. Copies of the full letters can be found at https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11ti6giHxWNdOfkjOxlzT6CtkmbUF6NPn .
Jordan Moldow (speaking on behalf of himself) - District 3 (95112) Council action
With the dissolution of the Task Force, these Transportation & Environment Committee meetings have been heralded as a way to get Council to take action more quickly on Vision Zero. With that in mind, here are my recommendations for actions that T&E and Council should take action on ASAP.
Speed Limit Reduction (CA AB 43)
Effective July 1, 2024, CA Vehicle Code AB43 expanded laws allowing greater flexibility in implementing speed limit reductions city-wide. AB43 allows cities to:
● Round down to the nearest 5 mph from the measured 85th percentile vehicle speed ● Consider reducing the speed limit by another 5 mph based on the road’s proximity to vulnerable populations such as schools or elder care facilities or bike-ped infrastructure Assessment and implementation of this law should, at a minimum, be along every identified VZ corridor. This should ideally be done before the deployment of speed cameras, in order to maximize their effectiveness.
Council action is required for implementing AB 43. As an example, here is an article about how Menlo Park has already passed an ordinance to take advantage of the new July 2024 provisions of AB 43. And here is a toolkit published by UC Berkeley about how to utilize the new provisions of AB 43 (see sections 5 and 6).
Daylighting (CA AB 413)
Daylighting of roads near intersections is CA state law (AB 413). Effective Jan 1, 2024, AB 413 requires drivers to leave at least 20 feet (or one large car length) between a marked or unmarked crosswalk and their vehicle, so approaching vehicles can see the pedestrians. Daylighting is also complemented well by sidewalk extensions (aka bulbouts, or curb extensions), whereby moving and parked vehicles are both excluded from a bulbous area at the intersection corner, creating more space for pedestrians, decreasing the pedestrian crossing distance, and slowing the vehicle turning speed by decreasing the turning radius.
We applaud SJ DOT’s use of sidewalk extensions in some projects. But from our observations, sidewalk extensions are still the exception, not the default. Council should provide staff with the direction and political commitment to incorporate daylighting and curb extensions at all intersections for all future projects.
All repaving/restriping should include application of white paint on the asphalt to mark out a sidewalk extension / no parking zone. This has been done in select areas, but needs to be a guaranteed standard for all streets. 1 / 5
On Vision Zero corridors, and wherever else possible, physical barriers or concrete sidewalk extensions should be used to implement daylighting.
No Turn on Red
Council should provide the political support, and any needed ordinances/resolutions, to allow staff to implement “No Turn on Red” as the norm (and not the exception) in more places throughout the city. The most important locations would be Downtown; along all Vision Zero corridors; and along the bicycle network.
Seek out process efficiencies
The Council, recognizing that it takes too much time for private development projects to get city approval, has kicked off multiple initiatives to eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy. The Council should bring this same energy towards identifying ways of building more roadway safety project, for less money, in a shorter amount of time.
Legislative policy for the state
We'd like the city to leverage the Intergovernmental Relations (IGR) team to advocate for state law changes that address methods for additional speed reduction as it relates to the built environment and/or make it even easier to install safe infrastructure.
2026 Visionary timeline
In 2026, the San José metro area will host Super Bowl 60 and matches for March Madness and FIFA World Cup. Huge amounts of visitors and pedestrian traffic should be expected in San José. We don’t want San José to be associated with dangerous streets that put our visitors at risk. Nor do we want the corresponding traffic increases to lead to more of our community members being harmed.
Though it is unrealistic to expect us to achieve Vision Zero by early-2026, the Action Plan should still set ambitious yet reachable goals to achieve by that time. Council should direct that this work be included in the workplan for the 2026 preparations, and allocate necessary funding. City expenditures on marketing, cleanup, etc. will need to be continually repeated every time the City hosts big events, but infrastructure improvements will pay dividends for decades.
Overview of requested improvements for Vision Zero Action Plan We strongly believe that San José’s draft Vision Zero Action Plan 2025 needs a clearer and bolder vision. At a time when San José experienced a record 65 traffic deaths in 2022 and currently has a 3-year average of 58 deaths per year, 60% of those being pedestrians and bicyclists, the plan needs to provide clear and actionable goals.
As the guiding document for the next five years, we expect the plan to meet the following criteria:
1. Provide a renewed focus on highest risk corridors, with standardized solutions that can be easily replicated without bureaucratic delays.
2. Show strong connections between each objective and those actions required to achieve the objective. 2 / 5
3. Specific, measurable, accountable, relevant and time-bound (SMART) steps that clearly show how the actions will reduce fatalities.
4. Reflect on shortcomings of the 2020 Vision Zero plan and explain how/why this plan is better.
5. Prioritize accountability and engineering, including the creation of public-facing dashboards to track the progress of Vision Zero projects and the implementation of equitable engineering solutions.
6. Address funding challenges by outlining steps to secure additional resources or by proposing cost-effective, timely solutions within existing budgets.
7. More effectively address vehicular speed, the primary cause of traffic violence, through targeted infrastructure improvements and policy changes.
8. Build upon and push beyond current efforts and embrace innovative approaches.
At a high-level, we want the City to prioritize the Key Action Area that can directly save lives 24/7: Engineering for safe streets. Equally important are Key Action Areas that allow Staff to improve their efficiency at delivering that objective:
● Communication and leadership commitment - Strong, uncompromising leadership from staff and elected officials, and a commitment to removing whatever internal or external barriers are preventing a swift delivery for Vision Zero
● Metrics, Analytics, Analysis, and Project Management - for staff, Council, partner agencies, and the public to better understand what has been done, what will be done, what has been successful (and how successful), and what can be done to improve efficiency ● Prioritizing Equity and Vulnerable Road Users (pedestrians and cyclists) - provide first class pedestrian and cycling infrastructure maintenance, urgency of service, and creation, especially in underserved areas, providing for a paradigm shift where they are preferred and more expedient than single or low-occupancy motor vehicles modes
Engineering
Speed (not speeding) kills. Presentations to T&E and the Vision Zero Task Force consistently note that over 80% of fatal collisions occur on roads with speed limits of at least 35mph (real speeds are even higher). Yet the staff reports don’t indicate whether speeds have been reduced as a result of major projects.
Apply the USDOT Safe Systems Approach as a guiding paradigm The USDOT Safe System Approach to roadway safety was not in place at the time of the last SJVZ Action Plan. We think it is important that San José include this approach as a guiding paradigm as it focuses on both human mistakes AND human vulnerability to design systems with many redundancies in place to protect everyone.
Develop and maintain a consistent (cookie cutter) policy for all safety corridor treatments Vision Zero is not effective or efficient, in large part due to lack of cohesion across the program. It feels like most projects start from scratch, and require extra engineering effort to create a design that is unique. To exemplify this, here are two Vision Zero projects that have been recently proposed or completed:
● Saratoga Ave (2017 Priority Safety Corridor (PSC); 2 deaths and 9 serious injuries from 2019 - 2023) ○ 2023 road restriping project: Lane diet 3 -> 2 lanes, created separated bikeway using plastic posts.
3 / 5
● Tully Road (2017 PSC; 5 deaths and 37 serious injuries from 2019 - 2023) ○ 2023 road restriping project: No lane diet, created buffered bikeway with no vertical separation elements. No sidewalk extensions.
The current draft is a perfect representation of this. The section for “Key Action Area #4: Engineer for Safety” lists some tactics that could be used, but does not say whether any of those tactics will be used across most/all projects, or only select projects.
We applaud the deployment of Leading Pedestrian Intervals city-wide, and would like to see more of this kind of systematic initiative. Given that most Vision Zero corridors are 6-lane stroads, the projects should not have as much variability as what we’ve been seeing.
Follow safe design recommendations
The following engineering design recommendations should be adopted for all street designs with exceptions for rare circumstances in which incorporating may impede safety in that particular application:
● Enhance crosswalks to include refuge islands and/or flashing yellow lights under all applicable conditions.
● Implement better bikeway and aggressive traffic calming on the most unsafe roads, as guided by data. ● “Don’t Give Up at the Intersection”. All VZ projects should make every intersection safer, by using quick-build materials to implement protected intersections and well-designed minor-street intersections. ● Require installation of physically protected bike lanes on any roads with 3+ travel lanes in each direction or speed limit of 35 mph+. Otherwise, lanes should be reduced to 2 travel lanes in each direction, and speed limits should be decreased.
● The current pace of implementing quick-build projects is not keeping up with the urgent need of lowering the death rate on our streets more quickly. One idea for addressing High Priority Corridors (HPCs) with quicker solutions is to implement “Ultraquick” builds that allow for experimentation and quick iterative design changes using readily available and less expensive materials.
Visionary infrastructure
Select one of the high risk corridors that also has extensive bike/ped traffic to fast-track the most effective, state-of the art methods for speed reduction and protection for the most vulnerable users (bikes and peds).
Create protected bikeways (sidewalk-level bikeways and/or curb-protected bikeways) and protected intersections through the entire length of the chosen corridor. This can act as a shining example of where San José is headed that can act as a driver for increased funding, public outreach, etc. (See Fremont Walnut Ave project)
Cross-city communication and Vision Zero leadership commitment Our goal cannot be achieved by DOT alone, or by different independent departments. Department leaders need to meet frequently, with one leader unambiguously taking charge, and the leadership team actively directing the Vision Zero program.
Vision Zero Network recommends, “An official city Vision Zero Taskforce (or Leadership Committee) is created and charged with leading the planning effort for Vision Zero.” Despite using the name “Task Force”, San Jose’s Task Force has not been “leading the planning effort”, but instead is a tangential oversight body. 4 / 5
Our neighbors in the City of Fremont use a five-person Core Leadership Team. A department Director (their Director of Public Works) serves as the Executive. The Lead Transportation Engineer serves as the Vision Zero Program Manager. Three other members, representing Public Works, the City Manager’s Office, and the PD Traffic Unit, serve other roles in the leadership team.
The new Action Plan should commit to implementing a Leadership Committee that is more in-line with the VZN recommendation. These leaders should be driving Vision Zero and accelerating meaningful progress. This would not be much different from how the City Manager’s office has assembled a cross-department scrum team for addressing the homelessness crisis.
Measurement / Tracking / Project management
We believe that the VZ team and action plan need to take additional steps to be more transparent and accountable. This includes goal setting, tracking progress, and prioritization of needs as demonstrated by data or network gaps, not based on repaving schedules or other non-safety, non-equity considerations.
Conclusion
Within the next five years, we want to have a year with zero traffic deaths and significantly fewer severe injuries. That is not possible without a bold, concrete Action Plan that prioritizes the Key Action Area that can directly save lives 24/7: Engineering for safe streets. Incorporating the suggestions in this letter should lead to better Vision Zero designs, as well as a more effective Vision Zero program to better direct the engineering projects.
We appreciate the work of the Vision Zero team, and as part of the San José bicycling community, we are happy to engage with our City colleagues wherever we may be able to bring in some value. 5 / 5
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Tuesday, November 5, 2024 7:33 AM
TEPublicComment
11/05/2024 Transporation and Environment Agenda Item 4
Public Comment.pdf
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This message is from outside the City email system. Do not open links or attachments from untrusted sources. 1 Public Comment: Agenda Item 4 Vision I
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James Kirk Campbell