Thread by @shayshinecastle

We're on Vision Zero now. I don't have any notes for this, bc it was added to the meeting packet late. But here's staff's presentation: documents.bouldercolorado.gov/WebLink/DocVie…

From my perusal, it looks like crashes are down generally, but severe crashes (serious injury or death) are pretty consistent.

Also that traffic fell 39% during 2020 (vehicle miles traveled). Cuz pandemic.

Also, left-hand turns are a huge cause of crashes, apparently. 34% of severe crashes involved left-hand turns. City making some signal changes to address that. (We'll return to this later)

Devin Joslin: Total crashes per year have been trending down since 2016, but severe crashes have held steady at 55-60 year year.

Again, 2020 an outlier with 38 severe crashes

Overall crashes down 44% in 2020, severe crashes down 31%. Again, vehicle miles traveled down 39%. Bit of an outlier year.

Another update planned early next year with this topic as well.

Friend: In the top 4 crash locations, Baseline/Mohawk is on that list. There was a really heinous ped fatality in Jan 2020 of an 85 y.o. man. The intersection requires a ped to cross 7 lanes of space, and there are a lot of older adults living nearby.

We see from the data that 65+ y.o. are over-represented in serious crashes, Friend continues. We're 2 yrs on from this fatality... what else are we planning to do for the top 4 crash locations?

And why is it taking so long?

Joslin: Improvements obviously take money. We applied for highway safety improvement funds. We got them, but there are long admin processes. We're waiting on a notice that we can start work.

Joslin explaining why simple signal changes actually aren't. Poles and arms have to be switched out; it's a whole thing.

Friend asks again and Yates paraphrases: Please let us know if there are challenges to making some of these safety improvements in the final report.

Speer: I'd love to hear why severe crashes aren't trending down along with total # of crashes.

And I would "encourage you to be bold in the solutions you are putting forth," Speer said. If we wanted to get to 0 severe crashes in 2024, what would we do in 2022 and 2023 to get there? "It's really striking to be how when VMT decreased, severe crashes" did, too.

Benjamin: "Boldness. That's what I was hoping for, too."

He wants to see data on the efficacy of protected bike lanes in reducing severe crashes. And "how do we decouple" vehicle traffic from all other modes, since conflicts with cars drive the severe crashes.

Winer: What I would like to know is what isn't working. If something isn't working and we're still spending $$ on it, how do we take the $$ and use it on what does?

Winer: "It seems like money is an issue. It would be great if we can use $$ where it's working best."

Folkerts: Other cities are using video feeds to spot close calls and assess them. Are we?

Joslin: We're looking at it. There's a grant we could possibly use.

City adding network of 60 CC cameras to intersections.

Wallach: Are we doing analysis on the causes of the left-turn severe crashes? Bc dif causes have dif solutions.
Joslin: Yes

Wallach: Are we looking at penalties? Do they need to be lowered, raised, or anything?
Joslin: I would categorize penalties or fines as one arm of enforcement. We can look at those.

Yates: We just lowered citywide speed limits to 20mph. Are we gonna get any data on that?

Joslin: We'll bring that to you in March.
I've already been told by another city traffic person that speed limit signs don't really slow cars down.

And as I recall from that discussion, staff said then that they prob wouldn't slow ppl down in the short term, but perhaps create a long-term expectation of slower driving.

Story coming soon(ish) on some traffic calming efforts. Stay tuned!

That's all for this one.

@threadreaderapp please unroll. Thank you!