San Jose steps up vision of zero traffic fatalities after deadly 2019
Eight months after her husband was struck and killed while riding his bike in San Jose, Nani Lavin went before the City Council — with tears in her eyes — begging for a change.
In 2019, four years after San Jose launched a Vision Zero initiative to eliminate traffic deaths on city streets, 60 people died in traffic collisions, matching the 25year high reached in 2014. Of those deaths, 29 were pedestrians struck by vehicles — the most since at least the mid-1990s.
Lavin’s husband, Robert, was the 42nd person to lose his life in a traffic crash last year.
“I don’t want you to see 42 or 60. I want you to see fathers and mothers,” Lavin told the council. “I know this will not bring Bob back or the other 60 people back, but please help us.”
After hearing from Lavin and more than a dozen community members, the San Jose City Council on Feb. 11 unanimously approved a plan to reverse the rising trend of fatalities by funneling nearly $7 million of additional funds into its Vision Zero plan over the next two years, forming a Vision Zero Taskforce and hiring a consultant to design a community engagement and messaging campaign to discourage residents from speeding.
“I know that is going to do nothing to take away your pain, but we hope that what this will do is help prevent further fatalities and further severe injuries,” council member Dev Davis told Lavin and others in the audience who had lost loved ones to traffic crashes in recent years.
The council also asked city staff to explore creating a feature on the My San Jose app for residents to report unsafe streets, work with private sector partners like Waze to notify drivers when they are approaching a dangerous corridor and analyze the fiscal budget to identify funding opportunities to increase staffing on the police department’s traffic enforcement unit.
Mayor Sam Liccardo stressed that the city should focus on gathering more data and conducting further research to find the most effective way to use its funding to reach its goal of Vision Zero.
“I don’t want to be flailing, I want to be focused,” Liccardo said. “That’s how we deal with a crisis, and that’s how we deal when there are lives on the line.”
Despite the efforts made by the city to reduce traffic fatalities up until this point, the number of people killed over the past 10 years has grown by 58%. During that same period, the number of traffic enforcement officers employed by the San Jose Police Department has shrunk nearly fivefold — from 48 to 10.
Council member Raul Peralez, who represents downtown San Jose, where many of last year’s fatalities occurred, said that correlation displayed “a clearly alarming trend.”
“If we want to make it a priority to get that number down to zero, then we need to change our strategy,” Peralez said in an interview before the meeting. “What we’re doing today is not working.”
Peralez will serve as chair of the newly formed Vision Zero Taskforce, which will meet quarterly starting in March to analyze collision trends and develop a strategy to improve traffic enforcement.
Along with Peralez, the task force will include members from the city’s transportation, police and fire departments, the county coroner’s office and public health department, Valley Transportation Authority and local advocacy groups such as California Walks and the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition.
The city plans to use the additional $7 million in funding, in part, to build safety improvement projects, such as new crosswalks, transit boarding islands and additional signage, in areas where the most collisions resulting in fatalities or severe injuries have occurred.
The city has identified 15 safety priority corridors totaling 56 miles of city roadways to focus safety improvement projects, including sections along Santa Clara and 1st streets and Mclaughlin and Senter roads.
Although almost everyone who spoke at Tuesday’s council meeting commended the council for its new plan, some community members urged the city to move forward with more urgency.
Nikita Sinha, San Jose program manager for California Walks, asked that the city reallocate $20 million during fiscal 2021 to fund a larger number of Vision Zero safety improvement projects throughout the city.
“While this plan represents a step in the right direction, you need to take more urgent action,” Sinha said. “San Jose has a responsibility to do everything possible. Let 2019 be the last year we see an upward trend in traffic deaths.”