Pedestrians before cars: A promise for the city to make —and keep

Lisa Rosenstein, 53, died on a Sunday morning when she was hit by a car as she jogged along a path precariously close to a road designed with cars, not runners, in mind.

It’s frustrating and heartbreaking there’s been another pedestrian fatality in San Antonio, especially since the changes to prevent more deaths are slow in coming. The circumstances of each pedestrian fatality are different, but the causes and the unspeakable loss are not.

In this case, Rosenstein was running west on the south shoulder of the North Loop 1604 access road between Lockhill Selma Road and Northwest Military Highway just after 7 a.m. on May 2. A Ford Focus drifted into the shoulder, according to the Express-News.

Her death is tragic, as is every pedestrian death. The road where she was killed was designed for cars to travel fast, as is almost every street in our city.

It’s beyond frustrating that another family mourns a deep loss, and that we keep designing and building a transportation system that accommodates commutes in vehicles without proper consideration for pedestrians.

According to the Texas Department of Transportation, the average commute in San Antonio is 23 minutes.

The San Antonio Mobility Coalition tells us that every day, 150 new cars are registered in Bexar, Comal and Guadalupe counties. So we build more and wider roads, and we design streets where more cars can go faster because 23 minutes to and from work is frustrating for many San Antonio drivers.

It’s frustrating because we can do better. And while we have plans and intentions to make things better, plans and intentions are not solace for a family in mourning.

But we can make a promise. When I first came to City Council, I made pedestrian safety a top priority. I learned about a multinational road safety project called Vision Zero, and I traveled to find out more about it. The organization’s name is, in itself, a promise: “A strategy to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries, while increasing safe, healthy, equitable mobility for all.”

It’s something our city needed then and needs today — not just plans and intentions but a commitment to change the way we think about mobility in our city, where pedestrian deaths aren’t seen as an inevitable side effect of modern convenience.

We’ve traveled a long road since I first came to council. Vision Zero has been adopted as a formal city initiative. The good news is that a culture shift is happening. We’ve put plans into place in the western part of the city. We’re working to reduce speed limits. We’re beginning to design roads with people, not cars, in mind. We’re envisioning a transportation system that makes room for every kind of mobility need. But it’s not enough; it’s not a promise.

A wholehearted promise to eliminate traffic fatalities would prioritize Vision Zero in the city budget. Prioritized spending would put action behind the intention and send a clear message that the lives and safety of our neighbors are not an inevitable side effect of our car culture.

My time on City Council will soon end — an inevitable consequence of term limits. But the vision of safer streets and roads will remain. My hope is the vision becomes a promise, and I urge future City Councils to prioritize pedestrians over cars — that they make a commitment in the city budget to “eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries, while increasing safe, healthy, equitable mobility for all.”

Plans and intentions are good, but a promise is a promise.

Courtesy Dorthy Williams Lisa Starr Rosenstein, 53, seen with her husband and their children, was killed by a hit-and-run driver on a road designed for cars to travel fast.