{"id":429755,"date":"2026-08-11T13:24:28","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T13:24:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/429755\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T13:24:28","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T13:24:28","slug":"study-cities-must-integrate-vision-zero-principles-into-all-planning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/429755\/","title":{"rendered":"Study: Cities Must Integrate Vision Zero Principles into All Planning"},"content":{"rendered":"

A woman was killed on Market Street on Friday<\/a>. A recent report shows a higher number of severe and fatal crashes in San Francisco than when the city first took its Vision Zero pledge over a decade ago<\/a>. <\/p>\n

A new study from a coalition including the Vision Zero network and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety concludes that the core problem is that cities take the pledge to reduce traffic fatalities and serious injuries to zero, but then don\u2019t integrate it into all aspects of planning. The \u201cSafe System Success Stories: Proactive Injury Prevention in Transportation<\/a>\u201d evaluates projects in 13 cities by their ability to reduce crashes. It\u2019s a template for how all cities should look at all projects.<\/p>\n

\u201cAcross the board, across the city, cities need to make changes and align decision-making and all their funding decisions, all policy decisions, with traffic safety priorities,\u201d explained the Vision Zero Network\u2019s Leah Shahum. \u201cMost cities are not doing that yet; San Francisco is not alone in that.\u201d<\/p>\n

More from the study:<\/p>\n

Put simply, speed kills. Kinetic energy is the central driver of injury in road collisions. As the amount of kinetic energy in a crash increases, whether through higher velocity or greater mass, the human body is less able to tolerate the forces released. Kinetic energy risk can be managed by reducing how often and how far people drive (exposure), limiting operating speeds and vehicle mass (severity), and reducing how often road users are placed in conflict (likelihood of a crash).<\/p>\n

\"\"The three levers from the study<\/p>\n

According to Shahum, those three safety levers need to be considered in every bit of planning. New York City\u2019s congestion pricing was one successful planning example cited in the study. By charging drivers to enter the city\u2019s most congested area, it reduces the number of cars and vehicle miles traveled, reducing exposure. It encouraged a switch to bicycles. And of course it reduces how often users are placed in conflict \u201cby enabling street space to be repurposed for bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. Such infrastructure separates pedestrians and cyclists from motor vehicles, reducing opportunities for conflicts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Closer to home, San Francisco\u2019s Van Ness BRT also pulled all three levers because it created\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026dedicated, center-running transit lanes, reduced general-purpose lanes from three to two in most segments, narrowed lane widths, added median pedestrian refuges, programmed signals with leading pedestrian intervals, and restricted left turns for private vehicles at most intersections. These changes reduced conflict points, shortened pedestrian crossings, improved transit operating speeds and increased person throughput without roadway expansion.<\/p>\n

Projects that don\u2019t meet the safety criteria, she explained, simply shouldn\u2019t be built. Shahum cited an example from Santa Rosa, which nixed a long-planned road-widening because it clearly increased exposure. \u201cIt\u2019s not just about a project there or a project here, it\u2019s about changing how we make decisions about widening,\u201d she said. \u201cIf a project fails on delivering on safety, you can\u2019t use it as an excuse that something\u2019s been in the pipeline for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shahum confirmed there\u2019s a parallel with equity-based planning, where cities require themselves to ask whether a project exacerbates disparities before it can proceed. Unfortunately, Caltrans and county departments of transportation continue to build projects that are in conflict with Vision Zero goals. Think of all the ramp<\/a> widenings, which increase speeds and exposure to wrecks.<\/p>\n

\u201cCity planners need to be unafraid and unapologetic about taking things off their plan and off the funding cycle if it\u2019s not going to improve safety,\u201d said Shahum.<\/p>\n

Be sure to check out the report<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A woman was killed on Market Street on Friday. A recent report shows a higher number of severe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429756,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[109921,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-429755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-promoted","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}