TACOMA, Wash. — City leaders want to eliminate traffic fatalities in Tacoma and will roll out a plan later this year on how to do it.
That plan, called the “Vision Zero Action Plan,” will look at actions like lowering speed limits across Tacoma, adding automated-enforcement traffic cameras and redesigning streets.
That includes exploring lowering residential street speed limits from 25 to 20 miles per hour, said Carrie Wilhelme, senior transportation planner for the city.
In 2020, prior to the outbreaks of COVID-19 in Washington state, the Tacoma City Council passed a resolution joining the Vision Zero Action Network, a national effort to eliminate all traffic fatalities and serious injuries while improving safe mobility.
Progress stalled due to the pandemic and internal staff changes, but it has picked up momentum in recent months. City staff have been working to collect collision data and identify areas to improve street safety.
Data, said Wilhelme, doesn’t always tell the whole story. Between now and March 4, the city is collecting input through a public survey, which can be found online at surveymonkey.com/r/VisionZeroTacoma.
The survey asks participants to share how safe they feel on Tacoma streets, identify major issues affecting safety and asks if they or anyone they know have been involved in a serious crash.
Wilhelme said it’s important to remember when looking at collision data that “that data point represents someone whose life is significantly altered or taken away because of a crash.”
Between 2016 and 2020, about 3,400 collisions were reported in Tacoma, of which almost 400 resulted in someone being killed or seriously injured, according to the Washington State Department of Transportation. That’s almost 80 people killed or seriously injured by traffic collisions each year. A majority happen on primary arterials — 56 percent of killed or seriously injured crashes — compared to 20 percent along minor arterials. Most recently in 2021, WSDOT reported 22 fatalities and 118 series injuries in Tacoma.
The city has allocated $200,000 to develop the Vision Zero Action Plan and speed study. The Speed Reduction Study goes hand-in-hand with Vision Zero and is currently underway.
The study will look at the steps and funding necessary to officially lower the speed limit in residential neighborhoods from 25 to 20 miles per hour. It also will look at potentially lowering the speed limit to 25 miles per hour on arterial roads in Tacoma’s 15 neighborhood business districts.
“The City is working to identify which neighborhood business districts have conditions in place to immediately lower the speed limit, and which neighborhood business districts could require traffic calming solutions as part of lowering the speed limit,” according to the city’s website. “Lowering the speed limit in the neighborhood business districts supports economic vitality and climate change goals by helping to create a safe and desirable destination for the surrounding neighborhood to walk, bike, or roll.”
The Vision Zero concept originated in Sweden in 1997. Since then, several cities throughout the United States have adopted the Vision Zero goal, including Seattle, Portland, New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles.
Former Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan announced in 2019 that the city would lower speed limits on all arterials to 25 mph. A 2020 study of five neighborhoods in Seattle showed that lowering speed limits and installing more speed-limit signs resulted in fewer crashes.
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