WABA held its 2nd Annual Vision Zero Summit this past spring. It was encouraging to see so much energy from the advocates in the room, but it was discouraging to see how slowly things are progressing on the government side - since that's where the help is most needed. The summit, and the two cyclist deaths over the last two weeks, provide a chance to check in on how vision zero is doing.
In short, we aren't going to make it. This should be no surprise since it was never a realistic goal, but DC isn't making a good faith effort to achieve it either. This goes for the other Vision Zero communities in the area as well. If we really want to make the roads significantly safer, we're going to have to do more. We're going to have to make some very hard choices, and it will be a lot harder than putting together an action plan.
The Vision Zero goal was dead on arrival
Sweden was the first place to set a goal of zero road deaths. That was back in 1997, and at the time they set the goal of zero road deaths by 2020, or in 23 years, and to cut them in half by 2007. Years later they realized they weren't going to make those targets, and revised the goals to 50% by 2020 and to 0 deaths by 2050. In other words, Sweden - the inventors of Vision Zero - thinks hitting zero deaths is a half-century long project.
Mayor Bowser announced in 2015, that DC was going to hit zero deaths and serious injuries by 2024. In 9 years. Which feels a little like 7 minute abs. We set a goal to hit zero deaths and serious injuries in half the time that Sweden had already been working on it. That's not real. That isn't a real goal. It's like my son's goal of being a jedi. I don't know if it was just politics, or naivete or over-optimism, but we failed right out of the gate. 9 years? It takes more than 9 years to get most projects from an idea to shovels in the ground. The minute the goal came out of the Mayor's mouth, you could put a tag on its toe.
Other areas are similarly ambitious. Montgomery County has a Vision Zero goal, set last November, of 2030. Alexandria's goal, set in December, is 2028. They aren't going to make it either.
The fact is that since Mayor Bowser set DC's goal we've made no progress as the measure of traffic deaths go, and it's impossible to believe at this point - and it was in 2015 really - that we're going to hit that goal. Equally disturbing is the realization that impending failure doesn't appear to be creating any sense of urgency. I realize that DC and other governments miss their goals all the time, but it doesn't seem that anyone is worried about getting egg on their face about this.
Bowser’s office declined to provide comment from the mayor, instead referring a reporter to DDOT.
OK, maybe they're a little worried.
Zimbabwe said the numbers don’t reflect the progress that has been made. In 2011, the District had 32 traffic deaths. The latest numbers reflect a leveling off when measured against the city’s population growth, he said.
“We are not backsliding,” Zimbabwe said. “We are seeing ourselves laying the groundwork for the next things that will get us down to zero, and it is not going to happen overnight. There’s nobody out there with a ‘mission accomplished’ banner saying we are there yet. We take it very, very seriously.”
I don't doubt they take it seriously. I doubt they take it seriously enough to meet the goal - which would requires taking it VERY VERY seriously.
At the Vision Zero summit, when I asked a panel of local political leaders what we can do to get to zero, they basically said that yes, we need to do something but we lack the political will right now, like they were as powerless as those of us in the audience. Sigh.
What would a realistic goal have been?
DC's roads are already pretty safe. With a fatality rate of 2.4 per every 100,000 residents (2014), we're safer than every state in the US, and every country in the world (including Sweden) but one - likely due to our low car ownership rate and high transit use (<- writers call this "foreshadowing"). We could have set a goal to be the safest American city over 500,000 (New York City, for example, is already at 0.8 per every 100,000 <---more foreshadowing).
We could have followed Sweden's lead. We could have aimed to cut road deaths in half by 2035 and to zero by 2060. Or matched up with the US goal of 2050 (which means that we think the US can close the gap with Sweden in 32 years. Color me skeptical). Those are realistic goals - or at least not insane. We can still aim for those. But to make a legitimate go at it even those goals, let alone the 2024 one, requires a post-Pearl Harbor style all-in commitment from the Bowser Administration; and so far, that is not what we've gotten. The DC government is making an effort to reduce deaths, I know because I'm part of it, but the effort is woefully inadequate for the goal set or for even a half-century effort.
Zero is very small number
Here's something else about the Vision Zero goal. It's probably unobtainable.
Let's be honest, hitting zero deaths is going to require a lot more than redesigning a few intersections. It's going to require some radical changes. Some of which are, at the very least, politically terrifying and likely impossible. But DC, more than any other place - with its largely urban layout, unique city-county-state government and a mostly functional transit system - is capable of making some radical changes that would be impossible in LA, New York or Sweden.
I'm on the Major Crash Task Force where we review major crashes and provide input for the mayor and the city based on what we learn. And one thing I've learned from this (other than that I'm a crier) is that in most of these crashes, there wasn't just one thing that went wrong. There were usually two, three or more things that went wrong. In my day job we spend a lot of time identifying, and planning for, things that could go wrong; but the minute you say "what if this breaks AND that fails" people will stop you and say "that's a two-fault scenario, we don't worry about those." [When I worked in manned spaceflight the line was at three-faults because human life was involved, but that made the task of preparing for every contingency an order of magnitude harder and more expensive]. Accounting for, and protecting against, all the things that can go wrong may not be possible.
Many of these fatal crashes in DC have involved impaired drivers, many of whom were driving too fast. (Driving too fast is common when people have been drinking, because their decision-making is hampered). There are also some cases that involve speeding without alcohol. There are a lot of misjudgments - road users of all kinds crossing a road or intersection when they don't have the right-of-way being the most common. In some of these cases, poor lighting, poor visibility or road design contributed to the crash.
If we could put an end to those kinds of crashes, and that's a big if, we'd be most of the way there, but not all. Even if you make an amazing effort to remove the major risks, you still get the bizarre outliers and weird one-person fatal bike crashes. Even in six sigma, the goal is to succeed 99.99966% of the time. That still leaves a lot of opportunity for failure.
So maybe we should reconsider what we mean by "zero". Zero is still the aspiration, even as we accept that it's likely impossible. We can believe both of those things at once. But if we want a goal that we can achieve, why not fewer than 0.5 deaths per 100,000 residents. That would still make DC far safer than any other similar place. 0.4999 rounds off to zero, and once we hit it - if we hit it - we'll be in a better place to identify the theoretical bottom.
The goal was big, the effort has been small
It would be inaccurate to say that DC hasn't done anything to get to Vision Zero. They put together an action plan. They hired a manager for the Vision Zero Initiative. There are regular meetings, both public and internal. There have been grants and some street improvements. They even put out a one-year progress report, which reported real steps they've taken and some things, like sobriety checkpoints, that they were already doing. (You can read more of what they've done in DDOT's 2018 oversight testimony).
DC has accomplished some good, but modest, things for which they should be commended. But what has been accomplished isn't up to the task of reducing deaths and injuries by 35% per year. Furthermore, that haven't yet implemented all of the strategies they identified in the low-ambition action plan. Every one of the strategies had a target completion date of 2016 or 2017, so they should all be completed. Without going through them all, it's clear that they aren't. For one thing, CaBi Safety data is not posted on the vision zero website. And there is still no progress report for 2017, even though the 2016 report came out 16 months ago. The 2016 report does give an update on all the strategies and many had been completed by then, but many others had not.
I'll further note that the Vision Zero website doesn't appear to have been updated since 2015, though new information has been posted at DDOT's site. Updating the website won't likely save any lives, but allowing it to linger for 3 years is not confidence building.
In addition to those strategies, DDOT proposed a list of regulatory changes like higher traffic fines and expanding the time that school zone speed limits would be in place to 24 hours a day, every day. Those have been scaled back because of public pressure (for example the proposal for school safety zones has been changed from 24/7 to 7am to 11pm, and many of the fines have been reduced), which doesn't really matter since they still haven't been implemented. It's fine to modify proposals, but when you say "this is what we need to do to reach the goal" and then scale everything down, you're basically saying you aren't going to make it - in part because you're not going to give it the effort you think is necessary.
Finally, there's the Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Act, which the progress report highlights as a major accomplishment - and it is. But it requires reporting and data releases that I don't think have been completed. For example
A) Annual reports on locations with the highest frequency of collisions that injure or kill pedestriansB) Annual reports on the Bicycle and Pedestrian Priority Area ProgramC) Annual reports on the Complete Streets policy progressD) A report on the deferred disposition programE) A report on whether DC Circulator buses and District-owned, heavy-duty vehicles should be equipped with pedestrian-alert technologies.F) A report on whether emergency vehicles should be equipped with camerasG) A biannual report for improving bicycle and pedestrian safety (this only came due on July 1, 2018)
And so, unsurprisingly, after an incomplete attempt to meet some modest goals, there hasn't been any progress on the one metric that really matters.
What would be needed.
Getting to zero may not be possible, but certainly reducing deaths and serious injuries is. Sweden has had to admit that their timeline was too ambitious but, as of 2009 they've cut traffic deaths by 35% (in 12 years what we said we'd do in 1), which is moving strongly in the right direction. Bowser should, at the very least, address this with a statement that says "We aren't going to hit this goal. Here's why. Here's what the plan is and here's the new goal(s)." And it needs to be Bowser. She held the kickoff and got the press/photo ops. Her face is on page 3 of the Action Plan and Year-One Report. In fact, in the Action Plan it's not even the District's goal, it's hers. The Action Plan literally starts with a picture of her and the words "My Pledge".
In going through the fatalities in the last couple of years there are things that stand out. A lot of them involve speeding. A lot of them involve drinking. Many involve both of those activities. All but one involves driving. So let's start with those.
Park the cars
I'm not anti-car. [I'm really not]. But it's kind of elementary that if we can get people to drive less then there will be fewer traffic fatalities, and perhaps if we CAN'T get people to drive less there won't be much progress made at all. The BEST vision zero program is one that gets people to take transit, or bike, or walk or telecommute or anything other than drive. New York City has a very low traffic fatality rate, and only about a third of their trips are done by car. That puts their fatality rate and car mode share well below the national average. I suspect that a plot showing the automobile mode share vs. fatality rate for major US cities would show a strong correlation. If you need another example, Paris cut the mode share of driving down to less than 15% and,as a result, saw a 40 percent drop in traffic fatalities in 7 years.
We can start with a congestion charge. When Metro was coming on line they were able to open a new multi-million-dollar segment and THEN realign the bus routes, remove parking and change street designs in ways that improved safety and hampered driving. When they restored 13th Street to two-way traffic during rush hours in the 1970's, the justification was to improve safety and get people to use the Metro. Mayor Berry even mailed a Metro card to everyone who said their commute would be worse. In the 1980's when Logan Circle was rebuilt as a park, getting people to use Metro was again a justification.
Unfortunately, we don't have billions to spend. We're going to have to do it backwards. We're going to have to reduce driving by making it more expensive and use the money that earns to build more transit, and a congestion charge for downtown is a great way to do that. And, it would reduce congestion. Money from the congestion charge could go to improve Metro with things like new pedestrian tunnels at Farragut and from Gallery Place to Metro Center. We could also raise taxes on gasoline, and lower transit fares, which would have similar effects. In addition, higher gasoline prices would likely encourage people to buy smaller cars.
We can rebuild dedicated transit lanes. When the streetcar is expanded to Georgetown, for example, we could stop allowing cars in the streetcar lane on H Street. It will mean a loss of parking and a traffic lane, but it will make transit better. We could also keep the "temporary" bus lane on Rhode Island Avenue and build out a larger bus lane network. DDOT has already proposed using bus lanes in the MoveDC plan (and at various other times had them, removed them or proposed them. In 1956, DDOT's predecessor proposed a test of bus lanes on, yes, H Street from Massachusetts NW to 14th St. NE). If you want to save lives, this is a good way to do it.
This will involve tough choices, no doubt. But they're just choices. The Mayor pledged to do everything "in her power" to get to zero. This is in her power.
In the long run, we can make plans to decouple the orange and blue lines. Metro has saved a lot of lives over the years, and expanding it is a great way to save more.
We can also invest in biking, e-biking, walking, scooters, telecommuting, etc... The more we can get the automobile mode share down, the closer the goal of Vision zero gets. In fact, I don't think any city will get to zero if their automobile mode share is above 30%. Douglas N. Schneider has probably saved the lives of more DC residents than anyone you've ever known. DC was lucky to have him and we'd do well to build on what he started (instead we've dismantled some of it).
Reduce Impaired Driving
Impaired driving is another major contributor to crashes, especially alcohol. There are three places where we can intervene - drinking, driving (covered above) and driving after drinking. Luckily, the National Academies of Science, Engineering of Medicine recently created a report on how to end alcohol-impaired driving fatalities and it has many good recommendations.
Their first recommendation is to raise alcohol taxes.
Strong, direct evidence shows that higher alcohol taxes reduce alcohol-impaired driving and motor vehicle crash fatalities. Yet alcohol taxes have declined in inflation-adjusted terms at both federal and state levels.
DC's alcohol taxes have room to go up. Our spirits tax is the 29th highest of all states, beer is #6 and wine is #4. Raising those taxes would save lives. And money raised from higher taxes on alcohol could be put into bringing back the "Owl" bus service that DC used to run back going all the way back to the streetcar days (and prior to that as streetcars). Running buses - preferably free - from areas with a high density of liquor licenses to areas where people live or out to the end points of the Metro could help to reduce both VMT and drunk driving. The buses could run from the time Metrorail shuts down until some time after the bars close at 2:00 or 3:00am.
DC probably can't do this on their own, but the report recommends widespread adoption of the Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety (DADSS). DADSS is noninvasive, vehicle-integrated technology that prevents a vehicle from moving when the driver's Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) exceeds the state limit. It is, unfortunately, still in testing; and even when testing is over getting it into cars on the market is likely a federal task.
They also recommend ending alcohol sales at gas stations, limiting the hours of alcohol sales, lowering the BAC level for drunk driving to 0.5 (it's 0.8 in DC) and minimizing the sale of alcohol to minors.
Beyond that, we could limit parking in high drinking areas of the city, by increase the price and reducing the supply. For example, the District could remove the parking minimum at drinking establishments. Removing parking would also open up space to close streets in bar districts. All of this would discourage driving to bars, and encourage use of transit or taxis instead.
We should put an end to distracted driving, not just use of a handheld phone, but any phone. When I brought this up with State Senator Scott Surovell of Virginia who was on a panel at the Vision Zero Conference, he shook his head and said that there was no chance of that happening; that his colleagues see talking on the phone while they're driving - especially when stuck in traffic - as something Virginia can not live without. I hope DC can see it otherwise, but maybe I'm naive.
Slow down,you move too fast (and you could drop a few pounds too)
Speed is a major contributor to traffic fatalities, even when the driver isn't speeding. We can lower speed limits like Portland is doing and design streets for slower traffic and slower turns at intersections (something DDOT has already started doing).
Here again some federal assistance would be nice. There's nothing stopping NHTSA from requiring cars that simply won't go faster than 100mph. While they're at it, they could create pedestrian impact safety regulations that limit the current front end designs of SUVs.
DC's not totally powerless here. We can decide who gets registered and we can define the taxes for registration. We can increase the registration fees for cars with a high top speed or high weight vehicles and then lower them for cars that are safer.
I will note at this point that I have not mentioned autonomous vehicles and also note that that is not an oversight on my part.
No Country for Bad Drivers
In addition to reducing the number of cars on the road, we need to improve the quality of our drivers. We need a tougher licensing process. We need to assess points for automated enforcement tickets (California and Arizona are somehow able to). We need to have fines that increase for repeat offenders.
We need to retest drivers. We used to require a car inspection every two years, certainly we can ask drivers to retest every 10.
If we can get the worst 1-5% of drivers off the road, we're going to be much more than 1-5% safer. Though here DC is uniquely handicapped by the presence of so many out-of-state drivers.
Tougher choices
And then there are the really tough choices.
Should we ban motorcycles? The fatality rate for motorcycles is more than 36 times higher than for cars, and more than 700 times higher than for rail transit. If there were a car that were that dangerous, we might ban it.
Should we ban bikes from lanes with streetcar tracks. WABA fought against it when DDOT proposed it, but then DDOT was proposing it because it would slow down streetcars. Maybe it's worth thinking about, along with a discussion about flanges, or even putting sharrows in an adjacent lane to encourage cyclists to ride out of the streetcar track lane. I don't know if this is a good idea or not, but the status quo is incompatible with Vision Zero.
Should we get rid of right turn on red? ROTR was put in place during the 1970's energy crisis as a way to save energy, but it became obvious early on that it was dangerous. We've got a new crisis, maybe we should address that.
These are unpopular ideas for sure. Many of them were suggested during discussions of the report that led to the Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Act and they were dismissed quickly, not because they wouldn't work, but because they couldn't be passed. But if we want to get to zero deaths - if that's what we really want - we're going to have to make unpopular decisions. There will need to be more angry people, if we want to have fewer dead people.
This is either going to be really hard or we're going to fail
Those are the choices. Automobile engineers are not going to save us. Tweaking the system is not going to do it. Either we make dramatic changes to our cities and to our ideas of what mobility is and to the place of driving in our city, or VisionZero will just become one of those things we keep saying we aspire to but is always off in the distance, like energy independence or a democratic Cuba.
Maybe these choice are too hard and it isn't worth it, but if we're not really going to try to get to Vision Zero, then our leaders should stop pretending like we are.
The truly shameful thing is that the city consistently puts pedestrians at risk unnecessarily by increasing signal cycle lengths and closing sidewalks for construction. These are well documented to lead to people walking in the street, and yet the city REPEATEDLY does this.
Posted by: Uptowner | July 11, 2018 at 09:13 AM
Yes to getting rid of right turn on red, which I think is one of the biggest safety issues for pedestrians. But we'd have to not just get rid of its legality, we'd have to actually stop people from doing it. We don't have enough in the way of enforcement for other illegal driving maneuvers, so they are routinely done without consequence; could be the same with no turn on red.
I felt from the beginning that Vision Zero was always an impossible goal and this impossibility undermined it to the point that it was just lip service or scoring easy political points and the hard work would never be done. Sounds like a little more has been done than I thought, but it's clearly still not the priority it should be.
This is a cultural change as much as anything else. Any progress was likely to be almost glacial.
Posted by: hukserdont | July 11, 2018 at 09:56 AM
This is a great analysis is why DC is doing too little to meet its Vision Zero goals, but I don't think it's worth attacking the goals. More importantly, DC isn't doing enough to save lives.
Posted by: Gillian Burgess | July 11, 2018 at 10:16 AM
You make a reasonable point about what "zero" actually looks like though I know people will read this and say that even the pro-bike guy thinks we can't do zero.
But its good to be unreasonable sometimes. When talking about the creation of coastal protections in California some pioneer in that effort said that their success would have never worked had they tried to be "reasonable" about development along the shore line.
I think the same applies to Vision Zero, of course its unreasonable. So is (preventable) death.
Posted by: drumz | July 11, 2018 at 10:19 AM
Read quickly, some ideas good. But I fear if advocates of multimodal safety say "if you don't implement the following contentious steps you might as well not have vision zero,then the result will be no vision zero, and the loss of incremental momentum we get from vision zero.
Posted by: ACYCLISTintheportcity | July 11, 2018 at 10:22 AM
Gillian, I'm not attacking the goal. I'm fine with saying the goal is zero. But the timeline is ridiculous and feels like lip service and political gamesmanship. It's a timeline set by someone who isn't serious or thoughtful about the goal. I feel a bit like the dad in this classic scene.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JCf9MTJ5kI
Posted by: washcycle | July 11, 2018 at 11:00 AM
OT but I think it is odd that there's isn't more discussion of banning motorcycles on Code Red or Orange days.
Posted by: Ren | July 11, 2018 at 11:28 AM
I'm of a mixed mind about it. I dislike that it's a serious matter that is being treated in a generally unserious fashion, which I think is inherent in setting a goal that pretty much all involved know is unattainable. To the extent it drove some concrete steps, great, though I would also say that you didn't need Vision Zero for that. Those should have been initiatives justified in their own right.
Posted by: Crickey | July 11, 2018 at 01:20 PM
One of my feelings about goal-setting is that it needs to be set as something we - very inclusive - are going to do, not something we - the government - are going to do. And that larger effort needs to mentally prepare people for what is required. Saying "this is a half century effort requiring some real sacrifice" prepares people for the road ahead. Saying, "we can knock this out in a few years without impacting anyone" does not.
Posted by: washcycle | July 11, 2018 at 01:30 PM
I'm curious about the aversion to autonomous vehicles. They obviously have a ways to go before they'll be ready for widespread use, but if we're thinking in the longer term anyways, as this post seems to be urging, they seem like one of the most promising avenues for eliminating the driver errors that lead to so many deaths. Could you speak to this, @washcycle?
Posted by: SamuelDKB | July 12, 2018 at 12:22 PM
The thing that bothered me the most about that drivers comments is that all of those behaviors are totally legal in the district. Just a reminder that drivers need retesting about rules of the road.
Posted by: Richard B | July 26, 2018 at 10:19 AM