(The Center Square) – The Seattle Department of Transportation’s proposed transportation plan will focus on improving traffic safety and continuing its Vision Zero initiative.
The Seattle Transportation Plan identifies six main goals for the transportation department to achieve within the next 20 years. The goals include: safety, equity, sustainability, mobility, livability, and maintenance and modernization.
Under the department’s six goals, there are 23 strategies highlighted to help achieve those goals.
On Tuesday, Seattle DOT Director Greg Spotts spoke to members of the Seattle Transportation & Seattle Public Utilities Committee. Spotts noted that the department had individual modal plans in the past. Examples he mentioned include a bicycle plan, pedestrian plan, transit plan and a freight plan.
Spotts said that there is a limit to how useful a single-mode plan may be and that it does not necessarily envision where multiple modes may need to coexist. The new 20-year draft plan considers all modes of transportation to better identify city corridors and locations to address common and shared needs.
The top goal of the plan is to improve public safety. Seattle already has a plan to end traffic deaths and serious injuries on city streets by 2030, called “Vision Zero.”
There have been at least 16 traffic fatalities within the city this year, according to statistics the Seattle DOT provided to The Center Square on Aug. 1. Out of the 16 identified traffic deaths, six were people walking, five were drivers and passengers, three people were on motorcycles or mopeds, and two bikers were killed.
According to the department, there are more than 10,000 crashes within the city in a year, with an average of 28 deaths and 180 serious injuries.
The proposed Seattle Transportation Plan includes four strategies to ensure safety, including reducing vehicle speeds.
“I think it’s no surprise to folks that speed is very-highly correlated with safety – a three mile per hour reduction in average speed on a corridor reduces fatal crashes by 50% and injury crashes by 27%,” Seattle DOT Transportation Planning Manager Jonathan Lewis said during the committee meeting.
The other three strategies are: concentrate safety funding into the most collision-prone locations within the city; broadly make all journeys safer, from departure to destination; and provide safer routes to schools, parks, transit, community gathering spaces and other common destinations.
The plan would continue to emphasize education campaigns. The city’s DOT promotes signs that include messages such as a 20 mile per hour speed limit is fast enough and keep children safe near city roads.
What is new to the Seattle Transportation Plan is a vehicular element, according to Lewis. He added that within the department, there have been a number of discussions on vehicle safety and speeds.
During the first two phases of community engagement regarding the plan, safety emerged as a major concern of Seattle residents.
The third phase of community engagement began on Aug. 24. The department will then refine the Seattle Transportation Plan based on public feedback, as well as develop the final environmental impact statement.
The department expects the Seattle City Council to consider the adoption of the 20-year transportation plan in the first quarter of 2024.
