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Despite decades of concentrating national infrastructure on private automobiles (often directly excluding and sacrificing other modes of transportation), modern humans get around far more than planes, trains and automobiles. Urban roads and suburban areas are becoming increasingly popular with vehicles ranging from electric scooters to city bikes, autonomous EV taxis and internal combustion SUVs. Responding to these competing priorities, the challenge of ensuring that everyone in town reaches their destination regardless of their physical or financial capabilities is becoming increasingly difficult.
Inclusive Transportation: A Manifesto for Fragmented Communities, This paper by civil engineer Veronica O. Davis highlights the many flaws in America’s transportation infrastructure (both procedural and structural) and calls on city planners to reconsider how public works actually affect the people they plan to serve. Davis tactfully advocates for a systemic revolution in the field of transportation planning that calls for better and more functional training for civil engineers, more diverse voices in transportation planning projects, and to undo at least some of the community-dividing ills of America’s past love of highways. In the excerpt below, Davis examines Washington, DC’s relative success. vision zero road safety program.
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from Comprehensive transportation By Veronica O. Davis. Copyright © 2023 Veronica O. Davis.
Review of transportation policy
Policy is the basis for many decisions. For example, I’ve worked with cities that have a policy of not allowing more space between curbs without extenuating circumstances, and even then the answer was no. In other words, you can’t widen the roadway, but you can do a “road diet” that narrows the roadway. For example, if the road had a curb-to-curb width of 60 feet, he would only have 60 feet to work with us in developing alternatives to accommodate the increased number of people moving into the hallway. The city’s policy decision was, “We will do what we have.
Vision Zero could be the way forward as a holistic framework for changing policy priorities, but it needs to be more than just a plan, it needs to be crafted with people. Vision Zero is a Swedish concept that recognizes that we are human and we make mistakes, but those mistakes should not result in serious injury or death. One of the things that confuses people in the United States when trying to adopt Vision Zero is that they confuse the total number of crashes with the total number of crashes resulting in death or serious injury. Vision Zero doesn’t demand a perfect record, and we recognize that crashes happen because we’re human. Instead, he argues, the focus should be on deaths and serious injuries. This distinction is important because crashes are generally ubiquitous in the area and people walk away from fender benders and side wipes with minor or unharmed injuries. Everyone lives to tell the drama with their family and friends, except they’ve had a bad day. However, more severe crashes tend to be clustered in specific communities. Focusing on crashes, regardless of the resulting injuries, allows resources to be moved away from communities that need them more because they are where people die.
Washington DC’s Vision Zero program is a good example of both successful interactions and some shortcomings. In 2015, only a few US cities adopted Vision Zero. DC’s plan was one of his first in the United States to include extensive support during the planning process. Over the summer, we held ten of his meetings on city streets, a youth summit attended by over 200 young people, two meetings with special advocacy groups, and he met with over 35 city agencies. We didn’t just inform people. We also worked with them and leveraged their feedback and stories to develop a plan. As an example, after talking with a group of black teens at a youth summit, we lifted all polices related to pedestrians and bicycles. Young people said that sometimes by crossing the street in the middle of the block they could escape groups of people who would try to harm them. Teens considered the risk of being targeted for violence higher than the risk of being hit by a car driver.
Additionally, I heard from people that having the police crack down on walking and bicycling laws would put the community at odds with law enforcement. Charles T. Brown has documented his own research for the podcast. arrested move How laws such as those banning footbridges are disproportionately enforced against black and brown communities, especially men. Under DC’s Vision Zero plan, the crackdown instead focused on dangerous driving behaviors such as speeding, drunk driving, distracted driving, and reckless driving.
In a world that is scrutinizing police crackdowns more closely in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, I think this plan to reexamine impartiality needs to go the extra mile. DC’s Vision Zero plan rightly focused on actions that lead to death or fatalities. However, the plan should have recommended a comprehensive evaluation. all Enacting traffic laws and removing anything that isn’t backed up by data or that doesn’t lead to safer streets. If we are talking about a data-driven approach, the law should cover actions that lead to crashes that result in death or serious injury.
Additionally, the plan provided recommendations and strategies and nothing more was done. After the Vision Zero plan was shared, the community all started demanding safer roads.This reminds me of the discussion [in chapter 2] Tensions over Montgomery County residents and who will get the resources. All roads have the potential to become safer, even if incrementally, without the guidance of further “emergency room” structures. DC’s Vision Zero program put resources where they needed help, but not necessarily where they needed the most investment. Given an opportunity like this, I would like to emphasize the importance of having a framework for allocating resources to communities and areas with high mortality and serious injury rates, areas with large numbers of Black, Latinx, and/or low-income residents.
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