The auto industry vs people's lives, chapter 915

The Post has woken up to the lack of success Federal incentives have had in promoting Vision Zero, an international strategy "to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries, while increasing safe, healthy, equitable mobility for all." Despite the success of Vision Zero in Europe (especially in the Netherlands), it isn't doing particularly well over here, which the Post blames on drivers:

Vision Zero’s failures in more than two dozen cities fit a predictable pattern, according to the Post analysis and interviews with experts in traffic safety. Motorists are hostile to measures that slow traffic and favor pedestrians. Local leaders give token or tepid support. Spending on pedestrian-friendly improvements is not prioritized. The U.S. government, meanwhile, never backed up its pledge with federal action or significant funds.

A Post analysis found that of 27 cities that had at least five pedestrian deaths each year before adopting Vision Zero, all but one now have the same or higher pedestrian death rates than when those declarations were made.

Los Angeles was one of the first cities to adopt Vision Zero in 2015, pledging to eliminate crash deaths by this year. The trend has been in the opposite direction. The number of people on foot who were killed by cars has increased more than 60 percent, from 97 in 2015 to 158 in 2024, according to statewide traffic data from UC Berkeley.

Sweden redesigned roads, increased enforcement, put money into expanded public transit networks and required new safety features from car manufacturers. Road deaths were cut by 60 percent, and pedestrian deaths by 65 percent. Other countries adopted the same commitment: The European Union made it continentwide in 2011. Road deaths in the E.U. have declined 25 percent since then, even as car use has grown. More than 900 European cities have made it a year or more with zero traffic fatalities.

The evidence is irrefutable that Vision Zero improvements — such as adding crosswalks, giving pedestrians more time to cross and narrowing multilane roads in busy areas — do work, according to multiple transportation officials and engineering experts.

New York City lowered speed limits, added cameras and most successfully — if controversially — limited car traffic in Lower Manhattan. The city averaged 141 pedestrian deaths per year before it announced its Vision Zero goals in 2014. Since then, it has averaged 111 per year. Hoboken, New Jersey, focused on removing parking close to crosswalks that made it hard to see people crossing the street. Hoboken has gone eight years without a traffic death.

So if Vision Zero works in a lot of places, why does it keep failing in American cities? Chuck Marohn, having a bit more expertise in this area than the Post staff, suggests that the top-down, Federal incentives are themselves a big part of the problem with the Complete Streets program, which funds Vision Zero efforts:

At its core, the Complete Streets concept was a direct response to the damage inflicted on neighborhoods by the federal highway era. That period prioritized the construction of high-speed roadways, even through the heart of neighborhoods, often devastating communities in the process.

The original vision for Complete Streets sought to reverse this damage by imagining a new kind of street: one that placed human beings back at the center of the public realm. These were not to be highways running through cities under a different name, but streets where people could walk, bike, take transit, and access the places they live, work, and gather with safety and dignity.

But instead of transformative change, we got compliance theater. Cities and states, eager to remain eligible for federal funding, began producing projects that technically met the Complete Streets criteria on paper but failed to produce meaningful change on the ground.

Many of these projects included the right mix of features — bike lanes, wider sidewalks, planted medians — but were implemented in places where they made little difference or, worse, contradicted the underlying goals of connectivity and safety.

By aligning itself with federal funding mechanisms, proponents allowed its priorities to be diluted. Instead of producing streets that are safe, human-scaled, and integrated into the fabric of neighborhoods, we’ve ended up with expensive projects that serve as compliance exercises for grant eligibility.

Federally-funded Complete Streets projects are also crowding out other initiatives that would have had more impact. Local governments that might otherwise have built meaningful, low-cost, and quickly implemented pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure are instead chasing federal grants that demand high-cost, slow-moving, and over-engineered designs. The result is not only wasted money, but wasted opportunity.

Here in Chicago, we've had mixed success. Vision Zero projects and Complete Streets money have given us tons of new protected bike lanes, traffic calming, streetscapes, and other infrastructure improvements that have reduced crashes and saved lives. But the Chicago and Illinois Depts of Transportation both prioritize traffic flow, which is the opposite goal of these programs.

Thanks to years of disinvestment in our cities in order to promote the domestic car industry, we have more than double the traffic deaths per capita as our peer nations in Europe and Asia. Even the language we use around car crashes implies that nothing can be done to stop them. I hope that more articles like the Post's today can raise awareness, but I worry that Americans just don't care enough about other people to change the culture.