Note: This is a major revision of a post from 2024-01-31. The OakDOT Rapid Response Program is now in a separate post.

When a fatality or severe injury occurs for walkers and bicyclists, people often ask, what can we do right now to prevent or reduce the severity of the next crash? This topic has come up a number of times at the Sacramento Active Transportation Commission (SacATC), and communication from Slow Down Sacramento and the Safety Forum, Civic Thread, SABA, Strong SacTown and other organizations.

Based on the successful program from Oakland, I am proposing that the City of Sacramento develop a similar rapid response program.

The City of Sacramento would establish a pilot Rapid Response Program with an initial budget of $100K. The pilot program would address only fatal crashes. The budget will likely be insufficient, as Sacramento has a state-leading level of fatal crashes, but the pilot would allow the city to develop expertise and program structure, and formulate a future budget. The city might respond only to fatal crashes on the high injury network, in order to extend the budget.

A Rapid Response Team will include a city planner and city traffic engineer, and may include responding law enforcement officer and walking or bicycling advocate (Civic Thread for walking and SABA for bicycling, paid for their time). I intentionally say the law enforcement officer who responded to the crash. Other law enforcement officers would likely offer only uninformed opinions and victim blaming, though the experience could be useful for educating officers about street design.

The team will review existing documents and data, and then visit the fatal crash site within two work days of the crash, or the death of a person resulting from an earlier crash.

The team will make a report within five working days which identifies and proposes quick-build features (countermeasures) to reduce or eliminate infrastructure hazards, with prioritization based on effectiveness.

The quick-build features (countermeasures) may include:

• Refreshed crosswalk
• Refreshed pavement markings
• Temporary curb extension with flex posts
• Temporary modal filter (traffic diverter) with flex posts
• Temporary traffic circle with flex posts
• New marked crosswalk
• Changed or added signing
• Temporary new stop sign; permanent stop sign would require additional analysis
• Changed signal timing

At least one quick-build feature (countermeasure) will be installed within 10 work days of the site visit. Additional temporary features will be designed and scheduled.

I had previously mentioned mapping of crashes and related data by the city, because the state SWITRS system is always too far behind. I had previously mentioned a dashboard on crashes. However, these would probably best be implemented after the pilot year.