Tag: interactive map

SacCity Vision Zero Action Plan update: why intersections?

Dan AllisonLeave a comment

Other posts on the City of Sacramento Vision Zero Action Plan update are available at category: Vision Zero.

The 2018 Vision Zero Action Plan focused entirely on corridors. It did not identify high injury intersections, nor suggest actions at those intersections, unless they were also part of a high injury corridor.

The update does recognize that intersections should be addressed, but at least so far doesn’t focus on them. It should. Element 6 says “Continue developing designs and securing grant funding for the Top 10 priority corridors identified in the 2018 Action Plan, with a focus on roadway designs for reduced speeds and in Areas of Persistent Poverty” which is fairly specific. Element 7 says
“Complete 10 projects that separate severe vehicle-vehicle conflicts as well as vehicle-people or vehicle-bike conflicts at intersections” which is rather vague.

Why are intersections important? Because that is where most of the fatalities occur. Fatality locations are not, and should not, be the only criteria for focus. Serious injuries are also important, and the pattern of these is both more dense and different from fatalities. Actions that prevent fatalities or serious injuries are important.

The map below, an except from the Vision Zero Crash Dashboard Interactive Map, shows only fatalities in the central city (American River to Broadway, Sacramento River to Alhambra). Of the 34 fatal crash locations shown, it appears that five are not at intersections, therefore 29 are at intersections.

This is a visual screen based on the map location of the crashes. The map shows primary road and secondary road for every crash, but does not show distance from the intersection. It would take an analysis of ever crash location to determine for certain whether it is at, near, or away from an intersection.

The only pattern that might be considered a corridor is X Street, the roadway just south of Hwy 50, known to be a high-speed traffic sewer.

The next maps shows 39 crashes in an area of northeast Sacramento. Of the 39, it appears that 15 are not at intersections, therefore 24 are at or very near intersections.

This is a visual screen based on the map location of the crashes. The map shows primary road and secondary road for every crash, but does not show distance from the intersection. It would take an analysis of ever crash location to determine for certain whether it is at, near, or away from an intersection.

A corridor pattern is more evident on this map. Both El Camino Ave (at the bottom) and Marysville Blvd (middle north) have been identified as high injury corridors.

Confirming the intersection dominant pattern, the chart below is from the Collision Landscape Summary and Collision Profiles memo.

chart of collisions near intersections

The map below shows the Vision Zero Top 5 Corridors from the 2018 Action Plan.

map of Vision Zero Action Plan Top 5 corridors

Streets for People interactive map

Dan AllisonLeave a comment

Additional posts on Streets for People Active Transportation Plan are at category: Active Transportation Plan.

The interactive map developed for the Streets for People Active Transportation Plan is available for public input through August 11. The ‘add a route’ and ‘add a point’ options have a free-form entry box, so you can enter anything you would like, but using terms that the city uses, in the visual glossaries (below) or the traffic calming features (below) are more likely to be understood and accepted.

You can comment on the city’s recommendations: “Clicking on a draft network recommendation will launch a pop-up that will provide more information about the recommendation. You can leave a comment, like, or dislike on any recommendation.”

Or you can add your own: “Are there roads or intersections that don’t have a recommendation, but you think should? Use the “Add a route” and “Add a point” buttons below to mark these locations on the map.”

The interactive map offers visual glossaries for pedestrian infrastructure and classes of bikeways. Since you can’t have these glossaries open at the same time as the map, they are offered as blog posts and pdf documents by Getting Around Sacramento.

Traffic Calming Features

The City of Sacramento has added the Neighborhood Connections Story Board to the Streets for People Active Transportation Plan webpage. The traffic calming tab has 13 features, with photos, brief descriptions, and relative costs. These traffic calming features are meant for local and minor collector streets, not for major collector and arterials streets. See Streets for People traffic calming for the 13 features.

The crowd-sourced entries on the map are concentrated in the central city and north Land Park. We hope that people who walk and bicycle in other parts of the city, particularly the disinvested areas of South Sacramento and North Sacramento, will make suggestions on the map.

Neither the glossaries nor traffic calming features offer fully signalized intersections as a recommendation. Traffic signals regulate motor vehicle flow to some degree, but do not significantly slow traffic nor make streets safer for walkers and bicyclists. Safety is best achieved by slowing the motor vehicles through street redesign.

The ‘bicycle routes’ / sharrows option in the Visual Glossary of Classes of Bikeways has been misused by Sacramento and many other cities/counties/Caltrans by placing them on high volume and high speed roadways, in lieu of creating safer bicycle facilities. Their use should be strictly limited, and most existing locations should be converted to higher quality bicycle facilities.