#saferstreetsact — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #saferstreetsact, aggregated by home.social.
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CM Saka is developing a city ordinance aimed at codifying Vision Zero work, requiring city contractors to install truck side guards
A ghost bike for Robb Mason near the Spokane Street Bridge. Shortly after his death, then-SDOT Director announced that the City Traffic Engineer would also be the Chief Safety Officer. Proposed ordinances would rewrite sections of Seattle's code to give the City Traffic Engineer more direct authority and responsibility to make safe streets changes. They would also grant "emergency authority" to the Traffic Engineer to expedite safety fixes in locations with "imminent risks," presumably including locations where a serious or fatal collision has occurred. City Councilmember and Transportation Committee Chair Rob Saka is set to introduce the ordinances during Thursday's committee meeting (PDF 1, PDF 2). The wording and scope of the changes are still very much in development, and Saka has signaled that he has additional goals that are not yet in ordinance draft form, including a new rule mandating truck side guards for all contractors working for the city. SDOT already requires side guards on all SDOT-owned trucks, following the lead of the University of Washington. Boston started requiring truck side guards for city contractors more than a decade ago, so the concept has successful precedent. Side guards are designed to push people away from the rear wheels in the case of a collision and are a proven safety device that the NTSB recommends for all trucks. They cost a couple thousand dollars to install, but in addition to preventing serious injury or death they can also improve fuel efficiency to help pay back their own costs. Dubbed the SAFER ("Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Equitable, Responsive") Streets Act, the set of proposed ordinances attempt to codify that the City Traffic Engineer also holds the responsibilities of being the city's Chief Safety Officer, a change that Mayor Bruce Harrell and then-SDOT Director Greg Spotts made following a Vision Zero review in 2023. By codifying the safety role within the legal description of the Traffic Engineer's authority, work to improve safety should be protected from the whims of future administrations. One of the more interesting lines in the proposed traffic safety ordinance would add "daylighting of intersections by prohibiting parking within an appropriate distance from crosswalks and curb returns" to the list of the regular duties of the Traffic Engineer alongside installing stop signs, marking crosswalks, etc. A presentation (PDF) to the committee notes that this change "requires that SDOT add intersection daylighting as a part of work it conducts at an intersection on a street with parking." Parking is already illegal within 20 or 30 feet of any crosswalk (marked or unmarked), but people essentially never follow this law voluntarily. By creating some kind of physical barrier to prevent parking (such as a sidewalk extension, a bike parking corral, a stormwater bioswale, etc), SDOT can ensure that everyone approaching an intersection can see each other. This problem is only getting worse as cars and trucks get bigger and taller. I can't tell from the ordinance language how strong a requirement this would be, but a dramatic expansion of intersection daylighting would prevent a lot of deaths and serious injuries and make the city's crosswalks much safer and more comfortable to use. […]