Vision Zero targets speeding in public forums

As the program moves into a new phase, the city is holding a series of forums focused specifically on steps to reduce speeding, including speed and red light cameras. (See the sidebar below or click here for details.)

Vision Zero’s champion is City Council member Mitch Gruber. “We have a particularly dangerous city to move around in,” says Gruber.  The data back him up. Going back nearly a quarter century, deaths and injuries in Rochester (adjusted for severity and population) have outpaced Albany, Buffalo, Syracuse and Yonkers, often by a significant margin.

Initiatives underway

School bus stop arm cameras are already installed and helping keep schoolchildren safe. Motorists who drive past a bus stopped with its red lights flashing are being ticketed. Experience in other cities suggests that 90% of those receiving tickets do not repeat the offense.

Many streets have been re-engineered for safety and more will follow. Some roadways invite speeding—a local street that looks and feels like a highway calls forth the Mad Max in many of us. Vision Zero hampers the “urge to surge” by putting streets on a what Gruber calls a “road diet”—in some cases reducing four lanes to two by adding medians, bike lanes, pedestrian “refuge islands” and other physical changes (although this is more bariatric surgery than Weight Watchers).

Rochester’s Genesee Street is on a “diet”—a new bike lane, curb “bump-outs” and an expanded easement with new plantings change the street’s “look and feel.” Planners are confident that average speeds will fall, making the street safer for pedestrians, bicyclists and motorists alike. The Vision Zero Progress Report shows other examples, including an impressive transformation of West Main Street.

More of our roadways should go on a diet—Lake Avenue is a big target for Vision Zero. But that’s not a complete or affordable solution (“millions per mile” says Gruber). And road diets don’t address the culture of speeding.

The consequences of speeding—even 20 or 30 mph over the limit—seem near zero to the driver. Rochester’s Vision Zero Task Force is exploring reducing the speed limit on most streets to 25 mph.

Without better enforcement (any enforcement?), a lower limit will only change the behavior of people who already observe the law. Some believe that speed variation has an effect on the number of crashes; variation would likely rise with the limit set at 25. Still, speed at the time of the crash is the factor most affecting death and injury.

Speed cameras and red-light cameras have been proven effective at slowing us down when driving and reducing death and injury. As Gruber observes, the tech is light years ahead of the cameras introduced a dozen years ago. For more on the “state of the art,” see GHSA report.

Opposition to automated enforcement raises two concerns: First, that the program is simply disguised taxation. Gruber insists that “automated enforcement is not a revenue raiser.  We have a real problem to solve. We have more people killed in crashes; we have more people almost killed in crashes. We have more people feeling unsafe to leave their houses.”

Equity is the second concern. Rightly or wrongly, some Rochester residents believed that the 2010 Red Light Camera Program targeted poor and disadvantaged residents. Gruber and the mayor are committed to fairness.

“Any implementation of automated enforcement will be done with incredible thoughtfulness to equity,” Gruber says.

The public forums are designed to hear from the public, address concerns and generate support.

“If we can’t prove to people that this is not a cash grab and will be designed and administered fairly, then they won’t support it and I don’t blame them,” says Gruber. “That’s the task in front of us, and these meetings are the beginning.”

Learn More about Vision Zero and Automated Enforcement

• 6 p.m. Tuesday, April 28 – Willie W. Lightfoot R-Center, 271 Flint St. 
• 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 29 – Carter Street R-Center, 500 Carter St. 
• 6 p.m. Tuesday, May 12 – Edgerton R-Center, 41 Backus St. 
• 6 p.m. Wednesday, May 13 – Thomas P. Ryan R-Center, 530 Webster Ave. 
• 11 a.m. Saturday, May 16 – Gleason Auditorium, Central Library, 115 South Ave. 

Kent Gardner, Ph.D., Rochester Beacon opinion editor, is former chief economist at the Center for Governmental Research.

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