Fresno prepares ‘Vision Zero Action Plan’ for safe streets

The City of Fresno is developing a new action plan that seeks to eliminate the incidence of fatalities and high-risk injuries caused by traffic crashes. The so-called Vision Zero Action Plan is an effort to do just that, and make streets and roads safer.

Andreina Aguilar, Senior Engineering Technician in the Transportation Planning Department, explains what motivated this plan.

“Within the year 2019 to 2023, almost 500 accidents have been reported, where they were fatal or were severe in outcome. “

The “Vision Zero Action Plan” began to be drafted last year, and in early June there was a community meeting to inform the public about the progress of the plan. Initially, the city collected and analyzed data to identify the most dangerous areas. Andreina Aguilar tells us what that process was like.

Where are our numbers, what is the significance, what are the issues the community is looking at? Through looking at the data, it is analyzed, and that helps us indicate what the problem streets are, the same with intersections.

According to the data analysis and informational billboards presented at the community event, the areas with the most fatal or serious crashes in central and north Fresno include streets such as Fresno Street, Belmont, Blackstone, Clinton and several intersections. But the plan is not based solely on numbers; it also seeks to incorporate the voice of the community. Over several months, surveys and workshops were conducted with residents throughout the city. Andreina tells us the details shared by participants in these surveys.

“Cars drive too hard, lack of sidewalks where pedestrians can walk, lack of bike lanes.”

Another concern highlighted by the surveys is the lack of safe streets for students to walk to school. Around that, The plan calls for concrete strategies to intervene: from markers to help reduce driver speed, speed bumps, to crosswalks that have sufficiently visible and illuminated signals.

“One of the implementations we’ve been using recently, which have helped in many schools, are what’s called an RRFB, a crosswalk, to reduce the possibility of an accident.”

Also, community organizations such as the Fresno County Bicycle Coalition and the Neighborhood Association have played a key role in this process.

“We gave them an engagement tool kit that came with presentations, with flyers, with posters that they could distribute to their contacts – part of the project, we worked with the Fresno County Bicycle Coalition, which is a group of bicyclists and pedestrians who helped us engage the community to be able to give their opinions and give their stories.”

The community event was attended by several representatives from local organizations, including Dr. Anthony Molina, a board member of the Fresno County Bicycle Coalition shared with me the story of the death of one of the coalition’s members, who was hit by a car while exiting Woodward Park here in Fresno.

 ”It was very tragic because there was a lot of traffic there in this area. He was riding his bike in the intersection, but he didn’t see it because of the truck that was so big. So, we’re working with the city to provide a new bike lane on Friant Street. We think that could perhaps avoid this problem for bicycles.

The next step will be to consolidate this information into a final plan that will be presented to the public and the Fresno City Council.

Once approved, Fresno will be able to apply for state and federal funds to implement the recommendations. Andreina Aguilar adds that the community can still participate in future public meetings or email suggestions to visionzero@fresno.gov.