City of Columbia continues to work on plans to end traffic deaths with Vision Zero
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
The City of Columbia continues to work on ways it can reach its goal of zero traffic deaths.
The city received a $1.4 million grant in February 2023 to help implement Vision Zero -- its policy of working toward eliminating deaths on the roads. In December, the city received another grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation for $1.5 million for road improvements.
Krista Shouse-Jones, coordinator for Vision Zero, said the project uses a different perspective on traffic safety.
"It really is looking at trying to make the transportation system safer for everyone," Shouse-Jones said. "And the thought is if we make it safe for our most vulnerable users, so people who are walking, biking, folks who need to walk or bike or roll to get to a bus stop, that if we focus on their safety, that it really does improve the system for everybody."
A Columbia organization, Local Motion, brought the idea of Vision Zero to the city in 2016. The program was finalized in April 2017 to eliminate traffic deaths by 2030.
"We thought it was important because the year that we brought it forward, there had been an unusually high number of people out walking who had been struck and killed by people driving in that number still tends to be pretty high in the sense that it's overrepresented," said Local Motion CEO Lawrence Simonson.
Four people died on Columbia roads in 2017.
Despite Vision Zero being established in Columbia that year, there hasn't been as much progress as hoped for.
In 2023 there have been 27 traffic accidents involving pedestrians with two of them resulting in deaths, according to Missouri State Highway Patrol reports. In 2022, there were 21 pedestrian-related accidents with one death.
The most recent road death happened on Dec. 30, when Brady L. Ewing, 55, was hit and killed on East Broadway at First Street in Downtown Columbia.
According to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, eight people died on roads in Columbia in 2021, the most recent year for available data. That was an increase from seven in 2020, according to the NHTSA and Columbia City Council agendas.
Twenty deadly crashes took place in Boone County in 2021, up from 10 in 2020, according to the data.
Simonson said Vision Zero is really about road infrastructure, which costs lots of money and takes a long time to change.
"Our goal was set at the beginning at 2030," Shouse-Jones said. "Unfortunately, we have not seen the needle move as much toward zero as we would like, but I think it's just a good reminder to all of us that this really is not a simple problem."
