Winnipeg Moving Forward on Road Safety Strategy

Road safety in Winnipeg is set to evolve from “look twice before crossing the street’” to “look twice before building the street,” as city council has ordered a new strategy that will put the onus on the transportation network itself to protect vulnerable users.

Prompted by Coun. Janice Lukes, the city’s public works committee voted Tuesday to have city staff draft a new road safety strategy within a year.

Transportation manager Luis Escobar said he still needs to consult committee members to “flesh out a little bit what their expectations are,” but he believes the request is a “positive action.”

“It brings more awareness to (road safety),” he said. “From the political point of view, it shows that they (councillors) are aware of and they understand the importance of road safety. We all understand road safety is important, but sometimes we take it for granted.

“Council asking we create a road safety strategy puts the spotlight on road safety.”

Escobar explained that regardless of what forms the new policy, one thing it will achieve is adding an extra box to check for transportation infrastructure projects.

“When we evaluate infrastructure projects, one element we evaluate is, ‘Is this consistent with or supported by council-approved policy?’” he said. “Now we’ll have that question, ‘is this infrastructure project supported by this (road safety) strategy?’”

Escobar clarified that the advent of a road safety strategy in Winnipeg will not be the first time projects had to pass that test, as “higher levels of government have come up with direction for road safety” the city already had to adhere to.

But he added that, locally, a standalone strategy will put extra emphasis on designing a fail-safe system.

“It gives more teeth, more weight to a number of projects driven specifically for road safety,” Escobar said.

He believes the strategy development will most likely be done in-house, though depending on councillors’ expectations it may require “additional resources.”

During the next year, he said stakeholder consultation and collision data analysis will help inform much of the strategy, as will the international model of road safety best practice called Vision Zero.

Part of Lukes’ inspiration in pushing for the strategy is Canada’s Road Safety Strategy 2025–Towards Zero, which is based on Vision Zero ideology.

Rebecca Peterniak, a road safety specialist who will speak at a Vision Zero forum Lukes is hosting Jan. 30, said the key principal is “wherever people might fail, the road system shouldn’t.”

The “zero” in Vision Zero stands for zero deaths, which is a goal Escobar is prepared to work into the city’s new strategy.

“The idea from our point of view is to prevent a collision, and if you can’t prevent it, you want to make sure you minimize the injury, that’s the approach,” he said. “Ideally we will get to a point where if there is a breakdown in the transportation system, the injury is going to be eliminated.

“That’s something we’ll strive towards when it comes to road safety.”

On Tuesday, councillors on the infrastructure renewal and public works committee voted in favour of having city staff create a road safety strategy within a year.

“This is exactly what I’d hope for,” Coun. Janice Lukes, who pitched the committee on the ideas, said after the meeting.

“This is excellent.”

She explained the city needs a comprehensive strategy to prioritize spending and better focus on specific ways to make roads safer.

Lukes citied Manitoba Public Insurance’s reported increase in road deaths from 2015 to 2016, higher rates of distracted driving and the upcoming legalization of pot as reasons why the city needs a robust road safety plan.

The committee voted for public works staff to develop a strategy that aligns with the principles of Towards Zero, Canada’s version of Vision Zero, which is a Swedish approach to road safety based on the belief collisions are preventable.

Lukes anticipates the strategy will focus heavily on education and require collaboration with the province, the Winnipeg Police Service and Manitoba Public Insurance.

The plan needs community consultation, she added.

Lukes expects that with adoption of a new policy, the city will have to set aside extra funds for transportation engineering improvements to promote road safety.

“Road safety is extremely serious and why wouldn’t we?”

City strives to cut number of traffic fatalities to zero

Winnipeg Free Press   By: Aldo Santin    Posted: 01/10/2017

A civic committee instructed the administration Tuesday to develop a road safety strategy designed to eliminate all traffic fatalities.

Sometimes vehicles hit people, and sometimes those people are either badly injured or killed—but it doesn’t have to be that way, according to one local expert who will speak on a road safety panel in Winnipeg on January 30.

Rebecca Peterniak, a Winnipeg-based road-safety specialist with an interest in accommodating vulnerable road users, said evidence drawn from best-practice shows “injuries and fatalities are preventable.”

It may seem farfetched, given the innate fallibility of all road users, but Peterniak said that’s old-school thinking.

“It’s the responsibility of transportation system providers to allow for that error and build a road system that (minimizes) the outcome of mistakes so they don’t result in people dying,” she said.

“Basically, wherever people might fail, the road system shouldn’t.”

That sentiment is at the core of Vision Zero, a road safety concept from Sweden that takes a zero tolerance approach to traffic deaths, effectively cutting them by half since the late ‘90s.

Peterniak has authored two papers on Vision Zero and held a workshop on the subject at the 2016 Canadian Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Conference in June.

She said Vision Zero cities accept road safety issues as nothing less than a “health epidemic,” and then addresses them accordingly through a proactive approach.

“There is always more that can be done.”

She said Vision Zero thinking is relatively new to Canada, but “gaining traction rapidly.”

The Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators (CCMTA) worked Vision Zero ideals into Canada’s Road Safety Strategy 2025 in January 2016, which Peterniak said provided a “framework municipalities can use to develop their own strategies locally.”

Major Canadian cities including Ottawa, Edmonton and Vancouver have all since publicly attached their own safety strategies to Vision Zero, but each still has work to do.

“Becoming a ‘Vision Zero jurisdiction’ happens on a spectrum,” Peterniak said.

“Adoption is the first phase … that comes with developing a policy statement to say, ‘we support this vision,’ but implementation is later, that’s what it looks like in practice.”

The implementation part is where Vision Zero really starts to matter, according to Vision Zero Canada’s executive director, Graham Larkin, who cautions against claiming Vision Zero sympathy to be “trendy” without really investing in the goal.

“Nobody wants traffic deaths, we all want to eliminate them, the question is: ‘Are we willing to go big and make the necessary changes?’” Larkin said.

He explained those necessary changes in a Vision Zero city would mean “civic officials taking responsibility for road safety, putting the onus on themselves, and using proven methods to establish fail-safe systems.”

Larkin said the status quo of most cities is relying on education, engineering and enforcement, pillars that survive in a shift to Vision Zero thinking, but in totally new ways.

“Engineering for one tends to come from this old fashioned idea that roads are devoted to level of service, throughput for cars,” he said.

“I’d rather talk about design, that’s sort of a more suitable term for describing what is basically the street as the best possible interface for all of the different users.”

Separating vulnerable users from cars, “clever signalization like advanced green for bikes,” pedestrian-initiated cross-walks, lower speeds, traffic-calming measures like speed humps and other innovations that are “compromises” that may irritate some drivers, Larkin said–but it won’t kill them.

He said the great part about Vision Zero is that in Europe, where the concept took hold decades ago now, it’s already proven, meaning Canadian cities needn’t reinvent the wheel.

“Just emulate the world leaders, do what they do, I’m talking about Sweden, Denmark… If you’re Winnipeg, it’s reasonable to look at those places,” he said.

“Go with proven data-driven methods, don’t do what you think is politically expedient so you can sell it to voters… we don’t need to do that.”

Peterniak will present her thoughts on the progressive approach at a public forum and panel discussion Coun. Janice Lukes has planned for January 30 at the Millennium Library.

She said it’s too early to tell what kind of support Vision Zero could have in Winnipeg, among its citizenry or leaders, but regardless it’s “encouraging” the discussion has started.

“I hope it will lead to action, road injuries and deaths are preventable so the more we get together and talk about it, the closer we get to that end.”

Pedestrian accidents highlight need for Vision Zero policy: councillor

Vision Zero hinges on the belief that “no loss of life is acceptable,” according to its website

Winnipeg Metro    By: Braeden Jones  Nov 14 2016