#VisionZeroLA Part 1: How Initiative Will Reduce Costs of Traffic Collisions

On a sunny August afternoon in Boyle Heights, Mayor Garcetti signed his tenth executive directive since taking office and launched the City’s new Vision Zero initiative, or #VisionZeroLA! The Mayor was joined by local traffic safety proponents, including our very own General Manager Seleta Reynolds, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, Councilmembers Mike Bonin and Mitchell Englander, other members of the City family, and a newly formed coalition of organizations in support of safer streets for everyone called Los Angeles Vision Zero Alliance (LA0).

#VisionZeroLA represents a commitment on behalf of the City of Los Angeles to eliminate traffic-related fatalities by 2025. According to the Mayor’s Office, the City’s Vision Zero policy “is based on the fundamental principle that traffic deaths can be avoided through strategic, data-driven approaches to engineering, enforcement, education evaluation, and community engagement.”

Mayor Garcetti adjusts the mic before announcing #VisionZeroLA.

In a typical year, roughly 200 people are severely injured or killed in traffic collisions in Los Angeles. Approximately 44% of these collisions involved a person walking or riding a bicycle. Vision Zero LA aims to focus multiple City departments to collaborate and develop measures that will reduce the number of traffic-related fatalities and severe injuries from 200 to zero. To this end, our GM Seleta Reynolds will lead the Department to ensure our transportation system offers people safe and comfortable mobility. “We must transform our city so that our youth and older adults aren’t risking their lives just to get around town,” said Seleta.

Tackling traffic safety in a city with over 4,500 miles of streets is an ambitious task.  According to the Vision Zero LA team, however, of the 30,000 collisions a year in Los Angeles, about 65% of those that result in a pedestrian death or severe injury take place on only 6% of the City’s streets.  This proportion of street segments is known as the High-Injury Network and will be the focus of the City’s initial efforts and safety improvements.

Increase Safety, Decrease Costs

Any death or injury resulting from a traffic collision on our streets is one too many. Traffic collisions have a detrimental impact on the city and its residents: physical and emotional pain of the victims and their families, significant economic costs and financial burdens, adverse effects on health and safety, inefficiencies in the transportation system, and lower quality of life for all. Not only will #VisionZeroLA create invaluable benefits for our communities like reducing the physical and emotional harm these type of tragedies cause and ensuring all residents feel safe using our streets, this initiative will also save Los Angeles residents from the financial burden on society generated by traffic collisions that we do not immediately recognize.

A recent report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reveals that all traffic collisions cost the U.S. economy about $836 billion in 2010—$594 billion in value of social harm and $242 billion in economic costs. This staggering figure accounts for 32,999 fatalities, 3.9 million non-fatal injuries, and 24 million damaged vehicles. NHTSA researchers estimate the economic cost of crashes based on factors such as property damage, lost earnings, lost household production, medical expenses, emergency services, travel delay, workplace costs, and legal fees, while the societal impacts of collisions are quantified based on physical and emotional pain and loss of quality of life.

The economic cost of each traffic-related fatality to society is approximated at nearly $1.4 million; more than 95% of this amount accounts for lost time in the workplace and household, absent contributions to the market, and legal expenses. A cost breakdown from the NHTSA report based on severity of traffic collision is included below:

In 2010, Californians paid 8.3%, or $19 billion, of the total economic cost of traffic collisions nationwide, the greatest proportion out of any other State.

Based on the 200 traffic-related fatalities and severe injuries in Los Angeles in 2013 and cost estimates from the NHTSA, the LADOT Bike Blog estimates these fatalities cost our City nearly $280 million. The varying costs of collisions are summarized in the table below, differentiated by the extent of injuries and types of transportation modes involved. Over half of the reported 200 fatalities were people walking or riding their bicycle. Cost details for collisions without reported injuries (i.e. vehicle damage alone) were not included.

The 28,896 traffic-related injuries and fatalities that occurred citywide in 2013 cost all of us approximately $3.681 billion, or $367.36 per resident. In other words, it makes fiscal sense for the city to provide safer infrastructure in order to reduce fatalities and injuries, and avoid a portion of these costs in addition to the other damages caused by traffic collisions.

There is no replacing the loss of a life and to get an idea of the financial toll serious traffic collisions have on our city, here are a few things $3.681 billion could pay for:

• Construction of 4.5 out of 9 miles of Metro’s Purple Line expansion.
• Rebuilding the LAPL Silver Lake Branch 334 times.
• Development of about 65 public parks similar to Grand Park or Wilmington Waterfront Park.
• Repairs to more than 18,000 miles of the city’s sidewalks.
• Installation of approximately 3,681 miles of protected bicycle lanes throughout the city (based on the Department’s cost estimate of $1 million a mile)
• Buildout of the entire Los Angeles River Bike Path within City limits (based on cost estimates in the Los Angeles River Revitalization Master Plan)

For more information on #VisionZeroLA visit visionzero.lacity.org and follow @VisionZeroLA.

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Corridors and plazas are the malls of the future! #streetsforpeople

Bradley Ave Plaza #thefuture

In the realm of active transportation, we are always thinking about the future and the constantly changing trends, cultures, and behavior shifts – these are the heartbeat of the City that we listen to in order to plan and integrate our work into the ever-evolving urban fabric of Los Angeles.  The conversation about active transportation increasingly goes beyond the modes we are talking about (walking, biking, rolling). The beauty of active transportation is that it intertwines with other disciplines, a wide variety of stakeholders, and other physical and social aspects of public space like social life, urban spaces, and cultural programming. Constantly in our practice, we observe these ties, although they differ neighborhood to neighborhood and place by place, as each has its own deep cultural and historical influences. We were lucky enough to spend some time in one of these culturally-rich neighborhoods lately, learning about the lay of the land.

Last week, LADOT Active Transportation Division traveled to Van Nuys Boulevard in Pacoima to attend a workshop put on by the Urban Land Institute (ULI). Van Nuys Boulevard is no stranger to recognition! It has been designated by two council districts as a Great Street, was selected as one of four Demonstration Corridors in the country for ULI’s Healthy Corridors Grant, and today hosted the ribbon cutting of its People St Plaza, the Bradley Ave Plaza.

This neighborhood within Pacoima is a touch point for the conversation about mobility and transportation due to its confluence of modes: the historically car-dominated transect of the Valley crosses both Metrolink tracks and the San Fernando Road Bike Path, a right of way that has been slated for a proposed future high speed rail line. Additionally, Van Nuys Blvd. is being studied by Metro as part of the East San Fernando Valley Transit Corridor project. It remains to be seen what the future configuration of the street will look like or what type of transit and active transportation facilities will be built, but keep your ears peeled because improvements to mobility are in the works!

Max Podemski of Pacoima Beautiful leads a walking tour of Van Nuys Blvd, stopping at the intersection of Van Nuys Blvd and San Fernando Rd., where the bike path and Metrolink cruise side by side.

Pacoima is indicative of some of LA’s most significant growth challenges: though it lies in the heart of the sprawling single-family-home-oriented San Fernando Valley, because of ubiquitous under-the-radar garage conversions, the area reflects the density of multi-family housing. When reflecting on our favorite statistic, that 47% of trips in Los Angeles are under 3 miles and can easily be completed by walking or biking, we can’t help but see Van Nuys Blvd. as the ideal attractor for these local trips.

The ULI Healthy Corridors Workshop brought up some interesting points, but one of the things that piqued our attention was the term “economic leakage.” The workshop presented a number of snapshots and studies that have been conducted in the area. One study found that though many families- over 3000 property parcels- live within 1/2 mile of Van Nuys Boulevard, the vast majority leave the area to shop elsewhere.  This is the same story of economic decline of corridors and local economies over the past 40 years that can be told by countless cities and LA neighborhoods.

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