GVMC Vision Zero 2050 Regional Safety Action Plan

Project Overview

Streets are a key element of our daily lives that allow us to access day-to-day needs and activities but also serve as places for the community to gather and interact socially. Transportation systems are complex and comprehensive, often overlapping with other systems, such as housing, land use, law enforcement, and commerce. GVMC took on the task of developing the Regional Safety Action Plan to further advance a safe, forward-looking transportation system that serves the needs and meets the demands of a thriving West Michigan region.

Achieving Vision Zero

GVMC and its members are committed to eliminating fatal and serious injuries on streets in the GVMC region by 2050. The Vision Zero 2050 Regional Safety Action Plan provides a roadmap for how to redesign our streets, change policies, and ultimately improve safety within the region so no one dies or is seriously injured while moving about the region, no matter whether they walk, bike, roll, or drive.

To support a vision of achieving zero fatal or serious injury crashes by 2050, the plan includes a detailed set of 138 actions as well as priority corridors for GVMC and its members to act on between now and 2050. The actions are organized into five categories: Safe Infrastructure, Data-Driven Approach, Culture Change, Equity, and Education; Policies and Guidance; and Implementing the Plan. Plan implementation will focus on installing FHWA’s Proven Safety Countermeasures along priority corridors to alter street design and make operational changes to improve safety.

How was this Plan developed?

This plan was facilitated by GVMC staff under the direction of the GVMC Safety Committee with regular input from community members through multiple public engagement events.

The Safe System Approach

Vision Zero 2050 is the goal, and the Safe System Approach is how we get there. The Safe System Approach refers to an intentional strategy for achieving zero deaths or serious injuries on the road network. It recognizes that humans make mistakes, and we can only achieve Vision Zero by integrating safety improvement efforts amongst all traffic safety stakeholders (road designers, vehicle manufacturers, policy makers, enforcement agencies, families, workplaces, schools, etc.) to create a safe system. A Safe System Approach is one in which practitioners work to design, build, and maintain a transportation system that promotes safe road user behaviors (human factors) and protects all road users from physical harm (forgiving systems). This is a shift from a conventional safety approach because it focuses on both human mistakes and human vulnerability.

USDOT has begun prioritizing the Safe System Approach through the Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) Grant Program. Funding for the SS4A Grant Program allows jurisdictions to create safety action plans with the goal of improving roadway safety; implement demonstration projects to test out projects, programs, and policies; and implement permanent and new infrastructure, programs, and policies that improve roadway safety. GVMC was awarded SS4A funding in the fall of 2022 to create a SS4A Action Plan.

Key Crash Trends

A crash analysis was performed to understand crash trends within the region. The analysis provides a data-driven basis for understanding fatal and serious injury (FSI) traffic crashes in the GVMC region. The analysis used crash data from 2018 through 2022, extended to 2013 through 2022 for temporal comparisons. Key findings include:

Total Crashes: 113,418
Total Fatal Crashes: 305
Total Serious Injury Crashes: 1,915
Total Fatal and Serious Injury (FSI) Crashes: 2,220

Crashes by Year: Fatal and serious injury crashes have been increasing over time.

What Does Achieving Vision Zero 2050 Mean?

The crash analysis provides insights into the location, type, and behaviors involved in fatal and serious injury crashes in the region. However, the Systemic Safety Approach offers a way to reduce crashes by examining patterns in infrastructure and roadway context that can systematically encourage safer behaviors and reduce serious injury and fatal crashes. To achieve zero roadway fatalities and serious injuries by 2050, GVMC and its members will need to work together to prevent 17 more fatal or serious injury crashes on average every year for the next 26 years to reach zero roadway fatalities and serious injuries by 2050.

Community Engagement

Engagement is a critical aspect to achieving Vision Zero 2050. Throughout the development of this plan, the project team consulted with the Safety Committee and engaged members of the public to understand what they believed were the specific safety issues in the region. Engagement methods that were employed throughout the planning process included:

Five Safety Committee meetings
Two Stakeholder Interview sessions
Four Stakeholder Conversations
Nine pop up events
576 comment cards
Online survey and Interactive Webmap
Community Open Houses

These community engagement efforts have helped direct the analysis and recommendations contained within this Action Plan. As GVMC and its members begin to implement the Action Plan, the public and stakeholder groups should continue to be provided with specific project updates and updates on overall progress towards Vision Zero 2050. Whenever a specific project begins, the local community and stakeholders should be consulted in the project development phase to ensure their safety needs are met with the new project.

Moving Forward

Taking action to achieve Vision Zero 2050 will require a constant commitment by GVMC and its members every day across the region to focus on improving transportation safety in everything we do. It will truly require embracing a “Safety First” mentality where technical staff and community members are constantly asking how projects, programs, and policies are going to improve safety.

This Action Plan is a “living” document that should be revisited and regularly updated to ensure we are making progress and course corrections if our safety interventions are not reducing fatal and serious injury crashes fast enough.

Crash Data Dashboard

To further communicate the transportation safety issues in the region, GVMC has developed a Vision Zero Crash Data Dashboard that provides high-level information about the number and location of fatal and serious injury crashes in the region as well as common crash types and key crash trends. This Dashboard will be updated annually with new crash data at the beginning of the following year.

Click here to view the Crash Data Dashboard: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/c7b0630b22f04565a24c6364fe5783ab