Stamford Advocate: Stamford becomes first CT city to set zero fatal car crash goal

Verónica Del Valle, Stamford Advocate

STAMFORD — Stamford has become the first municipality in the state to publicly pledge to eliminate all traffic fatalities and deaths in the next decade.

Surrounded by officials from all corners of the city, Mayor Caroline Simmons signed an executive order pledging that Stamford would invest money and resources to end major crashes on its roads by 2032 through a program called Vision Zero.

"Our streets are the foundation of our communities, connecting our neighborhoods and all of us residents to everything wonderful our city has to offer, but unfortunately, we've seen a rise — both here in Stamford and nationwide — in traffic-related fatalities and injuries," Simmons said during a press conference.

Sweden spearheaded the Vision Zero project in 1997 when its Parliament required that fatalities and road injuries fall to zero by 2020 through investments in safe streets policies and roadway design. Cities that commit to the Vision Zero philosophy take a data-driven view of crashes and implement lower road speeds to reduce crashes' impacts on road users.

Stamford documented 22,622 traffic accidents between Jan. 1, 2017 and Aug. 31, 2022, interim Public Safety Director Louis DeRubeis said during the press conference. Some 459 of those accidents have involved pedestrians: The city averaged seven pedestrian crashes per month in 2021. And most notably, Stamford has recorded four fatal car crashes — two involving pedestrians — in the first nine months of 2022. DeRubeis said that this was the highest number of annual crash-related fatalities since 2017.

"We all have to do better," he said.

During that same period, Bridgeport reported three fatal crashes, according to the University of Connecticut's Crash Data Repository . Hartford reported 10; New Haven reported seven.

Data from Sweden shows that Vision Zero has been widely successful, effectively halving the number of traffic deaths in the country since it was enacted. Though the significant decreases in traffic deaths in Sweden have slowed since the turn of the century, the nation reported just 192 crash-related fatalities in 2021 compared with 591 in 2000.

At a minimum, Vision Zero communities are required to have a clear strategy in place that makes eliminating traffic fatalities an actionable goal within a concrete time frame. In addition, the mayor must publicly and officially commit to Vision Zero as Simmons did, and critical departments within the municipality must participate in the program.

Stamford's Vision Zero strategy hinges on a Vision Zero Task Force comprised of both staff and community members. After a year, the task force must provide the mayor's office with "short-term and long-term data-driven strategies complete with measurable goals," according to the executive order.

Although Vision Zero is fundamentally a long-term initiative, Simmons, in the executive order, committed six immediate steps. Effective immediately, Simmons has tasked the Stamford Police with increased enforcement in "high traffic areas," focusing on aggressive driving and red-light enforcement. By April 2023, the city must also develop a city-wide crash data map to identify which intersections and roads are ripe for road safety improvements based on need.

The non-profit Vision Zero Network officially recognizes 53 cities in the United States as members of the campaign. Almost a quarter of the municipalities are in California, including Los Angeles, Berkeley, Santa Barbara and Sacramento.

While governments have touted the traffic initiative as a guiding light for safety, Vision Zero is not without its critics. Even as more cities sign onto the Vision Zero pledge, crashes and traffic-related deaths have grown. Los Angeles, which committed to the initiative in 2015, recorded a 20-year high for road deaths in 2021 , and other American cities have seen similar trends.

"It's an easy thing for a politician to say that they're committed to Vision Zero," said Jeff Paniati, the executive director of the Institute of Transportation Engineers, to Bloomberg's City Lab in April 2022 , "without actually doing anything different from what they were doing before."

When asked about how the city would make sure it continuously pursued Vision Zero goals, city Director of Transportation, Traffic & Parking Frank Petise said Stamford would have to regularly ensure its actions were in line with the new philosophy.

Petise's department, tasked with infrastructure planning, engineering and construction, has already been taking a Vision Zero-influenced approach towards road planning, he said, but the formal designation from Simmons comes with funding-related benefits.

The federal Department of Transportation has directed certain grants for municipalities that sign on to Vision Zero, and city officials emphasized that Stamford's new status could help the city secure federal funds to implement new roadway design. To that end, Stamford applied for a $20 million grant from the Department of Transportation to advance a redesign of the Strawberry Hill corridor.

Though Stamford is the first city in the state to formally embrace Vision Zero, the Connecticut General Assembly nodded toward the initiative in its 2021 transportation bill. In that law, the General Assembly created a council dedicated to developing a statewide Vision Zero policy approach.

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