Cincinnati has made a new commitment to pedestrian safety.
During the April 6 Cincinnati City Council Meeting, council members unanimously approved an emergency ordinance that will provide an extra $1 million in speed-reduction measures and other tools to help protect pedestrians. The ordinance, put forth from Mayor Aftab Pureval and council member Mark Jeffreys was first introduced on March 30. Read the ordinance and see its history.
Funding will come from a surplus of federal American Rescue Plan funds from 2021. With the new one-time investment, Cincinnati's Department of Transportation & Engineering (DOTE) will increase the number of communities receiving speed-reduction tools and produce new safety measures such as hardened centerlines (forcing motorists to make left turns more slowly) and curb bump-outs that offer some protection to pedestrians.
"We have collectively pleaded for bold actions to protect our pedestrians. With this transformational investment, we are responding to an urgent need to protect Cincinnatians as they walk and roll on our shared streets," Pureval told council members.
Pedestrian safety has been a growing concern in Cincinnati neighborhoods. During the April 6 meeting, Pureval said that more than 300 pedestrians had been hit by vehicles in 2021, and seven of those people died. In June, members of Cincinnati City Council allocated $500,000 of the FY 2022 budget to pedestrian safety improvements, bringing the year's total to about $1.25 million (including the city manager's budget). In 2022 budget documents, the city says that locally, Vision Zero has "developed over 200 pedestrian safety projects in 37 neighborhoods" with 2021 budget funds.
Vision Zero is an initiative to eliminate all traffic-related deaths and injuries, with increased traffic enforcement, infrastructure improvements and a sweeping plan to change the way the city approaches traffic safety. The movement began in Sweden and has been implemented in cities around the globe, including in Cincinnati. The Cincinnati Public Schools Board of Education also has adopted Vision Zero.
"On Warsaw Avenue in East Price Hill, there have been 13 pedestrians struck in the past three years alone, and this year, speed cushions will be installed to combat this trend," Pureval said. "DOTE will also be implementing the speed cushions and speed deterrents surrounding our public centers that families depend on every day, like Taft Elementary in Mt. Auburn and South Avondale Elementary School."
Jeffreys said that he'd recently spoken to community councils in several Cincinnati neighborhoods, and they all were seeing destructive vehicle incidents that affected pedestrians.
"The same stories. Cars going through houses, cars going through storefronts. It just continues," Jeffreys said, adding that police and fire fighters frequently respond to these accidents. "Every time this happens, we're taking our public safety officials away from the job that they need to do with gun violence and everything else. So it is all connected."
"(This investment) is the start. We need to do a lot more. This will make an impact, but we need to continue the investment," Jeffreys continued.
In September, DOTE installed a series of rubber cushions on Winneste Avenue in Winton Hills as part of a safety pilot program. A report published by the city showed that after the speed cushions were installed, only 11% of the vehicles traveling on that stretch were driving over the posted speed limit of 25 mph. Prior to installing the speed cushions, a whopping 95% of drivers hit speeds above 25 mph.
Cincinnati's DOTE already had plans to install permanent vehicle speed cushions on high-risk streets in 10 Cincinnati neighborhoods after last year's successful pilot program demonstrated their effectiveness. (Read CityBeat's story about where to find the speed cushions). With the new $1 million funding, the department will plan speed cushions for an additional 20 locations, bringing the total number of neighborhoods with safety improvements to 30. DOTE anticipates having the designs ready within the next two months, with construction set to begin during the summer.
To find the areas of Cincinnati that might benefit the most from the use of these speed cushions, DOTE examined data such as the history of crashes involving motorists and pedestrians; proximity to busy neighborhood hubs (like business districts, schools, recreation centers and libraries) and the areas that have higher volumes of people taking public transit.
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