Seattle must do more to prevent traffic deaths, report says

SEATTLE – If Seattle is serious about meeting its goal of eliminating traffic deaths by 2030, it must be willing to slow speeds and inconvenience drivers, found a monthslong review of the city’s “Vision Zero” policies.

The report, released Thursday, also concluded that the city should weave safety more fully into capital projects, clarify decision-making within the Seattle Department of Transportation, and fully fund safety projects that are currently viewed as “nice to haves” instead of “must haves.”

The review, ordered by SDOT director Greg Spotts shortly after he was sworn in late last year, is the result of an examination of existing documentation and data, as well as interviews with “dozens of key SDOT and partner agency staff.” It comes as Seattle’s pledge to halt road fatalities feels as far off as when the policies were first launched in 2015. The city is averaging 28 deaths a year, with trendlines going the wrong direction since 2019.

“Every Seattle resident should feel safe getting where they need to go,” Mayor Bruce Harrell said in a statement.

Compared to similarly sized cities, Seattle sees relatively few deaths; the report points to Denver and El Paso, which each saw more than 60 deaths in 2019.

But that’s little comfort to anyone who has lost someone in a traffic crash. Victims are mostly people cycling or walking on city arterials. In 2021, 27% of the people killed were homeless, according to the report.

“These are our friends, neighbors, and family members,” the report reads.

The review does not identify any one silver bullet lacking from the city’s arsenal; indeed, Seattle has implemented a slew of Vision Zero-focused projects over the last decade and has a team dedicated to reducing deaths. The city already has reduced speed limits on most arterials, redesigned dangerous streets like Rainier Avenue, built out more bike lanes, given pedestrians a head start when crossing intersections and more.

Locations that have already been reconfigured have shown some improvement. Collisions on Nickerson Street dropped 23% following a redrawing of its lanes; on Dexter Avenue, there was a 19% decrease; and on Rainier Avenue South there was a 42% drop in crashes after its lanes were reshaped.

Yet despite this work, citywide deaths have not budged.

With this in mind, the review advocates for broader integration of safety policies and projects into daily life at SDOT. That means broadening the reach of the Vision Zero team so that everyone from leadership to engineers are bought into the concept.

As things stand, the process for greenlighting safety improvements is not always clear, creating a piecemeal, project-by-project approach that can be “cumbersome,” the review says. This is especially true when it comes to any change that might slow traffic.

Compounding the clumsy process is the fact that not every project comes with funding for safety and the department sometimes fails to come up with a plan for adding those components later. Worries about possible litigation and liability can cause “hesitancy” when it comes to trying new ideas, the review says.

SDOT should clarify the roles and responsibilities of engineers and planners, and lay out clear safety policies so there is more autonomy for them to make decisions about safety projects, the review recommends. This may include explicit permission to reduce vehicle speeds and, potentially, inconvenience drivers.

For lower-cost projects, particularly those intended to test out a new idea, the department should create a mechanism for faster rollout, the report says.

Capital projects, meanwhile, ought to always include a base budget for safety improvements as well as a specific rollout plan. Some projects move forward without improvements for walkers and bikers, and the department then fails to come up with a plan for adding those pieces later.

The city’s multilane arterials are the most dangerous, particularly to walkers and bicyclists. The city has known this and has lowered speed limits and made changes to some of the most hazardous locations. Still, the review calls for more evaluation of the largest roads, including with redesigns of crosswalks, curbs and the roads’ lanes.

One barrier is that many of these routes are state – not city – roads, including Aurora Avenue North, Lake City Way Northeast and Sand Point Way Northeast. The state pledged to improve safety on Aurora, budgeting $50 million last year to do so. Still, the city will have to continue working with the state, as well as the federal government, to make proper improvements.

Underlying “Vision Zero” is a philosophy that all traffic deaths are preventable and often occur because of how the streets and roads are built. This takes emphasis off of individual behavior and places the burden on planners and engineers to design a safer transportation system.

That said, the report does urge a stronger look at enforcement, particularly via cameras. The city, under new authority from the state, has already rolled out automated enforcement at red lights and in school zones, with promising results. The review’s authors raised concerns about equity in enforcement, but nevertheless suggested that expanding the use of cameras could be a useful tool.

Seattle’s struggles do not occur in a vacuum; much of the country has seen traffic deaths rise.

The review includes more than 100 recommendations – amid the 12 “key” ones – for improving safety in the city, related to organizational structures, receiving feedback from residents, data collection, reporting, project rollout and communication.

As for specifics, Harrell and Spotts announced several “momentum building” moves they would take in the near-term, including increasing the number of intersections where turning right on red is banned, adding more head starts for pedestrians and focusing on safety improvements to Martin Luther King Jr. Way. Beyond those actions, the recommendations do not single out exact locations or projects, nor provide budget estimates. Instead, the goal is an informational one, intended to get everyone from the mayor to SDOT staff rowing in the same direction.

Councilmember Tammy Morales, whose district in South Seattle disproportionately absorbs roughly half of the city’s traffic deaths, said she was heartened by parts of SDOT’s review.

“At the same time,” she said, “this report stops short of calling for dramatic or swift action to combat the unprecedented number of collisions, injuries, and fatalities on our streets, particularly in District 2.”