Challenge

The City of Erie, Pennsylvania, won Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) funding from the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) to develop a safety action plan that addresses the upward trend of pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities and serious injuries happening in the city.

Solution

The Kittelson team organized and facilitated a safety working group and completed existing conditions analyses that included a development of a high injury network (HIN). Through systemic analysis, the team identified key focus facilities that are overrepresented in traffic crashes and developed prioritization criteria to identify locations for immediate action.

One key feature of the Erie SS4A Action Plan was a robust and meaningful engagement process, particularly among the city’s large new American community. These public engagement opportunities contained two parts:

1) traditional tools, such as public workshops and online surveys; and

2) nontraditional tools, like holding meetings with individual communities to gather input on which countermeasures to include in the draft plan while also respecting each community’s cultural norms.

Kittelson worked closely with senior city leadership to develop an implementation plan tailored to the 2035 Vision Zero target year. The plan includes recommendations for spot-specific improvements along six key HIN corridors; systemic recommendations for pedestrian and angle crashes at intersections; and proposed policy changes, like a traffic-calming program and a context-based design policy.