“On average, an Austinite is killed in a crash every five days, and someone is seriously injured in a crash every 20 hours,” according to the city’s Vision Zero website. The effort to eliminate these has multiple approaches including evidence-based public policy.
The Transportation and Public Works staff looks at crash data including vehicle speed, travel times and traffic signal analytics to determine safety improvement projects.
This week, the city highlighted a project along Barton Springs Road where crash data showed “a consistent pattern of high-risk speeding and a considerable history of crashes with people injured.”
Using traffic signal analytics, speed data and crash data, the city began improving the built infrastructure such as rerouting lanes, replacing traffic signals and adjusting traffic signal timing. The result, according to the city, is fewer drivers speeding. Speed is the leading cause of accidents here.
The Data and Technology Services Division populates the Vision Zero Viewer, unveiled in 2020, offering a public snapshot and an interactive map to see traffic accidents and the number of resulting injuries or deaths.
Data includes:
- Traffic crashes, injuries and deaths
- Modalities including car, foot, motorcycle, bicycle and e-bike
- Time of day
- Demographics
The Vision Zero Viewer “is a continuation of our efforts around how do we best reduce the number of serious injuries and fatalities that really are preventable in our community,” Transportation Safety Officer Lewis Leff told KUT 90.5 in 2020. “It’s an unnecessarily high number. You can see some of the progress we’ve made, but you can also see the complex challenge ahead of us.”
Funding for projects is from multiple sources including:
- City mobility bonds
- Texas Department of Public Safety
- CapMetro
- Bikeways Program
- Vision Zero
- Traffic Impact Analysis Fiscal Program
- The Quarter Cent Program
