This commentary is by Tony Redington of Burlington, who has worked in policy and planning for the transportation departments in Vermont and New Hampshire, and is an advocate for walk mode safety and roundabouts.
The tremors in a paradigm change in federal and state highway safety may lead to an earthquake on what our Vermont streets look like and how driver behaviors adjust to new and necessary strict speed limits enforcement.
All to reduce by half the current levels of serious and fatal carnage on our roads and streets, including every dangerous rural and urban intersection and urban residential and mixed use streets.
When appointed U.S. secretary of transportation, new dad Pete Buttigieg promised his first priority to be safety, particularly on roadways, the only safety area the U.S. is “trailing” other nations. Changes in safety, he pledged, would also address two other major policy objectives, addressing “equity” and climate change.
Equity means no longer using federal highway funds to “cut in two,” as often in the past, communities of color and low income. Yes, systemic racism can be found in common transportation practice in the past. See the January 2022 National Roadway Safety Strategy. The document shows the blatant racism and injustice in U.S. transportation, as pedestrians of color who are most vulnerable in crashes die at substantially higher rates than white death rates.
Vermont traffic fatalities remain about 60 a year, with certainly a higher number of serious injuries. In Burlington, about 150 injuries are recorded yearly and each week about two occupants of a car and either a pedestrian or cyclist. Add to that another 22 deaths a year resulting from decades of exposure to gas pipe emissions — first quantified last year in University of North Carolina research.
The 2022 Safety Strategy caused transportation engineers and policy development specialists (my background in two state departments of transportation and research) to look at nations that have been seriously addressing, with success, cutting road carnage. Most of us, myself included, came face to face with a pattern of changes not thought of in the past, certainly never faced seriously in the real world of safety policy in Vermont and Transportation America!
Road deaths are at pandemic level in the U.S. First in 1990, now we stand at 18th today, with a fatality rate twice the leading four nations, including the UK, with which we tied for top position in 1990. Simply, we have 21,000 excess road deaths yearly now versus the top four nations.
Our pedestrian deaths — disproportionately people of color and the poor — jumped 45% from 2010 to 2020. Vermont excess preventable deaths amount, pro rata, to about 35 deaths, along with an even greater number of excess serious injuries.
Safety numbers for the U.S. went south during Covid in 2020 (more deaths, 12% fewer miles of driving) and “first nine months of 2021, a 12% surge that marks the largest increase of fatalities since reporting began nearly a half century ago” (Wall Street Journal, Feb. 1).
The one visible safety investment, proven for all modes, is the modern roundabout, which cuts serious/fatal injuries about 90%. There are 16 in Vermont, but in the most populous county, Chittenden County, the first roundabout on a public street will finally be up and running this summer in Burlington. Burlington hosts 20 high-crash intersections listed by VTrans, 18% of the 111 in Vermont. Conversion of high-crash Vermont intersections, mostly signalized, to roundabouts have for years been a priority for advocates like AARP, AAA, and insurance companies like GEICO.
Get ready to knock down the 25 mph state law minimum speed limit! That limit has been as solid as granite in Barre but must be reduced. Even Quebec allows 30 kmh (18 mph) on residential streets.
Pedestrian safety is tied to speeds, and that alone should mean mostly 20 mph limits (enforced!) on all residential streets and downtown/residential areas in Middlebury, Burlington, Montpelier, St. Johnsbury, etc. — making them truly walkable for the first time.
Manchester Center, with its three-roundabout corridor Main Street, is the only walkable street, arguably, in Vermont, along with Burlington’s pedestrian-only Church Street Marketplace.
Our Vermont transportation construction program always — like many small states — depends on federal funds and already there are federal statutes from several years ago requiring a reduction in serious injury rates when we spend these funds. Expect direct pressure by the Federal Highway Administration to demand Vermont give greater attention to safety, climate and pedestrian safety investments.
As the Burlington Transportation Plan says, simple safety is “critical” in street investments. Safety first now becomes safety first for real!
