CLEVELAND — Vision Zero Cleveland is hosting a virtual community engagement event to review updates on Cleveland's Vision Zero Action Plan to eliminate serious injuries and deaths on Cleveland roads.
In partnership with local agencies and community groups, Vision Zero Cleveland is guided by a taskforce, which meets every six weeks. Their goal is to come up with an action plan to help eliminate serious injuries and deaths from crashes on the city's roads.
Cleveland has had 242 traffic fatalities between 2016 and 2020, according to the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT). Director of the Cleveland Planning Commission, Joyce Huang, tells News 5 there were 74 fatalities last year.
“An average of one person is killed or seriously injured and daily in Cleveland since the beginning of this year, 2022, seven people have died because of traffic crashes,” Huang said. “This is just simply unacceptable. This is this is not something we can accept as a city for a reason why someone is seriously injured or killed.”
It's why the city launched Vision Zero Cleveland.
“Getting down to zero serious injuries is going to involve a lot of changes. It's got to be a systems wide change. It can't just be fixing one little thing here, one little thing there,” Huang said.
Huang says the group plans on layering multiple types of interventions like slowing speed limits or creating more buffers between pedestrians and bicyclists from drivers.
“There are going to be certain roadways where there are higher incidence of crashes, whether it's, you know, damage to property or serious injuries or deaths. What we'll do is basically use a pop-up method to begin to test various methods on the street. Oftentimes, with a simple design change to the roadway that can often eliminate the feel and the need to speed.”
But Vision Zero team is also getting help from the community to decide what exactly should be done.
“We've done a few rounds of community engagement,” Huang said. “These community engagement efforts were held in various neighborhoods across the city, including Detroit Shoreway and Union Miles, the Stockyards neighborhood and Midtown and Hough.”
Mayor Justin Bibb will open Wednesday’s virtual community engagement. The event is from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. To register online, click here.
