Roadway leaders to aim for zero deaths

Texas transportation officials are poised Thursday to set a goal of reducing roadway deaths in Texas by half by 2035, and to zero by 2050.

How they will achieve it, however, is what officials will spend the next few years deciding, as they work to stem roadway crashes along the nation’s deadliest highway system.

The Texas Transportation Commission at its Thursday meeting will discuss a minute order — a directive to the Texas Department of Transportation — to require transportation officials to work toward and develop strategies for reducing Texas’ roughly 3,900 annual roadway deaths to around 1,950 by 2035, and zero by 2050.

Advocates acknowledge that achieving zero deaths likely is unobtainable, but say that setting such a goal sends the message that no death is acceptable.

“The commission acknowledges a majority of motor vehicle crashes can be prevented, thereby reducing fatalities,” the order states.

Advocates for safer streets cheered the anticipated commitment. Items brought before the transportation commission rarely are voted down.

“Texas leads the nation in traffic deaths and serious injuries, and we can lead the nation in eliminating traffic deaths and serious injuries,” said Jay Blazek Crossley, executive director of Farm & City, a planning-related nonprofit that advocates for safer streets and more investment in transit and bicycling.

The order would lead to TxDOT’s 27 districts, of which Houston is the largest by population, developing and implementing strategies. The order does not set a mandate, but rather a goal that the agency address the problem and focus on meeting the goal.

Officials consider roadway safety a matter of what often is referred to as the “three E’s” — engineering, enforcement and education. TxDOT, which for years has said designs should minimize risk by giving drivers more room and straighter roads, has reconsidered some that idea as it has led to increased speeds on some streets. Locally, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez has called on local law enforcement to refocus police resources in an effort to reduce fatalities.

The state and the Houston region already have highway safety plans, so it is unclear what further study will demand, or how those efforts will filter to planned transportation projects.

“Every city, county, metropolitan planning organization, and the state itself need a Vision Zero Action Plan to end traffic deaths and serious injuries,” Crossley said.

Vision Zero Texas, a group founded to encourage a state goal of zero deaths, has a goal of 10 city, county or regional Vision Zero plans by the end of the year.

Regardless of the challenge or likelihood Texas ever has zero deaths, the state’s commitment to such a goal is unprecedented. As other states and cities set Vision Zero goals, Texas officials demurred, saying they preferred staggered targets based on projected population growth that were more attainable.

To reverse the trend of fatalities from car crashes would take serious effort, especially as the state grows. Based on the current population and travel trends, researchers at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute in 2017 predicted 4,300 fatalities by 2022.

Roadway crashes are so common in Texas, which leads the nation in fatalities, that there has been a death on state roads every day since Nov. 7, 2000.

Houston, meanwhile, has by many measures become the most dangerous major U.S. city for roadway deaths, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis last year.

While no one has achieved zero fatalities, many U.S. cities and states have set the aggressive goal, and turned their trends around. New York City, which added bike lane projects and slowed city streets, reported the fewest number of pedestrian roadway fatalities in the city’s history in 2017. Los Angeles and Chicago have slowed streets or added bike facilities, though their reductions in serious injuries and deaths are unclear.

Meanwhile there are indications that building for more than just automobiles has potential to reduce serious crashes for all users. A new study that included analyzing safety in Houston has found installing protected bike lanes improves safety for all road users, not just cyclists.

Further, researchers at the University of Colorado-Denver and the University of New Mexico said the number of cyclists does not translate to safety, placing more emphasis on building safer streets to lure more cyclists.

“More bicyclists on the road is not as important as the infrastructure we build for them,” researchers wrote in their report, released Wednesday. “More specifically, our results suggest that improving bike infrastructure with more protected/separated bike facilities is significantly associated with fewer fatalities and better road safety outcomes.”

Houston was one of the cities studied and posted the least improvement in its fatality rate for bicyclists, falling 19.5 percent from the 1990s to the current decade, researchers found.

“You have improved, but you improved the least,” said Wes Marshall, co-author of the study and an engineering professor in Denver.

Chicago’s fatality rate fell 38.2 percent, while Seattle and Portland experienced drops of more than 60 percent.

Those cities heavily invested in protected bike lanes, something Houston has not as it focused on directing bicyclists to the bayou trail system rather than building protected on-street bike lanes. The only protected bike lane — and that’s debatable — is the Lamar bike lane through downtown.

Marshall called the Lamar lane “technically protected” noting the only thing separating it from vehicle traffic are the rubber humps, called armadillos. Often, vehicles — including city crews — park in the lane, forcing cyclists into the street along the one lane they have as their own.

When applied properly with clear protection such as a curb and plastic poles to separate the bike area from automobile traffic, the lanes not only correspond with fewer bicyclist injuries and fatalities, but fewer severe and fatal car and truck crashes.

“Protected/separated bike facilities significantly associated with better safety for all road users, so such infrastructure may have a traffic calming effect and facilitate safer speeds,” the authors said. dug.begley@chron.com