Request for Committee Action

2022-01047: Draft 2023-2025 Minneapolis Vision Zero Action Plan
2022-01046: 2022 Vision Zero Crash Study
2019-01348: 2020-2022 Minneapolis Vision Zero Action Plan
2017-01141 - Vision Zero Policy

The City of Minneapolis adopted the Vision Zero Resolution in 2017, which sets a goal of eliminating traffic deaths and severe injuries on City streets by 2027. The City Council adopted the 2020-2022 Vision Zero Action Plan to prioritize steps to improve traffic safety. This updated Vision Zero Action Plan builds on that plan and prioritizes work for 2023 to 2025.

The 2023-2025 Vision Zero Action Plan was developed by City staff across multiple departments and overseen by the Vision Zero Task Force, which is comprised of department leaders across the enterprise. The plan uses information in the 2022 Vision Zero Crash Study to inform priority actions.

Collaboration across department, agency, and community partners is essential to achieving Vision Zero. To reduce traffic deaths and severe injuries, the Vision Zero Action Plan addresses four systems:

• Safe Streets: using street design, infrastructure, and operations to improve traffic safety;
• Safe People: supporting and encouraging safe human behavior;
• Safe Vehicles: regulating and maintaining safe vehicle fleets; and
• Safety Data: supporting a data-driven approach to Vision Zero and ensuring accountability for progress towards goals.

The Vision Zero Action Plan includes 17 strategies and 78 actions to be implemented between 2023 and 2025. These strategies and actions build off the previous efforts outlined in the 2020-2022 Vision Zero Action Plan. A summary of progress on actions in the 2020-2022 Vision Zero Action Plan is available here.

This plan is also informed by extensive engagement on the Transportation Action Plan, engagement on the original Vision Zero Action Plan, feedback from the 2022 Vision Zero survey, and feedback on recent street projects and street safety projects. While there are many different—and sometimes competing—perspectives, we have heard several themes through our engagement:

• strong support for improving traffic safety, especially for people with disabilities and people walking, rolling, or biking;
• increasing concern about aggressive driving and speeding;
• a desire for the City to rapidly improve street safety; and
• hope that the City can equitably improve traffic enforcement.

This plan was released in draft form in November 2022. A one-month public comment period was held that included an online open house on December 1, 2022. The City received 170 comments on the draft plan. Comments addressed a wide range of topics in the plan. Themes from the comments include:

• Overall, there were more comments in support than opposition on each key strategy in the draft plan and the plan overall.
• The speed safety camera pilot action received the most comments. More people commented in support of the idea than in opposition, although there was more opposition than other key actions in the draft plan. Supporters commonly said they thought it would improve safety. Opponents most commonly expressed concerns over increased surveillance or thinking it is unconstitutional. Some supporters said they wanted to see red light cameras as well.
• While there was overall strong support for making safety improvements on High Injury Streets, quite a few commenters want more treatments in concrete rather than plastic bollards or are concerned around maintenance or attractiveness of the bollards.
• There was also strong overall support of street designs to reduce dangerous vehicle speeds. Many supporters wanted us to move faster while opponents thought it would not help or the measures are making it too hard to drive.
• There was very strong support for evaluating alternative approaches to staffing and implementing traffic enforcement with more than three times as many people commenting in support than opposition.

Changes between the draft and final Vision Zero Action Plan include:

• Broadening focus on a speed safety camera pilot to a traffic safety camera pilot that could include speed safety cameras and/or red light cameras depending on legislative action and future local engagement (Safe People Strategy 3).
• Adding four additional evaluation actions related to maintenance, relative effectiveness, and attractiveness of quick-build plastic bollard treatments (Safe Streets actions 2.8, 2.9, 2.10, and 9.3).
• Updating equity-related data points to reflect Transportation Equity Priority areas identified in the recently adopted Racial Equity Framework for Transportation.
• Adding an action to support legislative changes that allow retroactively reinstating driver’s licenses suspended solely for financial reasons (Safe People action 1.4). This is in line with the City’s existing legislative priorities.
• Adding an action to support facilitating access to driver’s licenses for residents who are now eligible after 2023 state law change (Safe People action 1.5).
• Adding an action to consider communications and other traffic safety needs related to the potential future legalization of recreational marijuana (Safe People action 2.4). 
• Adding an action to work to create a victim-centered restorative justice option for cases where charges are being considered in traffic crashes where there has been a severe injury or death to a pedestrian or bicyclist (Safe People action 4.5).
• Adding an action to coordinate an internal fatal crash review committee across relevant City departments (Safety Data action 1.4).