Vision Zero failing worse in LA

San Francisco's traffic death scorecard

From StreetsblogLA:

Two years ago today, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti signed his Vision Zero mayoral directive, setting the city on track to end all traffic deaths by 2025.

Unfortunately for Garcetti and the rest of L.A.’s residents, the results so far have trended badly. According to the Los Angeles Times, “in 2016, the first full year that Garcetti’s Vision Zero policy was in effect in L.A., 260 people were killed in traffic crashes on city streets, an increase of almost 43 percent over the previous year” and, at least as of April 2017, traffic deaths were running 22 percent higher than 2016.

Some critics are quick to blame L.A.’s Vision Zero programs for the unhealthy trend. Playa Del Rey road diet critics cite their own documentation showing a doubling of “accidents” since Vision Zero safety improvements were implemented. (If true, this would argue for more traffic calming, though that is not the conclusion they come to.)

The actual reasons for the alarming trend appears to have more to do with increased driving, low gas prices, a strong economy, and a lack of political will to take Vision Zero seriously. The program was barely funded for the first two years, until council leadership recently shepherded $27 million for the current fiscal year which just began on July 1. On top of the paucity of funding, several councilmembers have actively blocked safety improvements in their districts.

To mark the anniversary, the city Transportation Department (LADOT) put out a press release touting work accomplished so far...

Rob's comment:

If at first you don't succeed, double down on "traffic calming" and spending! San Francisco was more ambitious than LA, since City Hall only wanted to end all traffic deaths by 2024, not 2025. Neither goal is remotely plausible. 

According to the graph above, however, we're doing better than LA, though it's hard to detect any impact after the city's adoption of the Vision Zero slogan/policy, since, according to the Collisions Report (page 7) the city has averaged 30 traffic deaths a year for more than ten years.