City of Thornton works to adopt "Vision Zero" plan amid increasing crashes

The city of Thornton is taking on its own version of a growing trend in addressing increasing crashes on the road.

"I think the problem is there's just too many cars," said Mark Hoops. "The roads are too thin, and everyone is in a rush."

Hoops is among residents in Adams County who say they have seen an increase in crashes over the years.

Between 2017 and 2021, there were 39 fatal crashes in the city of Thornton and 228 serious injury crashes.

"Over the past few years, we've seen an increase and a lot of people will try to attribute that to possibly the open and free roadways that we had as a result of COVID and people not readjusting back to driving with other people on the roadway," said Darrell Alston, traffic engineer for the city of Thornton.

Since January 2024, Alston and the city of Thornton have been getting the wheels turning on creating a vision zero action plan to reduce all transportation crashes in their community. Right now, the city averages about 2,000 crashes each year.

"We're in the process of collecting a lot of data and citizen input. In terms of data, we're reviewing the crash history for the Thornton city, sort of focus in and create a high injury network in which we can look at where are fatal and serious injury crashes are occurring and what does that impact or relation to the density to our roadways," said Alston.

The plan also involves getting feedback from the public on what issues they say they're seeing on the roads.

"More police on the street could be great," said Hoops.

"The data tells us everything. It tells us numbers, but it doesn't give us the human perspective," said Alston. "So, we need that to be able to develop an effective action plan."

However, Vision Zero plans have not proven as effective in the past, like Denver seeing an increase in fatal crashes following the their initial plan in 2017.

"I think it's, it's unfortunate and a tragedy that in our region alone we've experienced on the order of about 300 fatalities on our transportation system a year and it's only getting worse," said Ron Papsdorf, transportation planning and operations division director for the Denver Regional Council of Governments.

DRCOG have created its own Vision Zero master plan, and is still supportive of cities taking on the Vision Zero approach, saying it takes both government and resident commitment to make it succeed.

"Do we need to make changes on our enforcement side? Do we need to make changes on the way we design our roadways so that as we build in the future and we're taking into account the vulnerable road user more effectively and we can lay out and design roadways," said Alston.

Residents also say the public's willingness to change their mindset about how they conduct themselves on the road that will help change the statistics.

"People not being in a rush, people not slowing down. People taking care of each other," said Hoops.

The city's traffic engineer says they hope to have a final draft of its action plan by late fall and beginning working towards grant funding to support any infrastructure needs to address crashes more effectively.