Pittsburgh Mayor Gainey's budget seeks to eliminate traffic deaths with "Vision Zero"
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - In 2023, one in four deadly crashes involved a pedestrian.
Now, Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey and others are working to uphold a pledge to reduce traffic deaths and serious injuries for everyone who uses city streets to zero.
Mayor Gainey's budget for this year nearly doubled the investment in traffic safety capital projects and operations for "Vision Zero."
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The goal is to make the roads safer through several immediate actions.
It establishes an interdepartmental working group that will focus on eliminating severe injuries and deaths due to traffic crashes. It'll also form a deadly crash response group to act quickly when those types of crashes occur.
They hope they will solve the root cause and develop short and long-term solutions.
It also focuses on prioritizing effective, low-cost countermeasures in areas that will have the greatest impact on residents.
Lastly, the city will use data from the "high-injury network map" as a guide to prioritize their work.
Examples of the Vision Zero project include updates to the right of way, a traffic-calming program, and traffic signal projects.
While these are just a few of the early examples, the city said that much more is expected to come out of this project in the hopes to get traffic deaths down to zero.