Opinion: San Jose must prioritize making its streets and roads safer
On March 26, Limin Cao was killed by a driver in a hit-and-run collision while walking with her daughter and dog across Blossom Hill Road at Leigh Avenue. The tragedy of Cao’s death has reverberated throughout the community, with family, friends and neighbors rightfully calling for action. Unfortunately, this is an occurrence that I have become all too familiar with. At every meeting of the Vision Zero Task Force, I read the names of the individuals who lost their lives to traffic violence since our last meeting, a somber reminder of the importance of making our streets safe.
San José has a traffic safety problem. Last year was one of the deadliest years on record for our city, with 65 fatalities on our streets. Since adopting our Vision Zero Action Plan in January 2020, which aims to eliminate all traffic fatalities, we have had 180 traffic fatalities. These aren’t just data points. These are our neighbors, people who had friends and family. These losses leave holes in our community that cannot be filled.
This problem is deeply troubling, urgent and almost entirely preventable. We know from the data that speeding is the No. 1 cause of roadway fatalities. The risk of a pedestrian being killed in a collision is 10% if hit by a vehicle traveling at 20 mph. It jumps to 50% at 30 mph and 90% at 40 mph. To make the problem worse, most of the major streets in San Jose are designed to facilitate fast automobile speeds that are not conducive to safe streets. People, especially the safety of people, need to be prioritized over traffic flow.
We know the solution to this problem. Enforcement of our traffic laws is one element, along with education and outreach on the importance of driving safely. However, changing the design of our streets through physical infrastructure is the only way to create lasting change. We know that human error will always be present, and so we need to design our streets so that an error that results in a collision doesn’t turn into a fatality.
Our Department of Transportation has done a great job at working to improve safety on our streets. They have adopted an innovative approach called quick build that allows them to deploy safety infrastructure quickly and cheaply. However, our staff need more resources to not only deploy more life-saving quick build projects but also to build permanent safety infrastructure.
Since adopting a Vision Zero commitment in 2015, the city has yet to commit meaningful resources to Vision Zero through our budget, instead relying on grant funding, an approach that thus far has been inadequate. Infrastructure improvements are expensive, and we do need grant funding to deploy these improvements. But we also need more staff to apply for these grants so we aren’t leaving money on the table. Furthermore, we need staff capacity to oversee delivery of these needed projects. This needs to be funded through our budget.
As we work through this year’s budget process, the lives and safety of our residents must be a top priority. The resources that we put toward our Vision Zero efforts should be commensurate with the problem that we face. Mayor Matt Mahan has emphasized in his budget that we need to get “back to basics” and focus on core city services. I could not agree more. What could be more basic than ensuring that a mother and her daughter don’t have to fear for their lives when they cross the street?
Pam Foley represents District 9 on the San Jose City Council.