The Road Ahead: Reflecting on a Decade of Vision Zero

By Colin Brown, Senior Transportation Planner

Introduction

As we commemorate the 10-year anniversary of New York City's Vision Zero initiative, the first of its kind in the United States, it's a moment for reflection and reevaluation. Over the past decade, the city has made significant strides in enhancing pedestrian safety, culminating in 2023 marking the safest year for pedestrians on record. However, amid these achievements, a sobering truth persists: our streets can still be fraught with risk, trailing behind global counterparts in terms of roadway safety.

The efforts of New York City to foster safer streets, particularly within the framework of Vision Zero, have been commendable. Significant progress has been made in the past two decades, evidenced by the reduction in traffic fatalities and injuries. While acknowledging these strides, it's crucial to recognize that achieving further progress toward the ultimate goal of zero fatalities on city streets will necessitate more substantial actions. These initiatives will require the enactment of heavier policy measures, regulatory adjustments, and substantial investments in infrastructure. Such endeavors require collaborative efforts involving both state and local legislation as well as increased funding allocation.

While our lens may be focused on the streets of New York City, the lessons learned are applicable to urban centers across the nation. Car crashes remain the leading cause of death among Americans under the age of 54, and pedestrian deaths in particular have skyrocketed in the United States in the past several years, counter to trends in other high-income countries. Broadly speaking, initiatives to address this threat can be grouped into design and policy interventions. On the policy side, it’s helpful to separate legislative efforts at the federal level from those at the state and city scale.

Design Interventions

At the heart of any comprehensive approach to urban safety lies the fundamental principle of safe street design. The notion that streets should be engineered not merely for the efficient flow of vehicular traffic but for the safety and well-being of all road users—especially the most vulnerable—is at the core of Vision Zero. From the road diet, which reallocates roadway space to prioritize pedestrians and cyclists, to the strategic implementation of daylighting, which enhances visibility at intersections, these design interventions have proven instrumental in calming traffic and preventing collisions.

Curb bump-outs, a simple yet remarkably effective tool, extend the sidewalk into the roadway, shortening crossing distances and providing refuge for pedestrians. School streets, temporary closures of streets adjacent to schools during peak arrival and dismissal times, create safer environments for students and caregivers alike. And protected bike lanes, separated from vehicular traffic by physical barriers, offers cyclists a sanctuary from the inherent danger of vehicles.

These and other traffic calming measures have, deservedly, received much attention in recent years as transportation agencies look to repair the harm inflicted by a half-century of car-centric development and disinvestment in critical public transit systems. However, while improved street design must continue to be pursued, cities will always face certain limiting factors in terms of costs, approval processes, and the speed of implementation of these measures.

Giving the constraining factors of design, the remainder of this article will focus on the often-overlooked policy initiatives that have the potential to significantly address street safety over shorter timelines and at greater scale. Although federal policy will likely ultimately be needed to induce the widespread change needed to address the threat of traffic violence, we’ll discuss why state and city initiatives may be the most productive place for policy makers to start.

Federal Policy Initiatives

The influence of federal policy cannot be overstated. At the national level, there exists a pressing need for comprehensive reforms that can drive progress on a scale commensurate with the magnitude of the challenge we face. The implementation of vehicle size regulations by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), for instance, could mitigate the dangers posed by oversized vehicles, which are disproportionately involved in fatal crashes. While European Union countries require vehicles to have safety ratings for their impact on those outside of cars, federal U.S. ratings only consider occupants within vehicles. This has contributed to the proverbial ‘arms race’ in which U.S. automakers continually increase the size of their vehicles—leading to disastrous results for the safety of pedestrians, especially children.

Similarly, closing loopholes in Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards—a critical component of the nation's efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions—could indirectly improve roadway safety by incentivizing the production of smaller, more maneuverable vehicles. Domestic automakers are, ultimately, capital ventures engineered to maximize profits and shareholder value—metrics by which company executives are measured. Without outside intervention, they will continue to shift production to larger, more profitable vehicles at the expense of the common good.

Moreover, the National Transportation Safety Board's (NTSB) recommendation for the widespread adoption of intelligent speed assistance (ISA) technology has the potential to revolutionize the way we approach speed management, saving countless lives in the process. This technology, which will be included in European Union vehicles starting this summer, is a logical continuation of safety assistance features already incorporated into vehicles. The challenge, at the federal level, will likely be advancing legislation that does not become mired in partisan political fights.

An important parallel effort that could have a tremendous upside for road safety—but which must be handled with nuance—is the growing popularity of e-bikes and other micromobility devices. There is increasing evidence that e-bikes, now outpacing sales of electric cars in the United States, are replacing a greater share of car trips. As with other measures that reduce the number of car trips in a given area, there is often a corresponding safety benefit—the caveat being that the availability of safe bike and micromobility infrastructure plays a large role in determining the scale of that benefit. To aid the shift towards smaller, lighter e-bikes, electeds have pushed for a federal e-bike rebate program, similar to those available for electric cars.

Local Policy Initiatives

In New York City, a number of local policy initiatives are poised to reshape the city's transportation landscape. Chief among these is the long-awaited implementation of congestion pricing—one that will be exhaustively studied in coming years and potentially serve as a model for other cities. The projected reduction in vehicles entering the busiest areas of Manhattan promises to have corresponding safety benefits for pedestrians and cyclists.

Sammy's Law, named in honor of a young boy tragically killed by a speeding driver, seeks to reduce the default speed limit on city streets to 20 mph—a move that could have profound implications for pedestrian safety, given the correlation between speed and severity of injuries in crashes. The initiative is, again, up for a vote this year in the state legislature, as New York State determines the citywide minimum speed limits and New York City sets limits within those parameters—a model of state influence over municipal policy that’s mirrored across the country.

An expanded network of speed and red-light cameras—currently only operating on streets adjacent to select school zones—offers a promising approach. Automated enforcement measures have proven largely effective in reducing speeding and, consequently, vehicle collisions on streets. While more research is needed, the fact that automated cameras only distribute fines when traffic laws have objectively been violated—and without the need for on-site police enforcement—could bolster safety, especially if they were to be expanded to streets with historically high crash rates.

Responding to recommendations from the NTSB at the federal level for greater automated speed regulation, New York City implemented a pilot in 2023 placing speed governors in select municipal vehicles. While limited in scope, this pilot could easily be expanded to additional City fleets. Similarly, the introduction of speed limiters for recidivist speeders—a measure currently under consideration by New York State lawmakers—could deter reckless driving behavior which, historically, has not been met with significant penalties.

In response to the growing size of U.S. vehicles over the past decade, a more targeted financial incentive program may provide the most realistic approach at the local scale. Vehicle registration, managed at the state level, could incorporate tiered systems by size and weight—levying higher registration fees on larger, more dangerous vehicles. Reducing the share of heavy vehicles in circulation would also reduce wear and tear on streets, saving taxpayer money on maintenance.

While federal legislation to enact an e-bike rebate program has stalled, states and cities have the opportunity to push forward their own measures—something places like Denver have already done with great success. In some senses, the local nature of e-bikes and micromobility—given their limited travel range—make this topic uniquely suited for action by municipalities. A growing list of cities have enacted their own e-bike rebates, often incorporating targeted funding for low-income individuals.

Conclusion: Accelerating Progress Through Local Action

The imperative for action on street safety has never been clearer. While the accomplishments of Vision Zero are commendable, and improved streetscape design is undoubtedly a cornerstone of any comprehensive approach to urban safety, more transformative policy approaches will be needed to further reduce traffic fatalities in a shorter period of time. By championing common sense measures at the local scale (many needing collaboration at the state level), cities like New York can serve as catalysts for change, inspiring a nationwide movement toward safer, more sustainable transportation systems.

On that point, it’s worth noting that policies aimed at improving safety on our streets have very rarely decreased in popular support after being enacted. While they may face initial opposition, arguments for reducing safety measures tend to fade away quickly after implementation. The thought of reverting to prior conditions often becomes unthinkable within the span of a few short years. Not only are these policies good governance—they are also good politics.

Our cities must take the opportunity to forge a new path forward—one where safety is not a privilege but a fundamental right. Building on recent successes, we have the opportunity to make Vision Zero a reality, but only if our elected leaders take decisive action to move forward the policies that have proven to have real impact.