“Spending on safety isn’t making Seattle streets less hazardous”
This unequivocal headline in the Seattle Times is completely false. The op-ed it is attached to uses a very misleading analysis of available data to draw the unsupported conclusion that safe streets projects actually make Seattle more dangerous, not less. In fact, the author argues without a shred of evidence, safety would improve if the city instead focused on reducing car congestion.
The most obvious and glaring issue that supersedes all the others in this piece is that the vast majority of Seattle’s traffic deaths an injuries are happening on wide multi-lane streets where Seattle has not yet invested in a significant safety project. It is disingenuous at best to say that “spending on safety isn’t making Seattle streets less hazardous” when the city has not spent money on safety for the streets with the majority of hazards. 80% of Seattle’s pedestrian deaths occur on streets with multiple lanes traveling in the same direction, and when SDOT does carry out Vision Zero corridor projects on such streets they consistently reduce and often nearly eliminate injuries and deaths. The problem is that that the city has a huge backlog of dangerous streets to improve, and leaders have lacked the political will to make changes on the biggest problem streets like the persistent list-topping dangerous streets Aurora, Rainier Ave, MLK Way, Lake City Way, 4th Ave S as well as a long list of other persistent problem streets like 5th Ave downtown, SW Roxbury Street, Fauntleroy Way, SW Sylvan Way, Michigan Street in Georgetown, 1st Ave in downtown through to Georgetown, Holman Road, Northgate Way, NE 50th Street, N 85th Street, Jackson Street, and on and on…