Road Safety in New York City After Vision Zero for Different Land Use Contexts

Over the past decade, more than 45 cities have committed to Vision Zero in the United States. New York City is one of them that has made good progress in reducing car occupant fatalities but struggled to achieve similar declines in pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities. This study assesses road safety performance based on land use context at the census tract level. The authors use the combined density of population and jobs to categorize NYC census tracts and compare fatalities and fatality risk for different classes of road users in each group. Using aggregate crash data for 2004-2008 and 2014-2018, the authors track the changes before and after launch of Vision Zero in 2014. The authors identify a large and growing discrepancy in fatality rates between pedestrians, bicyclists, and car occupants at places with different land use features. Surprisingly, the low density group has the largest number of pedestrian fatalities compared to other density groups in 2014-2018. This is unexpected since low density areas are places where one would not expect to see large numbers of pedestrians. Fatalities per 1,000 road users and fatality risk for pedestrians and bicyclists decreased with the density of the land use. There were very little or no declines in pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities from before to after Vision Zero, expect in the highest density areas. It suggests the need for cities to better understand the relationship between land use context and traffic safety and to implement context appropriate strategies to effectively address traffic fatality issue.

• Record URL:
  https://annualmeeting.mytrb.org/OnlineProgram/Details/19155
• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ACS10 Standing Committee on Transportation Safety Management Systems.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  ,    
• Authors:
  • Shi, Ge
  • Song, Yu
  • Atkinson-Palombo, Carol
  • Garrick, Norman
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 102nd Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2023-1-8 to 2023-1-12
• Date: 2023

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; Maps; References;
• Pagination: 20p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Crash data; Cyclists; Fatalities; Highway safety; Land use; Pedestrians
• Identifier Terms: Vision Zero
• Geographic Terms: New York (New York)
• Subject Areas: Highways; Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01874552
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: TRBAM-23-04731
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 24 2023 9:05AM