The San Diego City Council is preparing to update city policies around crosswalks, stop signs and other traffic safety measures to make them easier and faster to implement.
The council on Monday unanimously adopted a resolution declaring safety is the city's top priority when it comes to transportation. The resolution also directed the Office of the Independent Budget Analyst to prepare a report with options for how to better instill safety into the highly technical policies that govern traffic engineering.
The vote came after several residents complained of the difficulty convincing city traffic engineers that safety improvements are needed in their neighborhoods. San Diego's policies for when to implement traffic calming measures are complex and require extensive data collection, analysis and community outreach.
This is San Diego's official process for traffic calming. In case you're wondering why it rarely happens. https://t.co/VQbSrnaO5r pic.twitter.com/OwBoGWxBva
— Andrew Bowen (he/him) (@acbowen) July 10, 2024
Council President Sean Elo-Rivera, who presented the resolution with councilmember Stephen Whitburn, said the process needs to be simplified.
"When I hear from community members that they can't get a traffic safety measure implemented on their street because it does not satisfy some specific scoring criteria, it bothers me," Elo-Rivera said. "It bothers me because it's a resident of my district who simply wants to feel safer living in their neighborhood and they are running into barriers."
The council's resolution comes less than four months before San Diego's self-imposed deadline of ending all traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2025. Despite the city's efforts installing more bike lanes and crosswalks, traffic deaths were higher last year than when the goal was adopted in 2015.
"Over the weekend, the husband of one of our city employees was seriously injured while biking with their one-year-old child when they were doored by a car illegally parked in a bike lane," Whitburn said. "We just have to do more to make our streets safer."
Earlier this year, Whitburn asked city staffers to make an exception to their official policy and install stop signs at an intersection in North Park where a pedestrian was struck and killed last year. The exception was required because despite the man's death, city traffic engineers determined stop signs were not warranted.
The exception was ultimately granted and stop signs were installed earlier this year.
