In the six full years since the city committed to Vision Zero, more than 400 people have died in traffic, and there’ve been more than 2,000 crashes causing serious injuries.
By Nathaniel Minor, Denverite
Michael Hancock was on a bicycle in downtown San Francisco.
It was a warm, sunny day in the summer of 2015. The Denver mayor and dozens of other local officials and business leaders were on an “urban exploration” trip, looking for ideas they could bring back to their city.
“It was a good ride,” Hancock said, remembering bike-specific infrastructure like traffic signals that made it feel more comfortable.
San Francisco had been on a tear expanding bicycle lanes, and just the year before, became one of the first U.S. cities to adopt the “Vision Zero” goal of eliminating traffic deaths and serious injuries primarily through redesigning city streets. It was likely on this trip, Hancock said, that he first learned about Vision Zero — and he thought it made a lot of sense.
“That’s why I said, ‘you know what? That’s the vision. Let’s establish that as the goal, and let’s build our form and function around achieving that goal,’” Hancock said in an interview at his office last month.
Hancock’s transportation planning staff was ready to meet the moment. A handful had already been pushing Vision Zero and multimodal transportation plans internally, albeit with little success.
Read the full story at Denverite