San Jose Safe Streets Campaign — Latest Status, and How You Can Help
Limin Cao, hit and killed by a driver on Blossom Hill Road in San Jose, while in a crosswalk with daughter and dog. (Photo from San Francisco Examiner.)
When the San Jose City Council unanimously adopted the Mayor’s budget message, it marked another milestone in one of Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition’s big initiatives – to improve street safety in San Jose by dramatically increasing the budget for the most important safety improvements. For those who love getting into the weeds of policy and government processes, especially on such exciting topics as city budgets, this blog post is for you.
But first, it’s important to acknowledge that San Jose roads claimed the life of another human late last month. Limin Cao was hit and killed by a driver while crossing the street with her daughter and dog. Her daughter, 11, was hospitalized, and the dog died. The crash took place near Leigh Avenue and Blossom Hill Road, marking the City’s fifth fatal collision for a total of six traffic deaths so far for 2023.
Of note is that three of those crashes took place on Blossom Hill Road. And, in January, a few blocks away in neighboring Los Gatos, a crash resulted in the death of a Palo Alto student.
This makes Blossom Hill Road the site of four crashes resulting in five fatalities — in just the first three months of 2023.
We must not let 2023 follow in the footsteps of 2022. That year, San Jose had a record number of traffic deaths – 65 – almost double the number of homicides.
Status of the campaign
So where are we in the budget campaign to make our streets more safe? As described in the previous blog post here, SVBC was a member of the Mayor’s transition committee on community safety. As a part of that committee, we helped ensure that recommendations were included to fund the Vision Zero Action Plan and related measures.
At the first City Council session, discussing the transition committee recommendations, about a dozen of you wrote to your councilmembers. Thank you! It had an impact, as almost every single councilmember mentioned street safety.
One of the big takeaways from that session was a desire from the Council to fully understand what it means to fund Vision Zero. What measures, truly, can the City fund that will reduce the number of crashes on our streets.
The Mayor considered the recommendations by each of the transition committees as well as the Council discussion and came out with his budget message, which you can read here. Street safety is a small blip in a 34 page document that, overall, emphasizes the City-wide need to hire and retain good staff.
The recommendations pertaining to traffic safety are on page 11 and include:
Funding for quick build projects aligned with the Vision Zero Action Plan
A pedestrian safety program
Accelerating the existing Safe Routes to Schools (SRTS) program
Expanding staff capacity of the City to implement the Vision Zero Action Plan
And a reminder to councilmembers that they can request funds from the Essential Services pot of funds for items specific to their district
The budget message was then discussed at the March 21 City Council meeting. At that time, the only councilmember who commented on Vision Zero was the Chair of the Vision Zero Task Force, Councilmember Pam Foley. In her comments she reiterated the importance of street safety. She also noted that even with a budget allocation to fully fund the VZ Action Plan, the City does not currently have the staff required to do the work.
In the end, the Mayor’s budget message was adopted. Now, the City Manager’s Office will take the direction of the Council as outlined in the budget message and translate it into a budget to be adopted in June. Between now and then, there will be a lot of analysis of costs along with many community meetings and opportunities for you, the people, to provide input into the process.
Overall, our read of the traffic-related aspects of the budget message is that they leave lots of room for interpretation. Thisn could be good or bad. For example, “quickbuild projects aligned with the Vision Zero Action Plan” leaves the door open for which projects, how many, and at what cost. We also suspect that the reference to accelerate the existing Safe Routes to Schools program is a follow on to previous Council direction, which is in development after a survey of school needs. As a side note, with regard to the language about the Essential Services funds, when there’s an entire road, such as Blossom Hill, responsible for four crashes in three months, securing $100k for a stop sign in one intersection will not result in meaningful change.
What’s needed
In the lead up to the release of the budget message, here’s what SVBC detailed to the Chair and Vice Chair of the Vision Zero Task Force, Councilmembers Foley and Bien Doan. In that letter, we got specific about what exactly the City should do in the context of the budget. The relevant section is below:
Excerpt from letter
Priority Safety Corridor Completion: All 17 of the City’s priority safety corridors would be fixed and done so by 2025.
Staff Capacity: The City has a high quality Department of Transportation staff, public servants who are deeply committed to the safety of San Jose residents on our roads. However, they are too few in number. The Department needs additional staff for roles like:
New positions to oversee project delivery
A position for data and analytics
Additional staff support to write grants and secure federal, state and regional dollars
Staff capacity to serve as a rapid responder when a fatality or major injury occurs in order to quickly assess, from a design perspective, the needed fixes of an area immediately after a fatality
Lighting/Visibility: Over 70% of the City’s fatalities occurred during hours of the day and in locations where it was dark. Simple solutions such as better lighting should be implemented now. As an example, at the underpass of 87 and Curtner where Kyle LaBlanc was killed, the lightbulbs were burned out. Perhaps if there had been better lighting, he would not have been hit and killed by a tow truck driver.
Quickbuild/Pilots: We cannot wait. We must build these projects now with the intent to, over the long term, transition today’s quick paint and plastic solutions, to more permanent and attractive designs.
Community Engagement: The City could be more efficient and proactive about engaging the community in advance of project construction in order to speed up project delivery. As an example, with funding from the Knight Foundation and the Energy Foundation, SVBC has played a role in getting out into the community in advance of projects in order to facilitate and ease this aspect of the City’s process. Long term, models such as San Jose’s former Strong Neighborhoods Initiative should be revisited as a way of building even more trust and authentic relationships with community so that needed city transformations are welcomed.
End of excerpt
How you can help
In the end, the numbers won’t lie. Will the measures the City adopts this year result in safer streets? Will they result in you and I feeling more safe riding our bike or allowing kids to walk to school?
Let’s not leave it to chance. Here’s how you can help.
Petition: Sign the Vision Zero Petition here and encourage others to do that same. We will contact you as the campaign continues when there are critical decision points and calls to action.
Community Meetings: Attend community meetings held by the Mayor and your council representative to raise your voice. Almost always at these meetings there are opportunities to ask questions. You can find out when those meetings take place by signing up for your councilmember’s newsletter. Councilmembers also have office hours at coffee shops. Show up and ask about bike infrastructure and safe streets.
Email: Send your councilmember an email telling them why it’s important to fund safe streets. Tell your bikey friends to do the same.
Between now and when the budget is adopted in June, there will be many opportunities to make your voice heard. Stay tuned. Pay attention to these bulletins. Get involved with your SVBC San Jose Local Team. We’ll do our best to let you know when to show up, when to write, and how to have an impact on the budget process.
The City has many challenges and competing interests. Unless we, collectively, let our city representatives know how important this issue is, our city streets will continue to be one of the most dangerous places to be for all of us who are simply trying to get from Points A to B.
