“There’s not sufficient cash.”
How typically has this excuse deflated your group’s calls to repair streets which might be bodily threatening — generally even lethal — for a mother pushing her little one in a stroller, a child biking to soccer follow, or a late-night employee strolling to the bus cease?
With roadway deaths at a historic high, it’s time to cease accepting excuses — and begin working from the information that every one highway deaths are preventable.
Let’s begin as we speak by taking advantage of Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A), a brand new U.S. Division of Transportation grant program providing $1 billion yearly over 5 years for significant, community-led Imaginative and prescient Zero tasks that assist assure secure mobility for all.
The Fundamentals on SS4A:
- What’s obtainable?: $400 million (40 p.c) every year to fund Imaginative and prescient Zero planning efforts and $600 million (60 p.c ) to implement Imaginative and prescient Zero tasks.
- Who can apply?: Public companies on the native, regional and tribal ranges can apply straight. Group teams might be companions and might be compensated for his or her work, and partnerships amongst companies are inspired.
- When?: The deadline for proposals is September 15. The final date for questions on this system is August 15 (additionally a really helpful deadline to make sure your group is about with a required unique identifier).
- How?: It is a mercifully streamlined software course of, so don’t be daunted! Whereas a 20 p.c match is required, there are artistic methods to satisfy that requirement. (See the “What sort of funds could make up the native match?” part on this page.)
The SS4A program acknowledges that we want a brand new method to roadway security by funding pressing and often-overlooked priorities, together with:
- Enhancing the security and growing the variety of individuals strolling, biking, using transit, and micro-mobility customers;
- Investing within the safety of underserved communities, particularly traditionally deprived communities and Tribal lands;
- Managing speeds for safety, together with self-enforcing roadway designs and decrease speeds the place motorists combine with individuals strolling and biking;
- Designing Complete Streets that serve all highway customers, notably these exterior motor automobiles who’re most in danger; and
- Pivoting to a Safe System approach and evolving past “the traditional E’s” (Schooling, Enforcement, and Engineering).
Tips on how to Leverage This Funding for Change
There are two overarching classes of spending which might be eligible for SS4A funding: Planning Grants and Implementation Grants. Supplemental exercise grants can be used to enhance these efforts.
Right here’s how communities can profit from these alternatives:
- Develop a powerful and equitable Imaginative and prescient Zero Motion Plan
In case you don’t have one but, now’s the time to create a stable Imaginative and prescient Zero Motion Plan. Any group – small or massive, rural or city – can get started on Vision Zero today. (Examine to see in case your present plan meets U.S.DOT criteria, which is required for Implementation proposals, which we’ll discuss later.)
A strong Action Plan might help your group institutionalize Imaginative and prescient Zero, setting express timelines, deliverables, and accountability measures. And it needs to be constructed on the muse of a Safe System approach, specializing in Full Streets and decrease speeds, and not over-emphasizing enforcement measures that result in inequitable impacts in racially and socially marginalized communities, or schooling campaigns that tilt toward victim-blaming.
There are lots of examples of how local, state, and federal entities are incorporating the Secure System method into their planning and general roadway security work.
What chances are you’ll not understand: Feasibility research utilizing quick-build strategies that inform future tasks are eligible for each Motion Plan Grants and Implementation Grants as supplemental actions—so your group can check promising, on-the-ground measures whereas additionally planning for extra everlasting or widespread modifications.
2. Suppose Large, Daring & System-Vast for Implementation Initiatives
For communities that have already got sturdy Imaginative and prescient Zero Motion plans that meet U.S. DOT’s standards, Secure Streets For All is a superb alternative to place implementation {dollars} to work, together with:
- Remodeling Excessive-Harm Community corridors into Full Streets by designating secure areas for individuals strolling and biking;
- Creating and implementing pace administration plans;
- Creating secure routes to highschool and to public transit;
Different infrastructure-boosting efforts; listed below are a number of examples:
We encourage SS4A candidates to make use of this chance to shift past reactive responses to enact proactive security practices, together with figuring out patterns of extreme crashes, then implementing widespread, high-impact, cost-effective design remedies (and doing so extra rapidly than traditional). Examples embody Detroit’s installation of thousands of speed humps; Austin’s Pedestrian crossing improvement program; NYC’s left-turn traffic calming analysis; and transformative tasks in rural communities.
What chances are you’ll not understand: Implementation Grants may also include funding for supplemental planning actions in assist of an current Motion Plan. So go large, and suppose system-wide to deal with widespread impacts — not simply at a single location.
3) Deepen Supplemental Planning Efforts for Efficacy & Fairness
Each Planning and Implementation grants can embody funding for supplemental planning activities, which might bolster an current security plan or deliver the group’s work into stronger alignment with Vision Zero principles.
Critically, these (and all SS4A) funds needs to be prioritized to handle questions of safety in low-income neighborhoods and in Black and Brown communities. Among the methods supplemental planning grants can be utilized embody:
- Creating racial and well being fairness plans for roadway security work, which might embody extra absolutely partaking with – and compensating – group members who deliver important lived experiences and cultural understanding to the desk. (Denver and other cities have already experimented with this method.)
- Piloting a restorative justice approach to emphasize accountability amongst harmful drivers with out over-criminalization, and testing revolutionary schooling and enforcement efforts that evolve past inequitable fines and charges programs.
- Partnering with native Trauma Facilities on crash harm information assortment and evaluation to higher characterize what’s occurring on the bottom — one thing S.F., Chicago & New York City are already attempting.
- Investing in upstream schooling of elected officers and media round Secure System rules; and creating proactive communications methods, resembling inner messaging guides, and coaching group members to change into “solutions storytellers.”
- Partnering with – and funding – public well being professionals to assist institutionalize racial and well being fairness priorities in transportation efforts. (Examples from Chicago, NYC & SF)
Whether or not you’re a group advocate or a public company staffer, the SS4A grant program presents a major alternative to create on-the-ground enhancements and chip away at the established order that has compromised security for too lengthy.
No extra excuses.
Try more ideas about the way to finest benefit from this chance, and be part of Imaginative and prescient Zero Community and the Nationwide League of Cities for 2 deep-dive discussions on SS4A on August 11 (planning) and August 15 (implementation). Register here.
Melissa Balmer is the Founding father of PedalLove.org. Her workbook “The Hero’s Journey Starter Equipment” Recreation-changing communications abilities for energetic transit, shared mobility, secure streets & local weather advocates will likely be obtainable to obtain this September. Leah Shahum is the Founder and Director of the Imaginative and prescient Zero Community, bringing 20 years of confirmed success championing actions to advance secure, wholesome, energetic transportation.
