The Department of Public Works has proposed a “quick-build” program deemed the Transportation Safety Team that could build in new safety features on city streets within months. Currently, safety projects stall in the department for years — sometimes decades — waiting for grant funding.
If the council OKs the proposal Tuesday night, the Department of Public Works would begin the hiring process immediately.
Public Works has not asked for any new funding, and the department plans to shift some existing city transportation funds to shorter-term projects. The new program would not replace corridor-wide projects, such as the largely grant-funded major improvements to Broadway that are underway.
“This a great first step,” Councilmember Caity Maple, who pushed for the program, said at a meeting in February. “We still have a lot of other work to do. ... We’re gonna continue to fight for that.”
The vast majority of serious crashes are preventable with changes to infrastructure. With that in mind, in 2017, the City Council made a “Vision Zero” pledge to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries by 2027. Many large-scale safety projects have been planned, and some, such as the parking-protected bike lanes throughout the city center, have been implemented. Since setting that ambitious Vision Zero goal, however, the City Council has not made significant changes to the way it funds road safety.
In the eight years that have followed the pledge, more than 300 people have died in vehicle crashes on city streets.
The Sacramento Bee reported on traffic collisions that killed 32 people on city streets in 2024. This year, at least four people have died in crashes in the California capital: Najah Islam , 30, who is survived by her toddler; Jonathon T. Slaugh , 62; Adrienne Keyana Johnson , 33; and Cornelius Jesse , 59.
These deaths have already laid bare patterns: The crashes that killed Slaugh and Johnson happened on the city’s “high-injury network” — those city streets where the highest numbers of severe and fatal crashes occurred. Jesse died just outside the official designated network, by the same Fruitridge Road intersection where James Lind , 54, died last June.
How Would New Program Improve Road Safety?
On Tuesday, the council will decide whether to allow the Department of Public Works to add six staffers for the Transportation Safety Team: a full-time supervising engineer, three engineers to work under that person, as well as a traffic investigator and an administrative analyst. The department is also requesting to direct $2 million of existing transportation funds toward the new program. They are not asking the city to allocate any new funds amid the budget crisis.Public Works has proposed suspending the standard competitive bidding process for construction — a key element that will speed up the process. Instead, the city would preemptively approve contractors based on the type of services they would provide, and would then call upon those contractors when the needs of the projects aligned with those services. Anything that exceeds $250,000 would still go before the council for approval.
Most of the projects would be very targeted and low-cost; these would not necessarily be constrained by existing infrastructure plans.
In addition, one to three of the team’s projects each year would be interim projects on major corridors that are meant to bridge the gap while neighborhoods wait for a larger planned project to be finished. The city has made similar, relatively small-scale and temporary interventions before, including the lane reductions and plastic barriers installed at the intersection of Broadway and Martin Luther King Jr . Boulevard after multiple people crashed into a building on the southeast corner.
Isaac Gonzalez , vice chair of the city’s Active Transportation Commission and the founder of Slow Down Sacramento, said at a meeting last month that the Transportation Safety Team “represents what I believe could be a fundamental shift in how Sacramento approaches infrastructure improvements.”
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