The City of Arlington has launched the Safe Streets Arlington Action Plan to curb the alarming rate of traffic-related fatalities and serious injuries. Adopted in December 2024 after over a year of collaboration with residents and experts, this comprehensive strategy proposes more than 40 actions to make the streets safer for motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians.
Arlington's approach focuses on modifications to street design and promoting safer behavior among all roadway users. Notably, a staggering 70% of Arlington's fatal and severe crashes are concentrated on merely 6% of the city's road network, with accidents involving cyclists and pedestrians even more densely occurring on just 1.5% of the network. This troubling statistic has spurred the city to harness a data-driven and comprehensive methodology to improve road safety, setting an ambitious target of zero deaths and serious injuries by 2050. The plan outlines immediate and long-term strategies, including traffic and pedestrian safety measures near schools and directing traffic enforcement to high-risk areas.
Connecting with the community's need for increased safety, Mayor Jim Ross highlighted the city's goal, "Every day, hundreds of thousands of people travel to and through our community as they head to their homes, schools, work, or other destinations. And every day, what is most important to us as a city is that everyone arrives to those destinations safely,” as reported by the City of Arlington's official news site.
Some of the proposed countermeasures in the plan include implementing pedestrian refuge islands, buffered bike lanes, and pedestrian hybrid beacons to improve cyclist and pedestrian safety. Upgrades to intersections may consist of installing roundabouts and raised crosswalks, with a focus on calming traffic around school areas. Moreover, all transportation projects in the City budget will now consider fatal and serious injury crash reductions as part of their prioritization criteria.
