Call it
Blurred Vision Zero.
Houston’s municipal planning organization recently announced its annual roadway safety targets, which included
a goal not to exceed 728 deaths on area roads in 2020.
The only problem? That “goal” is 29 more people than the number who died on H-Town roads in 2019.
So if the Houston region meets its safety “goal” for next year, many
more people will die next year.
An
increasing number of roadway deaths isn’t acceptable in any sane universe — and the fact that
a supposed Vision Zero city like Houston can announce that target with a straight face calls into question the very way we use safety targets in transportation planning. It’s past time for the feds to start requiring that communities set
real safety goals that aggressively seek to end roadway deaths — and cut road funding when they don’t meet them.
Space City, of course, isn’t the only place that makes a mockery of safety targets: As
Streetsblog reported last week, a third of
states are setting sky-high death “targets,” too — and eight of them hit their grisly “goals” in 2018.