The City of Delta has big goals to improve traffic safety.
Council last fall gave the go-ahead to spend up to $50,000 for a Vision Zero study, aimed at creating a strategy to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries.
The engineering department is concluding the procurement process and next month will present the consulting services award to council for approval.
Vision Zero is a multi-national road traffic safety project that aims to achieve a road system with no fatalities or serious injuries.
The project originated in Sweden and is gaining momentum in North America, according to an earlier Delta staff report, noting it has been embraced at the federal levels in both Canada and the United States.
One of the key differences between Vision Zero and traditional approaches to road safety is that traffic collisions are considered preventable, viewing safety as a shared responsibility between system designers, policy makers and road users through system level changes.
The implementation of Vision Zero includes public education, targeted enforcement and further engineering, the report explains.
The report also notes that, according to ICBC claims data from 2015 to 2019, the highest number of collisions in Delta occurred on the following corridors: 120th Street, Nordel Way, 72nd Avenue, 56th Street and Ladner Trunk Road.
The locations with the highest collisions generally reflect the municipal roadways carrying the highest traffic volumes.
The Vision Zero Strategy will continue to build on Delta’s initiatives currently in place, starting with staff further analyzing crash data on the types of collisions and study trends of existing crashes at the top 20 crash locations.
Delta Police recently noted that during Canada Road Safety Week, held this year from May 18 to 24, a focus on driver education and awareness saw police hand out 629 violation tickets.
Of those tickets, 14 were for drug or alcohol impaired drivers, while police charged four drivers with prohibited driving.
