MILWAUKEE — Not one person has died in a traffic crash in the City of Hoboken in New Jersey in five years.
"I think the buy-in from community members was really an essential part to this being a successful initiative," said councilwoman at-large Emily Jabbour. She sits on the city's Vision Zero Task Force. Vision Zero is a goal that cities around the world, including Hoboken and Milwaukee, are trying to achieve zero traffic-related injuries or deaths.
The city implemented different projects, like daylighting intersections, adding bump outs along busy routes, and slowing the speed limit to 20 miles per hour citywide. Daylighting intersections means increasing visibility by removing or restricting parking near crosswalks.
"Those are changes that we can make that you almost don't even think about it necessarily because they're happening as part of the ongoing maintenance in our city but, then all of a sudden you realize that these changes are there and it's having a real difference in terms of the data that were seeing about the safety of pedestrians going around," said Jabbour.
Kate Riordan, Milwaukee's interim safe streets coordinator who is leading Vision Zero efforts in Milwaukee, calls the achievement in Hoboken "inspiring."
"We often hear about really great successes in cities and counties in Europe. However, we don't really have a lot of great examples in the United States to look toward. So, seeing a city like Hoboken, New Jersey that has really made a lot of progress and actually achieved zero traffic-related deaths is really inspiring and something that we can look towards and use as an example for our own work here in Milwaukee," said Riordan.
She said many of the projects that have worked in Hoboken are projects being planned and implemented in Milwaukee. Bump outs are just one example.
"There are a lot of similarities in things that they're doing there that we want to do here also," said Riordan.
One thing to remember is how different Hoboken's landscape is compared to Milwaukee's.
Hoboken's population is nearly 60,000 residents. Milwaukee has nearly 600,000 residents. Hoboken is just one square mile. Milwaukee is 97 square miles. Hoboken has 33 miles of streets. Milwaukee has more than 1,400 miles of streets.
Despite the differences, councilwoman Jabbour said the smallest changes can have a massive impact.
"I think a lot of those small changes can really have a big impact, especially when you're talking about the scale of a city like Milwaukee as compared to Hoboken - and thinking about that just as you approach regular Maintenance of city items," said Jabbour.
Learn more about Vision Zero in Milwaukee at ProjectDriveSafer.com
