Vision Zero
City of Berkeley
Vision Zero is a strategy to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries while increasing safe, healthy, and equitable mobility for all. Vision Zero is, first and foremost, an engineering strategy that aims to design and build our streets to eliminate all severe and fatal traffic injuries. These engineering efforts are supported by public awareness education and traffic enforcement. Equity-driven Vision Zero traffic enforcement utilizes the best possible data and is focused on areas of Berkeley where engineering and education efforts have already been implemented.
Vision Zero is a strategy to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries while increasing safe, healthy, and equitable mobility for all. Vision Zero is, first and foremost, an engineering strategy that aims to design and build our streets to eliminate all severe and fatal traffic injuries. These engineering efforts are supported by public awareness education and traffic enforcement. Equity-driven Vision Zero traffic enforcement utilizes the best possible data and is focused on areas of Berkeley where engineering and education efforts have already been implemented.
The following Vision Zero maps describe some of the City of Berkeley’s traffic safety capital projects and planning efforts undertaken in response to severe and fatal traffic crashes.
For more information about the Berkeley Vision Zero Program, visit https://www.cityofberkeley.info/visionzero or contact Vision Zero Program Manager Eric Anderson eanderson@cityofberkeley.info
Where Are Severe and Fatal Collisions Happening in Berkeley?
The crash data represented by this map comes from the Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System (SWITRS) maintained by the California Highway Patrol (CHP). The time period for the crashs shown is from the most recent ten years of data available at the time the map was made, 01/01/2010-12/31/2019. Due to limitations in SWITRS data, not all crashes can be mapped. This map presents a statistically significant representative sample of the locations of severe injury and fatal crashes in Berkeley from 2010-2019. Some traffic crashes involve injuries to more than one party, sometimes travelling by different modes of transportation. In such cases, when symbolizing the travel mode of the injured party, we have represented the more vulnerable of the three possible modes as the injured party. For this purpose, it is assumed that someone walking would be more vulnerable than someone riding a bicycling and someone riding a bicycle would be more vulnerable than someone driving a car.
Scroll down to learn more about traffic crashes on Berkeley streets.
What Is The City Doing About It?
Traffic Safety Improvements
The map below shows City of Berkeley traffic safety capital projects undertaken in response to severe and fatal traffic crashes on our streets. High-Injury Streets are shown in yellow and the Equity Priority Area (areas that were historically redlined by HOLC due to the racial makeup of the residents) is shown in red. These projects were identified in the Berkeley Pedestrian Plan, Berkeley Bicycle Plan, or other planning processes with the input of the Berkeley Community. In some cases these projects are delivered as part of the City’s Street Repaving Program. Further information about the Pedestrian and Bicycle Plans and the current 5-year repaving program can be found on maps that follow this traffic safety projects map.
Scroll down and click on the sidebar boxes or map icons to learn more about specific traffic safety capital projects on Berkeley streets
Improvements Map
Berkeley Pedestrian Plan (2020)
The Berkeley Pedestrian envisions Berkeley as a model walkable city where traveling on foot or with an assistive device is safe, comfortable, and convenient for people of all races, ethnicities, incomes, ages, and abilities. The Plan identifies two categories of recommendations to improve safety for people walking in Berkeley: citywide programs and priority projects. Citywide programs are improvements that can be applied systematically throughout Berkeley’s pedestrian network. Priority projects are improvements and countermeasures for the top ten high-injury street segments identified during the Plan’s prioritization process and in collaboration with the Berkeley community. More information about the City of Berkeley Pedestrian Plan can be found at https://www.cityofberkeley.info/pedestrian .
The map below shows the top ten high-priority corridor projects identified in response to severe and fatal traffic crashes involving people walking on our streets. High-priority project corridors are shown in green, High-Injury Streets are shown in yellow, and the Equity Priority Area (areas that were historically redlined by HOLC due to the racial makeup of the residents) is shown in red.
Scroll down for more information about each of the 10 Pedestrian Plan High-Priority Project corridors.
Berkeley Bicycle Plan (2017)
The vision of the Berkeley Bicycle Plan is to make Berkeley a model bicycle-friendly city where bicycling is a safe, attractive, easy, and convenient form of transportation and recreation for people of all ages and bicycling abilities.
The Plan is the result of a robust public engagement process that included more than a dozen Open Houses and other public events as well as an innovative public survey that collected the opinions and preferences of more than 600 Berkeley residents. City staff, with consultant support, completed a “Level of Traffic Stress” analysis to better understand what bikeway improvements could encourage more people to bicycle in Berkeley. The resulting Plan recommends a core network of “Low Stress” bikeways, a continuous and connected system of safe and comfortable bikeways that serve all types of people riding bicycles in Berkeley. The core Low-Stress Bikeway Network Vision is part of a larger overall bikeway system in Berkeley that is supported by wayfinding signage, bike parking, a high standard of maintenance, and education, encouragement and outreach programs.
Scroll down for more information about Berkeley’s Low-Stress Bikeway Network Vision