Santa Clara presents draft Vision 0 safety plan; residents press for bike-trail, speed and enforcement fixes

City of Santa Clara staff and their consultants on Thursday presented a draft Vision 0 action plan and preliminary safety improvements at the fourth community workshop for the program, outlining proposed engineering, enforcement and education strategies to eliminate traffic fatalities and severe injuries on city streets.

"Vision 0 is a strategy to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries on the city's Santa Clara roadways," said Robert Padurna, project consultant with Kimley‑Horn, introducing the plan's purpose and the project timeline. He said the firm analyzed eight years of collision data covering 2016–2023 and has identified a priority high‑injury network and a countermeasure toolbox to guide implementation.

The workshop provided technical findings and solicited location‑specific feedback from residents. "We are taking those type of specific locations and issues," said project moderator Regina Merrill of CirclePoint, noting staff recorded public comments and would review them for the draft plan.

Why it matters: project staff said roughly 60 percent of all injury collisions occurred on 16 percent of the road network. The team identified about 40 fatal collisions across Santa Clara from 2016–2023, and collision‑profile data showed that among fatal or serious‑injury crashes, 13 percent involved pedestrians or bicyclists, 15 percent involved alcohol, 13 percent involved speeding, 44 percent occurred at night and 15…