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Council adopts Safer Streets safety action plan to target high-crash corridors and pursue federal grants
Summary
Laguna Beach adopted a citywide Safer Streets (SS4A) safety action plan aimed at Vision Zero goals, naming priority corridor projects (Coast Highway, Park Avenue, Wilson Street) and an engineering toolbox so staff can pursue implementation grants.
Laguna Beach city council voted to adopt a citywide Safer Streets safety action plan developed under the federal Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) framework.
Consultant Fair and Piers presented the plan’s community engagement and data-driven analysis, which combined five years of crash data with in-person and online outreach. The plan identified a network of priority safety corridors concentrated on Pacific Coast Highway and Laguna Canyon Road (both Caltrans facilities) and a set of local streets with frequent serious collisions. Key takeaways: unsafe speed contributes to most collisions, impaired driving drives severity, and nighttime conditions are linked to higher pedestrian collisions.
The plan offers a toolbox of engineering countermeasures tailored to Laguna Beach — from rectangular rapid flashing beacons (RRFB) and targeted signal preemption to traffic-calming treatments on local streets — and three priority projects: (1) a coordinated Coast Highway safety project that would require close partnership with Caltrans; (2) Park Avenue traffic calming/pedestrian improvements; and (3) a package of measures for Wilson Street near Laguna Beach High School.
Adoption makes the city eligible for SS4A implementation grants, which the plan’s authors and staff recommended pursuing. Council members discussed the practical challenges of implementing changes on Caltrans roadways and urged staff to accelerate coordination with Caltrans to pursue lower-cost, high-impact fixes — for example, attention-grabbing beacons and better crosswalk visibility on Coast Highway.
Why it matters: The plan gives staff a prioritized, grant-ready list and an engineering toolbox designed to reduce severe injuries and fatalities and to align Laguna Beach with federal Vision Zero guidance.
What’s next: Staff will refine project scope and seek competitive federal and state grants (SS4A, HSIP and OCTA programs) as funding becomes available. The plan also calls for periodic performance reviews and community engagement to evaluate whether measures reduce severe collisions.
Quote “Unsafe speed is the single most common contributing factor in Laguna Beach crashes,” consultant Baldwin Pierce said. “This plan gives the city a data‑driven prioritization that is needed to compete for implementation grants.”
