City staff present draft Safety Action Plan; commission discusses speed management, school routes and equity

City of Palo Alto transportation staff and a consultant presented a draft Safety Action Plan during the Human Relations Commission meeting, outlining a safe-system approach meant to reduce roadway fatalities and serious injuries and to position the city to apply for federal Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) funding.

Sylvia Starlak, Transportation Planning Manager, introduced the plan and the consultant Ashley Takushi of Fair and Pierce, who described the plan's principles: design the system to anticipate human error, manage kinetic energy transfer to survivable levels and prioritize population-level changes such as physical separation and speed management over education-only strategies. "A fundamental objective of the safe system approach is to eliminate fatal and serious injuries for all road users by accommodating human mistakes and keeping impacts on the human body at tolerable levels," Takushi said.

Key findings and recommendations - Data and scope: The analysis uses collision data from 2018 through 2022 for fatal and…