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Montgomery County reports Safe Streets Act roll‑out: most required no‑turn‑on‑red and pedestrian‑interval installations complete; crash referrals under review
Summary
County staff said they installed no‑turn‑on‑red signs at 148 of 161 qualifying intersections and 200 of 231 leading pedestrian intervals, described a referral process for school‑related crashes and said walkability studies are about halfway complete with roughly 3–5 years remaining at current capacity.
Montgomery County staff updated the Council’s joint Transportation & Environment and Public Safety committee on Dec. 8 about implementation of the Safe Streets Act, reporting installation milestones for no‑turn‑on‑red (NTOR) signs and leading pedestrian intervals and explaining a new referral and review process for school‑related crashes.
Wade Holland, the county’s Vision Zero coordinator, and Michael Paylor, chief of traffic engineering and operations, told the committee the county had installed NTOR signs at 148 of the 161 county‑owned intersections that met the law’s criteria; 11 intersections were exempt and two were pending. For leading pedestrian intervals, staff reported 200 of 231 qualifying county intersections installed, with five still pending.
Paylor explained that the county is in a monitoring phase to assess whether any installations lead to “significantly impaired public safety” — a statutory threshold that could trigger removal. He described the review criteria as including increased queuing that obstructs secondary intersections, queuing that creates rear‑end crash risks, and other operational effects; staff said they expect initial reviews of 24 priority locations to be completed within about a week and recommended assessing broader crash trends over six to 12 months (with more robust evaluation over three years).
Under the Safe Streets Act workflow described by staff, Montgomery County Police redact personally identifiable information from qualifying crash reports and refer incidents to the agency that has jurisdiction over the roadway. Holland said the county has recorded 1,200 non‑motorist crashes under the review criteria, and staff listed referrals made so far: 47 to MCDOT, 26 to the State Highway Administration, 15 to Montgomery County Public Schools, 7 to municipalities (Gaithersburg, Rockville and Takoma Park), 2 to Montgomery College and 1 to Montgomery Parks.
Representatives from Montgomery County Public Schools (Kina Eliasi, bus operations coordinator, and Tony Tusi, director of infrastructure design and transportation) said the schools review referrals and track trends; they told council members that many crashes on school property are attributed to distracted drivers or pedestrians not using marked crossings and that a number of incidents are preventable.
Council members pressed staff on timelines for walkability studies and community engagement. Staff said Phase II walkability studies are about halfway complete, estimated roughly 60 schools remain to be studied at current throughput, and projected that completing the remaining work could take three to five years without additional resources. Officials said the referral process to MCDOT starts a six‑month clock for posting the DOT review to the website and that many engineering concerns can be addressed through signal‑timing changes or targeted short‑term interventions such as curb bump‑outs or refreshed crosswalks.
The committee did not take a formal vote during the briefing and asked staff to return with monitoring results and a short summary of recommended operational adjustments for flagged intersections.
