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Lancaster traffic commission opens plan to centralize safety requests using mapped intake and crash-priorities
Summary
Staff proposed funneling traffic-safety requests into a single mapped intake and prioritizing them against the city’s high-injury network. Commissioners supported clearer website guidance, written comment options and staff-packaged priority lists for commission review.
City of Lancaster traffic planners outlined a plan on Jan. 13 to centralize how residents submit traffic-safety requests and to prioritize work by crash risk. Emma Hamm, transportation planner, told the Traffic Commission staff wanted more consistent records and asked residents to submit safety complaints to the city’s street safety mapper on Engage Lancaster so requests are geocoded and include contact information.
"We're now up to over a 100 issues reported on that street safety mapper," Hamm said, adding that a centralized database would make it easier to see whether multiple reports point to the same high-priority location. She proposed overlaying incoming requests with the city’s high-injury network — corridors and intersections with the most serious and frequent crashes — so staff could bring a prioritized set of locations to the commission for collective review.
Commissioners praised the idea of triage and clearer public guidance. Ben Hogan, public works engineer, said fair application across neighborhoods is a priority and encouraged using a consistent intake to avoid uneven representation. Commissioner Philip Kennedy said he preferred written-comment options and open-house formats to lower barriers for residents who can’t attend meetings.
Staff emphasized that not all reports belong at the commission: maintenance and knocked-down signs should be reported on the Fix It app, while traffic-control changes (new signs, removal of parking spaces, loading zones) are matters for commission review. Hamm said staff will work on website text that explains what the commission does and does not approve and will draft a formal proposal for legal review and possible future council referral if commission authority needs to change.
Next steps: staff asked commissioners to email suggestions over the next month as they develop a formal proposal that could include a public package of the top-priority intersections for review and ongoing reassessment of permit-parking districts.
