Traffic engineering reports Vision Zero progress; city fatalities on municipal roadways fall 50% since 2020

Traffic Engineering told the Common Council that Vision Zero strategies and targeted safety projects have produced measurable reductions in serious crashes on city-controlled roadways.

Yan Tao, director of the city’s traffic engineering division, reviewed the Vision Zero framework — safe streets, safe people, safe vehicles, safety data and enforcement — and described a sequence of initiatives since 2019 including public engagement (Let’s Talk Streets), the citywide 20 is Plenty speed initiative, and the Safe Streets Madison infrastructure program that prioritizes smaller safety projects across neighborhoods.

Tao said the city has funded 237 Safe Streets projects (many implemented) and has over 600 resident safety requests in the pipeline. He highlighted speed-management results: reductions in the share and number of very high‑speed drivers after interventions, and neighborhood crash reductions of 42% (one cluster) and 46% in another pilot neighborhood versus multi‑year baselines. For city-controlled or jointly controlled roadways, Tao said fatalities fell from 12 in 2020 to six in 2025 — a 50% decrease.

Tao credited multiagency collaboration (including MPD enforcement and public-health alignment), federal grants (more than $20 million in safety‑related awards for the division) and community engagement for the progress. He stressed continued program rollout, ongoing evaluation and that one recent fatality in 2026 underscores the work’s unfinished nature.

Next steps: finalizing a second Vision Zero progress report, continuing the Safe Streets project pipeline and evaluating longer-term impacts of BRT and other large projects on pedestrian safety.