NVCOG presents Envision 0 action plan, highlights 20 priority corridors and public interactive hub
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Summary
NVCOG staff presented a federally funded Envision 0 (Vision Zero) regional action plan, highlighting an interactive web hub, a list of 20 high-priority corridors to reduce fatalities and serious injuries, and a board briefing scheduled for the 20th. Public feedback was solicited.
Rich Donovan, the region's transportation planning director (as identified in the transcript), presented NVCOG's draft Envision 0 (Vision Zero) action plan to committee members, saying the region adopted a Vision 0 target in 2022 and is pursuing interventions to eliminate traffic fatalities and serious injuries.
"Roadway fatalities and serious injuries are not inevitable," Donovan said during the presentation, adding that the plan focuses on interventions that reduce the energy transferred to a person in a crash and on locations where changes can make the biggest difference in the shortest time. He described a year-and-a-half crash-history analysis used to identify the 20 highest-priority corridors in the region.
Donovan said many of those corridors follow the Naugatuck River and therefore overlap with the Naugatuck River Greenway route; he urged members to view an interactive hub built with Esri that displays the corridors and crash maps (envision-0-nvcog.hub.arcgis.com) and invited feedback. "We want this to be something that's valuable for our communities, for decision makers, but also for the public," he said.
The presentation listed location-specific interventions (for example, replacing midblock crosswalks with higher-visibility crossings and rapid-flashing beacons, and considering a regional roundabout program to replace dangerous intersections) as well as region-wide strategies. Donovan also noted the plan will be presented to the NVCOG board on Friday the 20th and asked members to send written comments or raise them at that meeting.
When members asked whether crash data capture incidents that occur on greenways, Donovan said police crash reports that involve a motor vehicle and a trail user should appear in the repository where NVCOG draws data, but that greenway-only incidents not involving a vehicle are not separately recorded. He and others flagged the rise of electric bicycles as an operational challenge on multiuse trails and noted a statewide working group is developing recommendations on how local ordinances, DOT, or DMV policies might respond.
The presentation closed with a timeline-oriented public goal: working toward zero fatalities and serious injuries across the region by 2060. The committee was invited to review the draft plan on the hub site and to bring comments to the board meeting.
