Leavenworth council hears Safe Streets plan aiming for zero deaths by 2035

Leavenworth — City councilors on Monday received a presentation of the Transportation Safety Action Plan (TSAP), the planning deliverable from a federal Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) grant that recommends projects and policies to reduce roadway deaths and serious injuries.

The plan’s consultants said the city experienced 142 reported crashes in the analysis window and 36 injury crashes; 28 of those injury crashes occurred on US 2, which the presenters said accounts for roughly 78% of the injury crashes in the study area. "We call it TSAP," said Kyle Curtis, the project manager for the consulting team, describing the study approach of combining WSDOT crash records with community mapping and local review. The draft plan sets a Vision Zero goal "to improve safety in the transportation system by working towards a goal of 0 deaths or serious injuries, by the year 2035," presenters said.

The consultants emphasized community engagement as a major input: an online bilingual survey, in‑person outreach at farmers markets and community events, and an interactive map that the team said captured more than 800 unique safety spots. That public input, together with five‑to‑ten years of crash records, produced a prioritized list of corridors for further study and funding. The presentation named a series of priority corridors (transcript list includes US 2 and several local streets) and described candidate countermeasures such as roundabouts or signal changes at intersections, missing sidewalk or bike lane construction, traffic calming and low‑cost citywide treatments (driveway width reductions, signage consistency).

Consultants told council staff they would work with city staff (referred to in the presentation as Brantley) to select a candidate project for construction‑fund grant applications and to post the TSAP to a public website for ongoing updates. "We're gonna work with Brantley to select one of these projects and apply for that using the financing from this program," the project manager said. The team also noted that some adjacent projects (for example, a county‑led roundabout design) were already under county study and that the city plan could support a joint funding application.

Council members asked operational questions — whether projects considered traffic congestion as well as safety, how roundabout designs accommodate large vehicles and buses, and how a forthcoming large residential development north of town should be reflected in future analyses. Consultants said the TSAP focused on safety rather than traffic modeling but that they considered operations when developing candidate projects and that coordination with county designs would be part of implementation.

Next steps are procedural: the consultants said they would post materials online, assist staff in refining project lists, pursue applicable construction funding sources, and return to council with revisions or a final draft for adoption. Councilors did not vote on the plan at this meeting; staff said adoption would be scheduled for a future council meeting after council and public review.

The TSAP presentation provides a local roadmap for funding and implementing a mix of targeted intersection projects and low‑cost citywide treatments to reduce serious injuries and fatalities on Leavenworth’s streets.