Edina adopts Safe & Equitable Mobility Action Plan to guide Vision Zero work

The Edina City Council unanimously adopted a Safe & Equitable Mobility Action Plan on May 5 that sets a Vision Zero target — zero traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2050 — and an interim target of a 50% reduction by 2035. The plan, developed with Alliant Engineering, Tool Design Group and Humanize Minnesota, identifies a high‑injury network and a prioritized safety‑investment framework for the city and county streets.

Tim Burkhart of Alliant summarized the crash analysis and risk assessment used to rank corridors. "For the crash analysis we conducted, cyclists' risk of serious injury or fatalities [was] about four times greater than a motorist. For a pedestrian, it jumps up to 18 times more likely," Burkhart told the council, underlining the plan’s emphasis on protecting vulnerable users.

The plan groups recommendations into four categories — infrastructure countermeasures (curb extensions, roundabouts, no‑right‑on‑red changes), policy and process changes, outreach and education, and supplemental planning and engineering studies — and links recommended interventions to typical crash types. Staff said the main avenue for early implementation will be to overlay the plan’s “safety priority network” with the city’s pavement management and reconstruction schedule, expanding project scopes to include safety countermeasures where appropriate.

Council members asked how the plan would interact with existing master plans and private development reviews; staff said the plan is a guide, not an automatic override, and that changes to other policy documents will be brought to council as needed. The city plans to pursue federal Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) grants and to continue coordinating with Hennepin County and MnDOT on county and state routes.

The council voted to adopt the plan as presented and directed staff to use the priority network to guide capital investments, grant applications and private development review.