Pasco MPO keeps 2025 fatalities target, adopts 2026 safety measures and hears safety-action updates

The Pasco Metropolitan Planning Organization on Feb. 12 approved its 2026 safety performance measures and heard detailed presentations on the county's safety action plan and active-transportation planning.

Tania Gorman, who introduced the item, said MPOs must adopt Vision Zero targets under federal and state transportation requirements and described the MPO's proposed approach: a data-driven 10% reduction methodology based on the most recent rolling five-year average. "This item is our annual adoption," she said, noting the targets "ensure accountability and reinforce that safety remains at the forefront of our planning and investment decisions."

Urban SDK analyst Zach Funkhouser walked the board through the MPO's crash analysis for 2020'024, the high-injury network and a heat map of fatal collisions, and offered to provide interactive mapping after the meeting. He summarized the five key safety metrics under review: total fatalities, fatality rate, total serious injuries, serious-injury rate and combined pedestrian/bicycle serious injuries, and said Pasco performed better than the statewide average on four of five measures.

Commissioners pressed for more granular, year-to-year analysis instead of the five-year rolling average. "When you get the data of a 5 year rolling average, especially throwing COVID in the middle, it's almost useless data to me," said Commissioner Mariano, urging staff to identify specific hot spots and to show before-and-after effects of improvements. Board members repeatedly asked staff to return clearer, readable maps and corridor-level findings for locations such as U.S. 19, Shady Hills Road and State Road 52.

The Technical Advisory Committee had recommended keeping the 2025 fatalities target (reported in the materials as 91.26) rather than increasing it to 93, saying it did not feel comfortable raising a fatalities benchmark. The board voiced consensus for the TAC recommendation and approved the 2026 safety performance measures with that change.

The meeting also included a consultant briefing on the Safe Streets Pasco safety action plan. The consultant presented a two-part approach: a reactive focus on the high-injury network (where the majority of fatal and serious-injury crashes are concentrated) and a proactive "high-risk" network of corridors that have the characteristics likely to produce future serious crashes. Presenters described a mix of countermeasures (from signal timing and speed-management interventions to infrastructure changes such as median fencing and, where feasible, grade separations) and recommended near-miss assessments and pilot projects to evaluate effectiveness without waiting years for crash data.

James Flaherty of GoPasco told the board the county's intelligent-transportation system has been operational since June and now supports stop-level analysis to guide ADA upgrades and shelter placement. "We're able to now dig down to the stop level to make determinations on whether a stop should be brought up to maybe ADA standards or with a shelter or with a bench, depending on ridership," he said.

Rebecca Bogue, Pasco County's planning project manager, introduced the county's first active-transportation plan, saying phase 1 will focus on data collection, network analysis, safety-gap identification and public engagement to support walking, biking and micromobility and to position Pasco to seek funding.

What happens next: staff and consultants will provide requested corridor-level detail, clearer maps and additional analysis of the factors that drove spikes or drops in the five-year series; the MPO's adopted targets will be applied in programming and performance reporting going forward.