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Trustee urges village-wide Vision Zero task force after pedestrian deaths; residents press for quick safety fixes
Summary
Trustee Leilani Yizer Reid and traffic-commission presenters relaunched the villageVision Zero effort, cited local crash data and collected resident ideas including crosswalk improvements, enforcement and school-focused outreach; organizers will compile notes and seek a Safer Routes grant decision expected in about 45 days.
Leilani Yizer Reid, a Village trustee and the trustee liaison to the traffic commission, opened a community meeting to relaunch the villageVision Zero initiative and urged the formation of a village-wide task force to prioritize pedestrian and cyclist safety.
"We adopted Vision 0 in 2019," Reid said, framing the session as a restart of a program she wants the village to implement holistically. The meeting combined a short presentation, data review and small-group discussions with residents, traffic-commission members and municipal staff.
Shannon Hughes, identified in the meeting as a representative connected to state/federal transportation work, presented crash figures and the rationale for system-level changes. Hughes said Mamaroneck recorded 1,690 collisions from 2016 to 2018 and noted that while only about 6 percent of those collisions involved people struck by vehicles, those incidents accounted for roughly 34 percent of crash-related injuries. "If you're hit by a car as a pedestrian at 25, you got about a 90% chance of living," Hughes said, adding that the survival rate drops sharply at higher speeds.
Hughes and other presenters highlighted results from walking-safety assessments around local schools: nearly all families whose children attend MAS live within a mile of the school (reported at about 98 percent), yet roughly 73 percent of families drive their children to school, citing safety concerns as a primary reason.
Residents used small breakout groups to propose near-term, low-cost measures and longer-term actions. Catherine Lupone, speaking after group work, urged broad distribution of the meeting video and recommended school- and PTA-based outreach: "We need to put the link to that video, everywhere we can think of," she said. Other suggestions from participants included repainting and adding center crosswalk signs, installing no-turn-on-red restrictions at key intersections, creating green-painted bike lanes, adding crossing guards or paid crossing attendants, improving lighting and trimming sidewalk vegetation, and running targeted enforcement campaigns.
A meeting consultant and residents emphasized both engineering and behavior-change tools: more visible signage and pavement markings, targeted enforcement at problem locations, volunteer-driven education such as youth ambassadors and school-based trainings, and intermunicipal coordination where roads cross village and town boundaries.
Organizers said the village will compile notes from the breakouts to form a Vision Zero task force that includes the village engineer, planning, enforcement, EMS and residents. Trustee Reid said staff will gather sign-up information to contact volunteers and will publish next steps on the village website and in newsletters. The meeting also noted a pending Safer Routes grant: "We have about 45 more days left until we hear back about the Safer Routes grant that we applied for," Reid said; the grant work was described as proceeding in phases (study then implementation) if awarded.
The meeting closed with appeals from traffic-commission members and residents that recent tragedies not be forgotten and that the community turn the moment into concrete change. Organizers asked attendees to expect follow-up by email and updates at regular trustee meetings.
