Sacramento City Council Begins Planning To End Traffic-Related Deaths

The Sacramento City Council is expected to direct city staff to create a plan to end traffic-related deaths in the city by 2027.

The first part of its Vision Zero plan would be identifying factors contributing to traffic fatalities and injuries.

City council member Steve Hansen supports the plan and pointed out the need to find a way to fund engineering improvements.

"As a region, we're still working to figure out how we can put together the resources necessary to fix a lot of these problems," Hansen says. "It's a lot easier to build something right than to come back and fix it."

Hansen says the city needs different strategies to solve traffic safety issues on the city's "grid" — designed in the 1850s for people — compared with wide suburban streets where there are no sidewalks.

From 2010 to 2014, there were 130 traffic-related deaths and more than 400 traffic-related crashes in Sacramento resulting in severe injuries.