The City of New Britain is implementing its own Vision Zero roadway safety strategy, with the goal of eliminating serious and fatal vehicle and pedestrian-involved crashes over the next 20 years.
The City of New Britain is implementing its own Vision Zero roadway safety strategy, with the goal of eliminating serious and fatal vehicle and pedestrian-involved crashes over the next 20 years.
A task force made up of elected officials, community leaders, and transportation experts meet regularly to discuss ways to achieve that goal.
“It is a lofty goal but I think it’s an achievable goal,” said Mark Moriarty, New Britain Public Works Director. “We’ve been really focused on making the streets safer for some time, for vehicles, pedestrians, bicyclists, and this takes it up to a whole other level. Where we did a lot of infrastructure improvements, now we’re looking at data and understanding crashes that happen in the city, the reasons crashes happen, and really looking at mechanisms to stop them from happening.”
The task force focuses on five 'E's – engineering, education, encouragement, evaluation, and enforcement.
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“We’re talking about road dieting, so it forces drivers to slow down. We’re talking about looking where are the street lights? Where are the crosswalks? Are there better places for them?” explained Mayor Erin Stewart. “We stood out on one of the busiest corners in town and literally watched people just walk out into the middle of the road, but we also watched drivers that just blew through red lights.”
The mayor said public education is a big piece of the initiative.
“Unfortunately, a lot of accidents that we see, it’s people looking down at their phones, not even looking up as they cross the road,” Stewart said. “Unfortunately, there’s incidents where you have erratic drivers that are just not paying attention. We all have to do our part, and I think public education is a big piece of what we’re doing here too.”
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The city has already invested tens of millions of dollars into its road safety initiative, but this effort expands beyond downtown, and includes state roads too.
“It could potentially open avenues for us to put a speed enforcement or red light cameras in these problem areas,” Stewart said.
The task force is looking for community input from people who use New Britain roads. Click here to access the survey.
