Saanich is developing a Road Safety Action Plan
In February 2022 Council adopted Vision Zero as the approach to road safety in Saanich and they passed a motion directing staff to develop a Road Safety Action Plan (RSAP) in alignment with Vision Zero and a Safe Systems approach.
Vision Zero is an ambitious goal to eliminate all traffic injuries and fatalities while ensuring safe, healthy, and equitable mobility for all road users. This includes people who walk, ride a bike, take a bus or drive. Vision Zero is a new paradigm for road safety that recognizes that human error is inevitable and a systems-based approach (called a Safe-Systems approach) is needed to ensure that actions targeted to achieve safe speed limits, safe road design, safe people and safe vehicles work together to achieve this aim.
Safe-Systems diagram, National Road Safety Action Plan 2018-2020
Saanich has targets to increase the number of people walking, cycling and using public transit to get around. At the same time, Saanich also has a target to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases being emitted into our atmosphere. Achieving these targets will require road safety to be a priority, so that residents and visitors feel comfortable walking and cycle on Saanich streets.
Shared responsibility among all road safety partners is fundamental to the success of Vision Zero and a Safe Systems approach. It is imperative that partners recognize the importance of their individual contributions and work collaboratively, taking collective action to eliminate collisions leading to death or serious injuries.
The RSAP will focus on the following priorities:
- Develop a vision and guiding principles that align with Vision Zero and a Safety Systems approach;
- Collect and analyze data to understand the risks and impacts of collisions on vulnerable road users, as well as the locations of concern in Saanich;
- Identify targets and actions, based on a thorough analysis of the data and input gathered through community engagement; and
- Incorporate an implementation and monitoring plan to prioritize and track progress on improved road safety and zero traffic fatalities and/or injuries.
Collaboration with road safety partners will be critical, not only to the development of the plan, but also as we move forward with implementation.
Timeline
It will take approximately 17 months to develop the RSAP and it will be completed in four phases.
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Documents and Reports
Project-Related Documents
Council Reports
- A Policy Framework for Road Safety in Saanich [PDF - 569 KB] (February 2022)