The City of North Vancouver’s Council unanimously approved their new Safe Mobility Strategy, joining the City of Surrey who approved their Safe Mobility Plan last year.
In North Vancouver there are about ten vehicular collisions a year that result in serious injury or fatality. The intent of the adoption of the plan is to embrace a safe systems approach to achieve Vision Zero where no lives are lost in using the City’s road system.
Guidance is already provided in the City of North Vancouver’s Community Plan that measures ease of mobility as a factor in a liveable city.
The City’s document in nine concise pages summarizes an overall approach to move to Vision Zero. They intend to accomplish this by a four pronged approach which will also impact work in all transportation and planning endeavours in the city.
The four factors are:
1. Design safe streets
This means changing the design and features of City streets, intersections, and curb space to reduce the risk of conflict; and providing more space, separation and protection for the growing variety of ways people choose to travel.
2. Encourage safe speeds
We do this by promoting speeds that are appropriate for specific street or pathway types. This is achieved through lower speed limits and street design changes – like narrower streets, speed bumps, landscaping, and other treatments.
3. Promote safe behaviour
We will support the development of a range of community outreach and education campaigns, targeted enforcement, and new regulations to foster a culture of safe mobility.
4. Be evidence-based and accountable
This means prioritizing actions and interventions in the right areas by collecting more data; this will increase our understanding of safety issues on our streets. We will report back to the community regularly on our progress as we work to achieve our vision and goal for safe mobility.
The City of North Vancouver has made this document a foundation to the overall transportation plan which is currently being updated. You can take a look at the Safe Mobility Strategy as well as the presentation to Council here.
Images: DanJarvis&NYCParkingTicket.com
