The city of Bellevue, Wash., has spent the last seven years working to make its streets safer with the Vision Zero plan. The Bellevue City Council passed a resolution providing the framework to pursue Vision Zero in December 2015. Five years later, in December 2020, the council approved the Vision Zero strategic plan, which included the Safe System approach.

In order to reach Vision Zero, Bellevue adopted the belief that serious injuries and deaths on the road are not simply accidents, they are all preventable.

Franz Loewenherz, Bellevue’s mobility planning and solutions manager, explained, “Crashes result from a set of designs, infrastructure and systemic issues, not just road user behavior. This holistic approach accepts that people will make mistakes and that crashes will continue to occur, but it aims to ensure these do not result in serious injuries or fatalities. Stated simply, Vision Zero is the goal and the Safe System approach is how we get there.”

This Safe System approach focuses on safe streets, safe people, safe speeds and safe vehicles. According to Loewenherz, it also encompasses “the supporting elements of leadership, culture, partnerships and data. Bellevue recognizes that the way we design our streets, educate our road users and establish and enforce traffic laws can dramatically improve safety.”

Loewenherz continued, “The leadership strategy, nested within the city’s Safe System approach, states, ‘Commit all levels of the city to keep learning, refining our skills and expanding our toolbox with the best available strategies, policies and actions.’ The city of Bellevue adheres to this high performance organization commitment vis-a-vis its active involvement in multiple professional engineering forums and through collaborations with technology companies. Bellevue is constantly learning and sharing with others. A priority in our Safe System approach is to share our successes with other communities so that we’re moving toward zero together.”

Using the Safe System approach, the city reviews historical trends, roadway features and proactive risk evaluations in order to provide city staff members with insights on potential problem areas and to identify appropriate countermeasures to help solve the problem. These solutions are prioritized to improve equitable, safe access to civic life for road users of all ages and abilities.

Annual action plans are developed by Bellevue’s cross-department team to monitor the progess of Vision Zero and keep efforts on track to meet the city’s goal. Safe System actions are identified in the annual action plans, which is the duty of the city departments to implement throughout the year. These actions ensure the city’s residents, employees and visitors navigate the city’s roadways safely and comfortably with multiple options.

The role of technology is crucial in the city’s mission to prevent transportation-related serious injuries and deaths on roads and streets. Typically, crash data analysis is used to pinpoint areas and specific locations that may require intervention. However, crashes are random and police reports do not always state the full extent of safety issues experienced by those using the road. Therefore, an intervention analysis requires a minimum of five years of crash data.

For quicker results, Bellevue has adopted new technology with an emphasis on proactive safety techniques. “Traffic conflict analytics techniques that leverage cloud computing, artificial intelligence and video intelligence offer predictive insight into when, where and why crashes are most likely to occur at specific locations,” Loewenherz described. “The city of Bellevue is an early adopter and accelerator of these proactive safety techniques, having set in motion multiple technology development partnerships that convert raw video footage from our existing camera network into traffic flow, speed and conflict event data.”

From 2016 to 2018, the city partnered with Microsoft and the University of Washington for video analytics. The city then partnered with Transoft Solutions and Together for Safer Roads from 2019 to 2020. In 2020, the city partnered again with Microsoft as well as Jacobs and Advanced Mobility Analytics Group.

The most recent partnership began in 2022 and includes Amazon Web Services, Ouster, Outsight, Advanced Mobility Analytics Group, Blue-Band and Fehr and Peers. With these partnerships and new technologies, it only takes approximately one week for data collection as opposed to the traditional five years.

“In addition to identifying conflict hot spots, video analytics offers rapid insight on whether a safety countermeasure achieves a favorable outcome,” Loewenherz said. “Together we are exploring new safety metrics from lidar and video-based edge computer sensors at several downtown intersections. Additionally, we are exploring the potential of interfacing these sensors with the city’s adaptive traffic signals. Currently, the city’s signal system uses inductive loops buried in the pavement to detect vehicles and bicycles, then adjusts signal timing accordingly. The technology we’re developing with our partners offers the possibility of better detection of road users to increase the safety and minimize traffic delays, as well as lower costs by eliminating the need to maintain loops under city streets.”

In this most recent partnership, a before-and-after evaluation was conducted on the safety impacts of Leading Pedestrian Intervals. It has been shown in Bellevue the majority of serious injuries and fatalities occur at intersections, including 61% of pedestrian injuries and fatalities and 54% of bicycle injuries and fatalities. The LPIs give walking individuals the chance to enter an intersection crosswalk between three and seven seconds before vehicles are given a green light. This allows pedestrians to be more visible in the crosswalk before any vehicles have the opportunity to turn right or left. This is especially important in Bellevue given that 41% of all pedestrian fatalities and serious injuries result from a failure to yield to pedestrians.

Using LPIs has been a proven countermeasure, promoting safety in the city of Bellevue. The city’s LPI pilot study included 20 intersections throughout the downtown and Crossroads areas. In these pilot areas, traffic cameras were used, which observed over 650,000 road users. Thus far, the use of LPIs shows a 42% reduction in conflicts between vehicles and pedestrians.

In 2022, the city teamed up with the Bellevue School District for six road safety assessments on streets near schools, which are considered part of the city’s “high injury network.” These few particular roads see the most fatal or serious injury collisions.

“A road safety assessment is a proven tool to identify safety issues, particularly for vulnerable travelers, such as people walking and bicycling,” Loewenherz stated.

As part of the road safety assessment, students, parents and other members of the neighborhood were invited to take an online questionnaire and participate in a walking audit. The walking audit included walking along the high-risk roads to identify potential safety issues or street conditions that could be considered unsafe.

“Results from the assessments will be used to make on the street safety improvements through city transportation projects,” he continued.  According to the World Health Organization, over 1.3 million people die each year from roadway crashes. Vision Zero has arisen as an international movement to help lower those numbers. Utilizing new partnerships and technology, the city of Bellevue hopes to reach its Vision Zero initiative by 2030, eliminating serious injury collisions and traffic deaths on their city streets.