KSHB 41 reporter Charlie Keegan covers politics in Kansas, Missouri and at the local level. Share your story idea with Charlie.
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Leaders in Kansas City are in a years-long effort called Vision Zero to improve traffic safety for drivers, pedestrians, cyclists and others.
The goal is to create an environment where no one dies in traffic crashes by the year 2030.
In 2023, 102 people died in traffic-related crashes.
People living near East 35th Street and Norton Avenue brought up concerns about how the city prioritizes traffic safety after a crash Tuesday at the intersection killed three people.
Vision Zero is an international concept used by cities from Stockholm to San Francisco. It focuses on changing traffic infrastructure to protect everyone who uses the road.
Kansas City leaders adopted a Vision Zero resolution in 2020 and agreed to an action plan in 2022.
Since then, it’s designed or completed more than 200 projects.
They include building protected bike lanes, installing plastic poles around intersections and parking spots, beefing up crosswalks, and eliminating lanes through concepts called road diets.
The city uses data to prioritizes the location for Vision Zero projects. Using data from 2015 to 2019, the city found 68% of the fatal and serious injury crashes happened on 12% of Kansas City roads. The city labeled these roads the High Injury Network.
The intersection of East 35th Street and Norton Avenue is not in the High Injury Network.
“Making all those changes oftentimes requires us to do things that may appear painful on the front end, but will ultimately pay dividends in terms of safety, economic quality, quality of life in the long term,” explained Michael Kelley, policy director at BikeWalkKC.
The nonprofit focuses on accessibility in transportation. It supports the Vision Zero movement and successfully advocated for Kansas City leaders to increase funding for the program from $500,000 last year to $4.5 million this year. The city's committed more than $7 million so far to Vision Zero.
“The choice we have to ask ourselves is are we willing to lose our neighbors, lose our family members, are we willing to pay a price that steep?" Kelley asked. "Or are we willing to do something different that we know is going to save lives."
As someone who walks or bikes to work several times a week, Kelley has noticed some improvements around Kansas City, but admitted there’s more work to do.
Drivers and walkers told KSHB 41 News they admire the city’s goal of eliminating traffic deaths by 2030, but wonder how realistic the goal is.
“It’s a nice idea, it’s good to work toward, but I don’t know that we’d ever get there,” Morgan Parsons said, pointing out it’s hard to control individual drivers.
“It’s like an I’ll believe it when I see it, type of thing,” added Margaret Lisac.
Kansas City updates an online map of locations where its completed Vision Zero projects.
Anyone can provide suggestions for Vision Zero projects through the city's traffic calming request process, the myKCMO app, and residents can request funding for specific projects through the city's Public Improvements Advisory Committee (PIAC).
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