MIDLAND, Texas — The City of Midland and Midland County have begun a collaboration on the Vision Zero Safety Action Plan, a plan that would hypothetically end traffic fatalities.
Vision Zero is being done alongside the plans already being made by the City of Midland, such as the five new intersections that will be receiving new traffic signals in 2024 and 2025.
Pedestrian accidents have been ticking upwards in Midland, a trend that the city has taken notice of.
“We've identified that over 50% of our accidents occur on only 4% of our roadways internal to the City of Midland," Midland Mayor Lori Blong said. "That's a really important statistic.”
In the past four years, Midland has over 15,000 documented crashes with almost 5,000 injured and 64 fatalities.
Vision Zero - which was adopted by the U.S. Department of Transportation - aims to eliminate such accidents with extensive research into various traffic safety issues.
“It's really just a program or a plan where we can come in and address a variety of safety issues," Director of Engineering Gabe McClelland said. "When I'm talking about traffic safety issues we're talking about pedestrian traffic and vehicular traffic.”
There’s a lot that goes into the planning phase. City engineers have to put a lot of hours into studying traffic and roads, along with determining speed limits to lower and where to put certain signs.
“So what we do is we study our 12 most traveled corridors and we identify things from litter abatement to traffic safety needs," McClelland said. "When we go in and we identify those needs, we then develop plans to address all those needs.”
McClelland said that some of those roads include Lamesa Rd., Andrews Highway, Midland Dr. and Fairgrounds Rd.
The city hopes that all of this work will lead them to being able to apply for a grant sponsored by the U.S. Department of Transportation and put an end to traffic deaths.
“We need to be making sure that we're addressing these as needs in our community," Mayor Blong said. "We also have the opportunity sometimes to address wants in our community, but I believe that Vision Zero represents the needs that we most need to address and safety in our community."
As part of the plan, Midland has created a Safety Task Force to complete road studies and get community input. They hope to apply for funding of up to $25 million and are on a current timeline to complete their plan and adopt it by May 2024.