Vision Zero Action Plan Development

The City of Lancaster is joining cities across the world in the Vision Zero movement to eliminate traffic-related deaths and serious injuries. To achieve this ambitious goal in Lancaster by 2030, we are working with our community and partners to develop a Vision Zero Action Plan.

Please take a few minutes to view this video to learn more.

Achieving the goal of Vision Zero in Lancaster will require attention and resources. Vision Zero is based on data collection and crash analysis that will identify the causes of crashes in our community and work to prevent them. The Lancaster Vision Zero Action Plan will include a prioritized list of street improvement projects, education initiatives, city programs and proposed changes to policy.

At the center of Vision Zero is the recognition that humans make mistakes and streets should be designed to minimize the impacts of those mistakes. This is a fundamental change from the traditional traffic safety approach.

From 2014 and 2018, between 600-700 crashes occurred on Lancaster streets involving 1,600 people each year; 73 people were killed or suffered serious injuries. Serious injuries require immediate medical attention and emergency transport from the crash site to the hospital.

In addition, some people are more vulnerable than others when involved in a crash. Cars and trucks are designed to withstand the impacts of a crash, while human bodies walking, biking, or motorcycling don’t have that kind of built-in protection. As a result, people walking, biking, or motorcycling are more likely to be killed or seriously injured when in a crash than people in automobiles. Crashes where someone is killed or seriously injured are sometimes called KSI crashes.

Using Lancaster’s crash data, the Action Plan will identify the streets and intersections with high crash rates. These will become part of a set of prioritized street and intersection improvement recommendations that will move the city toward achieving Vision Zero.

How can serious and fatal crashes be prevented?

One way to prevent serious and fatal crashes is through speed management. Traffic speed management is at the heart of all Vision Zero work because higher traffic speeds make crashes more likely to happen and make crashes more likely to result in a severe injury or death. The graphic below shows that when speeds are reduced from 30 to 20 mph, the likelihood of a pedestrian being killed or suffering a serious injury decreases by more than half from 40 percent to 13 percent.

The Lancaster Vision Zero Action Plan would not be possible without a grant from WalkWorks, a partnership between the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public health to promote active transportation through grants, education, and programming. Learn more at:

https://www.health.pa.gov/topics/programs/WalkWorks/Pages/WalkWorks.aspx