In 2019, the Dallas City Council announced a bold commitment to take the city's first steps toward its goal of eliminating traffic fatalities.
City Council members said Dallas will become a “Vision Zero” city, joining an international list of communities whose leaders aim to reduce traffic fatalities and serious injuries by 50%.
The “Vision Zero” strategy assumes that drivers will make mistakes and crashes will occur. But it also envisions that roads could be redesigned in ways that reduce high-speed speeds, thereby reducing the likelihood of serious injuries or fatalities in crashes.
In 2019, the Dallas City Council announced a bold initiative to eliminate traffic fatalities and reduce injuries through Vision Zero. However, his NBC 5 investigation four years later revealed that the program still had not gained much traction. In our ongoing series Driven to Death, senior investigative reporter Scott Friedman delves into the reasons behind this delay.
But four years after Dallas took its first steps on the path to “Vision Zero,” documents obtained by the U.S. government show that NBC 5 investigates, and interviews with city officials showed that many of the plans are barely getting off the ground. Meanwhile, some of the city's most dangerous roads have yet to be reimagined to better protect drivers and pedestrians.
Buckner Boulevard is one such street. (An interactive map showing all the locations of personal injury accidents in North Texas is at the bottom of this page.)
NBC 5 investigates An analysis of TxDOT accident data found that within five years, at least 150 people were seriously injured and 24 died in traffic accidents in Buckner.
Twelve of the dead were pedestrians, including Luis Diosdado, who had been a patron in the Pleasant Grove area for decades.
On July 26, Munoz, wearing a distinctive cowboy hat, was pushing an ice cream cart along Buckner near Loma Garden Avenue when he was struck and killed by a pickup truck.
“It's just a matter of time,” said Muñoz's daughter, Elizabeth Diosdado Sanchez. NBC 5 investigates In Spanish, it means that drivers along Buckner reach very fast speeds.
“Hurry up,” Diosdado Sanchez said. She added that as we stood along the street, we could see how cars were passing by.
NBC 5's Don Peritz, also a former traffic sergeant with the Dallas County Sheriff's Office, helped time cars driving through Buckner.
Nine out of the 10 cars Peritz measured were traveling over the 40 mph limit. Some were traveling at near-highway speeds of 50 mph, or even over 60 mph.
Cars could be seen speeding and tires could be heard screeching in the area near Bruton Road, about a mile from where Munoz was killed.
“I've seen them go close to 100 miles per hour. Yeah, just racing, winding, you think, 'Oh my god,'” said Buckner, who has been at Buckner for decades. said Bobby Peterson, who also owns an auto shop. “That happens all day long here.”
The speed is half that in Bakker, which seems to be a deadly combination due to the constant flow of pedestrians crossing the road without using a crosswalk.
One after another, NBC 5 investigates I watched as people crossed Buckner in the middle of the block. It's not hard to see why, considering how far pedestrians have to walk to find a crosswalk in some places.
In Buckner between Bruton and Hume Drive, the crosswalks are more than a half-mile apart. A person who gets off the DART bus between two major intersections will have to walk 400 m upwards and then walk 400 m back in order to get safely from the bus stop to the shops on the other side of the street.
Diosdado Sanchez said he believes his father was not at the crosswalk when he was hit by a passing pickup truck because the light was too far to cross.
“I hope no one else loses their lives like my father did,” Diosdado Sanchez said in Spanish.
David Zipper, an expert on transportation policy and road safety strategies and a visiting fellow at Harvard University, said city and state transportation planners should stop building roads like Buckner Boulevard.
“This is a dangerously designed road,” Zipper said of Buckner Boulevard. “And I think it’s especially people on foot who are going to pay a disproportionate share of that price.”
Zipper said Buckner Street and other streets like it were built for speed over safety. He said that even though Buckner is lined with store entrances, pedestrians, and along a busy bus route, its wide straight lines give drivers the false impression that it's safe to drive at near-freeway speeds. He said it gives him a sense of security.
“The idea of building a bus stop on a road like this and not facilitating safe pedestrian passage to the station. To be honest, I don't know whether to call it crazy or inhumane or both. I was shocked by that because there wasn’t,” Zipper said.
What is Vision Zero?
In 2019, the Dallas City Council announced it would use a “Vision Zero” strategy to reshape the city's dangerous roads. In 2022, city councilors signed a formal pledge to eliminate traffic deaths and halve serious injuries by 2030.
However, we have obtained a draft Vision Zero 2023 progress report. NBC 5 investigates It showed that very few of the city's action items were completed, and many more were marked as “not started.” Other progress notes were left blank.
NBC5 investigates We asked city officials about these gaps in the report, and a few weeks later the city Department of Transportation released an updated version showing even more gaps had been filled in. Still, a memo attached to the updated report said it included just nine of the 40 items to be implemented in 2023. With only eight weeks left until the end of the year, we have completed, 24 are still in progress, and 7 are yet to be started.
The city has completed engineering safety assessments of five hazardous corridors, including Buckner Boulevard, and low-cost, rapid construction improvements are being considered, the report said.
Kathryn Rush, the city's chief transportation planner, said the city department completed a study using data from 2015 to 2019 to rank the roads with the highest number of fatalities and injuries, and the numbers are higher than those in Dallas. He said this shows there is a lot of room for improvement on the road.
The worst road at the time was part of the Great Trinity Forest Way south of Dallas, according to a city study. The Buckner area, from Lake June Road to Great Trinity Forest, was the second worst location.
An additional 138 fatal and serious injury crashes occurred across Buckner from 2015 to 2019, according to city data.
Asked how things got so bad, Rush said part of the reason was that there wasn't someone dedicated to using data to identify areas that had the highest number of injuries in the past.
Rush explained that even though the City Council approved Vision Zero in 2019, it took the city three years to create an action plan.
“We actually had no funding from.” [the] The term of the City Council is until October 2022. So, actually, from an implementation standpoint, we're just now approaching the one-year line,” Rush said.
Last year, Dallas City Council members complained about slow progress at a City Council meeting, and 24 months after the City Council first approved Vision Zero, city officials asked for another 24 months to implement the plan. He pointed out that
Dallas City Councilman Chad West believes the city council is still on board, but believes Vision Zero needs to be included in the 2024 bond funding plan so it can fund more significant safety improvements. He said that there is.
“We scream about it in the news media. We talk about it on social media in our congressional districts. But when it comes to fundraising, it's not even recommended, let alone voted on. It's a problem,” West said.
NBC 5 investigates The National Vision Zero Network also reviewed Dallas' action plan and found it lacked concrete measures to reduce high speeds and did not meet the group's national standards. found.
“We don't question any city's commitment to safety, but to truly be recognized as a Vision Zero community, we want to see a very clear timeline, strategy, and ownership. ” said Leah Shaham, founder of Vision Zero Network.
The group believes cities need to lower speed limits and narrow lanes or reduce the number of lanes in pedestrian areas to encourage drivers to slow down.
“I think in the last 10 years or so we've really found that there's such a direct relationship between the width of driving lanes, how roads are designed, and how fast people drive,” Shaham said.
Dallas' action plan sets a goal of completing 10 major Vision Zero projects by 2027. The plan does not specify what those projects will include.
Other goals in the plan are much smaller, such as installing improved crosswalks at three locations each year, but Rush said this is just to get the wheels spinning, and the city is trying to get more pedestrian crossings on the council. He said he hopes to accelerate the plan after funding is approved.
Great Trinity Forest and Buckner are also part of State Highway Loop 12, which can make dealing with the hazards even more complicated. Changes to these road segments will require additional approval from TxDOT.
Zipper said many cities have struggled to implement Vision Zero because city leaders quickly realize it's easier to say they want safer streets than to find a way to fix them. He said he was looking at it.
“Sometimes I worry that some of our local leaders will say, 'Well, great, I did it.'” We are now at Vision Zero, and I can focus on all the other issues they want to focus on, but actually issuing press releases accomplishes nothing,” Zipper said.
NBC 5 investigates When contacted, TxDOT said the agency welcomes discussions with the city about safety measures such as lowering speed limits and installing crosswalks.
Regarding Buckner, TxDOT said the city may ask the state to conduct a speed study to see if the speed limit should be lowered. The city transportation department said it has reached out to make that happen. NBC 5 investigates We will continue to demand answers from both sides about what they are doing to address the rising number of deaths on our roads.
So what would Dallas' streets look like if the city fully committed to Vision Zero? We'll explore that in our next report. We also visit a place called the “Texas of the North,” a city that has reduced traffic fatalities using strategies not seen in the metroplex.
Examine crash data
Crashes resulting in deaths and serious injuries in North Texas October 2019 April 2023
NBC 5 Investigates used data from the Texas Department of Public Safety to map all fatal and serious injury crashes in North Texas. TXDOT collects data from Texas Peace Officer Collision Reports (CR-3). TXDOT advises law enforcement agencies that “any collision involving a motor vehicle in transit that occurs or occurs on a roadway resulting in personal injury or death, or damage to property of a single person in the range of $1,000. We are asking you to report the case. ” The data compiled in this map is from January 1, 2019 to October 4, 2023.
Do you know about dangerous roads?
I need your strength. If you've identified a road where drivers are speeding or crashes are common, please email him the location at iSee@nbcdfw.com. In future reports, we will ask local leaders how they can address issues in other areas.
