In early August, staff steering Metro’s federally funded Safe Streets for All project presented a new iteration of the high injury corridors data to jurisdictional and community partners working on roadway safety.
Explore city, county and regional high injury corridors
The high injury corridors explorer and story map is a tool for traffic and safety practitioners and communities of greater Portland to view and access high injury corridor GIS (Geographic Information System) data.
Go to the story map and explorer
Roadways are the meeting places of communities and can reflect the overall health of a region. Regrettably, traffic violence on highways, streets and roads is a persistent and growing problem, one that many have come to accept as part of everyday life.
Even though the greater Portland region has one of the lowest rates of traffic deaths in the country, there is more that can be done.
When Metro adopted the Regional Transportation Safety Strategy in 2018, it was clear that achieving Vision Zero would not be easy. It takes years of sustained effort to see significant reductions in traffic violence, and that requires a cultural shift in how people view and address roadway safety.
In the past ten years, state, regional and local transportation agencies and the communities they serve have adopted and started implementing transportation safety action plans. Their goal: eliminate traffic deaths and life-changing injuries using the proven Safe System approach, which has been very successful in Sweden, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand and other countries in Europe.
Recognizing high injury corridors is one of many strategies transportation agencies can use to address the epidemic of traffic deaths and life-changing injuries. The U.S. Department of Transportation Network recommends that all jurisdictions working towards the goal identify the high injury corridors in their area.
Did you know that nearly 60 percent of all fatal and serious injury crashes in the region occur on only about seven percent of roadways in the metropolitan area?
“Because transportation systems cross jurisdictional boundaries, it is crucial we tackle traffic safety challenges collectively and strategically, with a steadfast commitment to eliminating traffic-related deaths and serious injuries,” Catherine Ciarlo, Metro’s director of the planning, development and research department, said. “Identifying where crashes occur repeatedly and why is an important step in our collaborative efforts to focus deeply on roadway safety – using the Safe System approach – and make the region's collective safety actions more effective.”
Metro first identified high injury corridors in 2018 as part of the Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) and updated them in 2022 for the 2023 RTP. Now with the help of federal funding, Metro and regional partners are expanding on this work to support efforts that will hopefully lead to safer streets so that every person, regardless of their background, income or zip code, can enjoy the benefits of safe, accessible and reliable transportation.
In January 2023, Metro received a federal Safe Streets and Roadways for All grant to advance safety strategies. Half of the grant is funding the development of comprehensive safety action plans in Washington County, East Multnomah County and the City of Tigard and building their capacity to implement effective safety projects.
“As part of Metro’s grant, we are supporting those projects by providing safety analysis and identifying city and county high injury corridors for those plans,” Lake McTighe, a Metro principal transportation planner, said. “It’s our hope, too, that this additional analysis will be useful beyond those few jurisdictions and be a helpful resource for other jurisdictions and community partners in the region.”
Vision Zero
Vision Zero is a strategy to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries, while increasing safe, healthy, equitable mobility for all. First implemented in Sweden in the 1990s, Vision Zero has proved successful across Europe — and now it is gaining momentum in the U.S.
Learn more about Vision Zero
Preventing traffic deaths and serious injuries is an intersectional issue that is not only about physical street design but also social, economic and political power. Roadway safety challenges reflect systemic issues impacting communities large and small and disproportionately impact lower income and communities of color.
A Safe System approach creates a culture that puts safety and equity first and foremost in road system investment decisions.
“Our goal is really to prioritize systemic, corridor-wide safe system treatments on high injury corridors so we can proactively address the most serious safety issues in a city, county or region,” Kate Gregory, a Metro safety data GIS specialist, said.
In a Safe System approach, serious crashes are regarded as preventable and traffic deaths and serious injuries are unacceptable. When designing a transportation system with this approach as the foundation, the hope is that when crashes occur, they do not result in death.
Traffic violence is a public health crisis that can begin to be remedied through leadership who commit to righting historical and ongoing injustices carried out through transportation planning that disproportionately impact people with lower incomes and communities of color.
It is key for the designers and owners of the transportation systems to use a holistic view of the road system that first, anticipates human mistakes and second, keeps impact energy on the human body at tolerable levels.
Many transportation advocates refer to death and serious injuries on roads as “traffic violence” instead of “traffic accidents.” This intentional shift in language may seem like a misnomer, but it implies that crashes are not solely the responsibility of individuals.
One of the six principles of the Safe System approach declares: “Responsibility is shared among those who design, build and manage streets and vehicles; those who use these streets and vehicles; and those who provide care after crashes.”
"Behind this data are people whose lives have been impacted by crashes, but there are solutions that we can implement to make streets safer.” - Kate Gregory, Oregon Metro
Keeping equity at the forefront, Metro’s Safe Streets for All project team overlays high injury corridors with regional equity focus areas, which are places in the region with higher concentrations of people of color, people with lower income and people with limited English proficiency.
"Most of these [equity focus areas] also include higher than regional average concentrations of other historically marginalized communities including young people, older adults and people living with disabilities. So, the regional high injury corridors can be overlayed with the equity focus areas, and this is really important,” Gregory said.
While covering the 25 worst-scoring high injury corridors during a presentation of the storymap, Gregory took a moment to acknowledge that this data represents real people and real loss.
“I want to pause here and say, that the amount of orange and red on this map does look daunting,” Gregory said. “Behind this data are people whose lives have been impacted by crashes, but there are solutions that we can implement to make streets safer.”
Understanding the problem is half the battle on this road to zero traffic deaths. There are steps that can be taken to save lives and reverse the upward trend of serious crashes.
What the region can do is:
- Elevate the experiences and safety (or lack thereof) of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian and other people of color in the region’s processes and decisions.
- Prioritize near-term funding for safety projects, programs and operations on the most dangerous arterial roadways and for the most vulnerable users.
- Amplify the Safe System approach in all decisions, focusing on safe speeds, safe streets, safe people and safe vehicles.
- Work together in coordination, proactively creating a safer system to prevent serious crashes from occurring.
As the Safe Streets for All project progresses, Metro staff look forward to expanding on their analysis, as high injury corridors are just one piece of the puzzle, one way to look at the roadway safety problem.
During the discussion after the presentation, McTighe reiterated the importance of collaboration and invited people to reach out for technical support, continue to ask great questions and help improve Metro’s methodologies.
"We also would love to meet with any teams that are…looking at this wanting to delve in and understand,” McTighe said. There are a lot of layers to this analysis, and there are a lot of decision points, right? There's no one way to do this.”