Mayor Eddie Sundquist outlines the major steps in his Vision Zero public safety initiative. His plan would seek to eliminate all pedestrian deaths in the city by utilizing a variety of resources granted by the federal government. P-J photo by Timothy Frudd

Jamestown Mayor Eddie Sundquist believes the Vision Zero initiative could eliminate pedestrian deaths and significantly boost public safety.

“The idea for Vision Zero is to really enhance the Complete Streets model,” he said. “Not only are we looking at every street in the city for safety, for pedestrians, for bikers, but how are we also educating the public. How can we change behaviors to ensure everyone is safe?”

Sundquist said the city adopted the Complete Streets Program several years ago, which is a street design approach that considers how to safely build roads for pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists and transit riders. Since that time, the city has worked to slowly increase public safety through this program.

“It made sense to move toward a Vision Zero model because we had started seeing kids getting hurt in certain school zones,” he said. “The idea of having zero fatalities within the next 10 years is really important. We’ve really focused on ways that we can improve our streets.”

Sundquist said as the city continues to increase the number of bicycle lanes and multi-model traffic, the danger of traffic accidents could increase without proper precautions.

“We really just encouraged more ways to get around than ever before,” he said. “The more you do that, the more you need to educate people on sharing the road, sharing the sidewalks and making sure people get where they need to go safely.”

During a meeting last week of the City Council, local resident Melissa Paterniti raised several public safety concerns.

“In the city of Jamestown, there’s probably eight to 10 crosswalks in the middle of the road with a yellow sign, thinking people are going to stop,” she said. “The signage isn’t enough.”

The safety concerns Paterniti raised would be directly addressed with Vision Zero.

Sundquist said the federal government is launching a multi-billion dollar initiative to improve the safety of streets across the country.

“With the adoption of Vision Zero, which is really a plan to have zero fatalities within the next 10 years, we would be eligible to tap into that funding for street redesign work,” he said.

The mayor’s Vision Zero policy is on Monday’s City Council agenda. If approved, the city will apply for a planning grant from the federal government that would involve officials analyzing the entire street pattern of Jamestown and creating a full Vision Zero plan that would establish an outline for the next 10 years.

Application for the grant is due in September, and the mayor expects the city would find out if they received the federal grant by the end of the year or very beginning of next year.

“The first step is for communities to write a Vision Zero plan and the next step after that would be implementation,” Sundquist said.

While the mayor is not sure how much money the federal government’s grant would provide for the city’s plan, he believes it would be substantial.

Once the city completes a comprehensive plan for improving public safety, Sundquist said the city will focus on improving school safety.

“The first focus for us is safe routes to schools for our kids,” he said. “You can’t put a price tag on ensuring our kids get safely to their school. For us, that is the number one thing.”

The city has already been in contact with a consultant to make sure the city has the right crosswalks, road infrastructure and safe routes for children to use on their way to school.

Making the necessary improvements under the mayor’s Vision Zero policy will require a significant amount of funding; however, Sundquist said the federal government will provide the resources needed to undertake his initiative.

“At this time, we can apply to have it fully funded under federal programs, but the city has access to other funding sources that it can use to match if it needs to,” he said.

The state’s CHIPS program and an additional federal roads program are two alternative funding sources the city could use for the initiative if needed.

In addition to the Vision Zero policy, the city has discussed the use of school speed zone cameras and has worked with the superintendent of Jamestown Public Schools to implement additional sidewalk plowing for the schools.

“All of these things since we took office three years ago have been focused on improving our street infrastructure and helping to improve our pedestrians as they utilize our streets and our sidewalks,” Sundquist said.