The Safe Streets For All project is continuing onward for the city, with the most recent step in the process being a presentation on the project to the city Planning Commission.

John Hartley with Stan Tech Consulting, who have been working with the city on the project, presented to the commission, providing an overview of the project.

“Safe Streets For All is a grant program funded by the USDOT,” Hartley said. “This funds local initiatives to prevent roadway fatalities and serious injuries. Obviously the goal is to reduce fatal and serious injury accidents within municipalities.”

The funding provides for two different types of projects; planning and implementation. The grant for Jamestown is a planning grant, and is set to leave the city with several concepts and what Hartley called 30% designs, which he said the hope is that it will allow for the city to implement some changes.

The process itself is a multi-filtered process, looking to provide safer people, vehicles, roads, speeds, and post-crash care. The overall idea is to reduce fatal or serious crashes within the city. Hartley went over with the commission what each section looks like, including driver’s ed and focusing on safer driving for people, safety items built into vehicles, safer roads through street design such as with crosswalks, intersections, and bike lanes, automated speed enforcement, designing roads that calm traffic, and improving response times to crashes and trauma care.

“So this is holistically, obviously this planning study doesn’t touch on all of this, especially safer vehicles,” Hartley said. “But it just gives you a sense that all five of these things really play a role in a safer street grid.”

Hartley then discussed the road action plan for the project, which includes setting goals, a safety analysis, engagement, recommendations, strategy for future projects, and designs.

Ten locations are being looked at with the project for concept designs. For the 30% designs, physical topographic surveys will be done on three streets or locations and Hartley said the plan is for those designs to be able to set the city up to move forward quickly.

Which areas get concept designs versus 30% designs depend on the time frame, Hartley added, or how soon they think they will be able to implement some of these improvements.

“So that’s going to tell us, if you’ve got something coming up in the next two or three years we might want to consider a 30% design,” Hartley said. “If we think, well we just redid the street five years ago, we’re not going to want to touch that, that’s probably going to lend itself to more of a concept and a longer planning horizon for those implementations.”

Hartley then discussed what a concept design was; an aerial image showing some concept changes allowing people to see where changes might be made to provide guidance to any potential future designs. On the other hand, a 30% design, while he said might not look much different, involves a physical survey that they will leave the city with. If a design is looking to be implemented, with the 30% design a survey will not have to be done again if it is recent to that design and nothing has changed. The design will include curbs, striping, and proposed traffic signal changes, and is what should be considered for potential projects within the next five years.

Hartley also addressed the goals of the project, including eliminating traffic fatalities and serious injuries, building capacity to support safety improvements long term, identifying and prioritizing projects the city can implement, and preparing the city to apply for future funding.

Schedule wise, Hartley said the project is moving fairly quickly. The study is looking to be wrapped up by March 2027. The contractors are moving quickly in identifying projects, as for the 30% designs surveys will need to be done before winter, but will most likely not be done until late summer or early fall. Concepts can be done quicker, allowing for some information to be presented during public engagement times. Hartley went over tentative dates for the project with the commission, gave an overview of the steering committee meetings that are ongoing, and what community engagement that has been done and is continuing as well.

A website is up for the project, .jamestownny.gov/safe-streets-4-all/, to help with some of that community engagement, along with upcoming tabling events. Hartley then spoke briefly on focus groups such as with Jamestown Community College and Chautauqua Health Network.

Moving into crash trends and safety analysis, Hartley said for the project they have downloaded crash data in the city over the last five years to look at where some of the crash patterns are, presenting maps and data to the commission. Injury crashes are looked at by severity, and Hartley noted that the fatality rate in the city is low.

Areas that might be more likely to have potential crashes, such as nearer to a school are looked at, along with community input. Following discussing some of the data being looked at and maps with the commission, Hartley then moved into the next steps for the project. Next steps include drafting project recommendations, policy work, progressing the design plans, future options, and a draft and final report in November.

The projects and recommendations framework was then presented, along with some specific streets that may be targeted in the overall project, collaboration and partnerships, transparency and tracking, a toolkit for traffic calming and speed control, before Hartley wrapped up his presentation with a few questions from the planning commission.