Traffic Safety Action Plan to address pedestrian safety in Watsonville

With the passage of Watsonville’s “Traffic Safety Action Plan” comes the possibility of decreasing the amount of pedestrian injury and fatal accidents on Watsonville streets.

Since 2009, Watsonville has ranked as one of the worst communities for major injuries and pedestrian fatalities for cities that are the same size in California.

“It’s unacceptable for us. It poses a serious threat for our community,” says Matt Huffaker with the City of Watsonville.

The plan comes with a number of approaches, one of which includes some “outside the box” type thinking when it comes to revamping infrastructure in the city.

This includes identifying those problem areas for pedestrians and drivers in the city and labeling them as “Safety Zones.”

“We’ll be focusing on a number of safety infrastructure improvements along those safety zones,” says Huffaker. “This includes enhanced crosswalks and doing ‘pedestrian flags,’ which is somewhat unconventional but a number of communities use them and they have proved successful.”

Focused enforcement efforts will also be in place at various safety zones in the city.

The Watsonville Police Department will be adopting a “zero tolerance” approach when enforcing city ordinances in safety zones.

City leaders find pedestrian-injury accidents involve a number of factors. Speed, in particular, is something the city wants to have a little more freedom to regulate.

“Right now cities like ours don’t have the authority we need to reduce speed limits in certain areas,” says Huffaker.

To regulate this, Huffaker says the city would need to reach out to state lawmakers to be granted the authority to reduce the speed limit.

Last year 5 people were killed in pedestrian traffic accidents and about 30 were injured.

It’s a trend the city hopes to reverse by 2030, which is the time where Watsonville aims to not have any pedestrian or bicyclist fatalities/injuries.

ORIGINAL STORY

City leaders in Watsonville approved a “Traffic Safety Action Plan” with the purpose of decreasing, if not totally eliminating, pedestrian injury and fatal accidents on city roadways.

For years, Watsonville has been one of the most dangerous places for pedestrians for a city its size and within California.

There’s hope that trend can be reversed with this action plan with the implementation of specific projects for the city.

This morning on Wake Up KION’s Victor Guzman is live in Watsonville with details on the plan as well as some of the problem areas the city has identified in a recent survey.

That report is coming up at 6 and 6:30 this morning on KION.