FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The Fayetteville City Council unanimously decided to approve a plan designed to make the city safer in regard to traffic at their meeting on Thursday night.
The resolution was one of the consent items on the agenda which means it was approved in a single vote from the council.
The Vision Zero Purpose plan is an outline for cities to follow that can improve the safety of commuters.
“Along with the adoption of this regional Safety Action Plan, they adopted a goal of reducing fatal and serious injury crashes to zero over the next 15 years,” said the Executive Director of the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission (NWARPC), Tim Conklin.
The NWARPC worked with a consultant for six months to improve the region's transportation system, and they brought the plan to many communities across Benton County and Washington County. Four large cities decided to take steps to get the plan approved. Fayetteville was one of them.
“The cities are taking this planning to the city councils along with a request to apply for grants to actually implement the plan over the next 10 to 15 years,” said Conklin. “The priority is to look at how to improve those corridors where people are involved in crashes that lead to fatalities or serious injury type crashes ... and then looking at what proven safety countermeasures can be implemented in Northwest Arkansas.”
Some recommendations in the plan include roundabouts and reducing speed limits in some areas.
“If we don't start changing how we plan our transportation system and build it out and implement proven safety countermeasures, nothing will change and we will still have people in fatal, or serious injury crashes,” said Conklin.
Matt Mihalevich, active transportation manager for the City of Fayetteville said his department wants to focus on the safety of pedestrians and bikers.
“Building a trail along a road is a good example of how we can put those bikes and pedestrians out of the roadway and provide them a separate facility,” said Mihalevich.
Fayetteville will now start applying for grants to complete projects.
“It's called the Safe Streets For All program and is eligible for 25 million dollars in funding for these five projects.” Said Mihalevich. “One of them is Maple Street. We've been working a long time to try to have a better connection from the Razorback Greenway along Maple Street to the University of Arkansas.”
Both Conklin and Mihalevich emphasized how these plans are for the safety of the community.
“How many fatalities or serious injuries are acceptable to your family, your relatives, and your coworkers? To most people, [that answer is] zero,” said Conklin
Watch 5NEWS on YouTube.
Download the 5NEWS app on your smartphone:
Stream 5NEWS 24/7 on the 5+ app: How to watch the 5+ app on your streaming device
To report a typo or grammatical error, please email KFSMDigitalTeam@tegna.com and detail which story you're referring to.