© 2024 WRVO Public Media
NPR News for Central New York
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Syracuse taking steps to eliminate crashes with Vision Zero partnership

Clinton Street in Syracuse is now a two-way street, as part of a city effort to make downtown easier to navigate.
Jessica Cain
/
WRVO
Clinton Street in Syracuse is now a two-way street, as part of a city effort to make downtown easier to navigate.

The City of Syracuse is taking its first steps towards getting feedback on a plan to eliminate dangerous crashes on city streets. City planners are looking for public input on ideas that would make streets safer.

On average every year since 2019 there have been 113 serious crashes the City of Syracuse, leading to more than eight fatalities and 122 serious injuries. Mayor Ben Walsh’s answer: joining forces with the nationwide Vision Zero Network. City Special Projects manager Neil Burke said there’s a common theme among the strategies being discussed to make streets safer: slowing down traffic.

"So the more we can do to reduce speeds, the better," Burke said. "So a lot of our focus will be on calming traffic. And you've seen us start that already with things like speed cushions and speed humps, striping narrow lanes. So we want to take an all above approach to this."

Changing speed limits within the city is a potential strategy. Burke notes that while New York State controls speed there is now more flexibility in municipalities.

"They recently passed an updated law that allows cities and villages to go from 30 to 25 area-wide," Burke said. "We're not sure if that's going to be one of these recommendations, but it's absolutely something we want to hear from the public about and something that we're going to explore further throughout this process."

Burke expects a final report to be ready in a year.

Ellen produces news reports and features related to events that occur in the greater Syracuse area and throughout Onondaga County. Her reports are heard regularly in regional updates in Morning Edition and All Things Considered.