2022 Vision Zero Summit Recap
On Tuesday, September 13th WABA hosted the 6th annual Washington Region Vision Zero Summit.
The event featured a number of panels (You can find the full agenda here!) and two keynote sessions.
Our morning keynote speaker Jennifer Boyd shared multiple clips with us from The Street Project, her documentary about the international safe streets movement. We talked about the history of pedestrian blame, speed and street design elements that can help drivers slow down, the history of safe streets protests, and what it means to have democratic streets that are safe for all. We also examined how to tell the story of Vision Zero as we think about how to build widespread support.
In our afternoon keynote session, Jessie Singer examined the structural issues at play when it comes to who is most impacted by traffic violence, and recognized that the language we use is powerful. She also talked about how we can use the information that we know about traffic violence to impact change.
A great big thank you to all of our panelists:
- Cheryl Cort, Policy Director, Coalition for Smarter Growth
- Sonya Breehey, Fairfax Families for Safe Streets and Coalition for Smarter Growth
- Jennifer Cooper, Steering Committee Member, D.C. Families for Safe Streets
- Kea Wilson, Senior Editor of Streetsblog USA
- Jordan Pascale, Transportation Reporter, WAMU
- Scott Brodbeck, Founder and CEO, Local News Now
- Jesse McGowan, Multimodal Transportation Planner Coordinator, Montgomery County Planning Department
- Tiffany Smith, Program Manager, Vision Zero Network
- Robert Mandle, Deputy Executive Director, National Landing Business Improvement District
- Andrea Lasker, Vision Zero Coordinator, Prince George’s County
- Zachary Bishop, Planner, Prince George’s County
- Sydney Walker, Communications Assistant, Prince George’s County
- Mike Doyle, Founder, Northern Virginia Families for Safe Streets
- Gillian Burgess, Steering Committee Member, People Before Cars Coalition
- Malaika Scriven, VP of Planning & Development, National Landing Business Improvement District
- Ron Thompson, Transportation Equity Network Organizer, Greater Greater Washington (as a moderator)
- Faith Walker, Executive Director, RVA Rapid Transit
- Jane Lyons, Maryland Advocacy Manager – Coalition for Smarter Growth
- Max Richman, Ward 7 Representative to the DC Bicyclist Advisory Council (DC BAC)
Throughout the day, our panelists emphasized that getting to safe streets will require a multi-pronged approach involving safe road users, safe vehicles, safe speeds, safe roads, and post-crash care.