2024 DC Youth Traffic Safety Town Hall Recap

WABA hosted the DC Youth Traffic Safety Town Hall on Saturday, September 7, 2024. This event was an opportunity for participants to learn about traffic safety and empower participants to vocalize transportation safety concerns.

The event was held in collaboration with Sasha Bruce Youthwork, the Children’s Legacy Theater, and the FH Faunteroy Community Enrichment Center, and sponsored by the DC Highway Safety Office. 

Along with WABA and our partners, participants had the opportunity to listen to an engaging speaker session and participate in activity stations. 

To kick off the event, Marvin Brown, co-founder of Ward 8 Bike Alliance, explored topics of traffic safety and environmental justice with maps showing the disproportionately high index of traffic proximity and rate of road deaths in Wards 7 and 8.

Following Marvin, students got to hear from Stone Koffi, a bike courier primarily working in Ward 8. Stone spoke about his lived experience on DC roads from different perspectives, from his prior experience as a delivery driver to delivering items by bike – to his personal experience taking transit.

Following the speaker line up, participants rotated between four different activity stations. 

Sweeetz La Bamba of Seasoned Setter’s, a community organization working to reduce injuries and save lives through educational experiences, hosted the traffic safety edition of Jeopardy, including questions such as, “What is the Stop as Yield?” and “Is it legal to ride a bike on a sidewalk in DC? ” The traffic safety trivia game was created by staff at the DC VIsion Zero office, incorporating lessons from the Safe System Approach.

Kori Johnson of Safe Routes Partnership, an organization working to advance safe walking and rolling to and from schools in everyday life, improving the health and well-being of people of all races, income, levels, and abilities, and building healthy thriving communities for everyone, hosted a traffic safety craft activity to engage participants in bracelet making with glow-in-the-dark and reflective beads and bookmark decorating while engaging participants in a conversation about traffic safety. The participants discussed how to keep their community safe and were encouraged to share what they learned with friends and family. 

Dr. Kiriazes with the Department of Engineering at Catholic University led a walk audit bingo activity with the participants. The walk audit activity trained participants how to assess the walkability and safety of their neighborhood streets, sidewalks, and intersections while Dr. Kiriazes shared her expertise in shared mobility, travel behavior, and multimodal systems planning for safe and sustainable urban environments. 

At the last station, participants worked with Joseph Hamd, a Youth Organizer with WABA, and Keisha Anderson, DDOT’s Community Engagement Coordinator for Ward 7, on questions regarding Vision Zero, transportation challenges, and government interventions. At the station, the attendees discussed survey questions from DC’s Vision Zero community survey.

When asked “What challenges do you face when moving around DC?” Participants listed a range of issues regarding transportation, including unexpected turns from cars, the cost of transportation, pedestrian safety, speeding, drivers running stop signs in school zones, and violence. 

When asked to reflect on what DC has been doing well to improve travel safety on DC streets, participants named flex posts, automated traffic enforcement to control vehicle speed, increasing the availability of public transportation, building bike lanes, and the Kids Ride Free transportation program. 

Participants offered a variety of suggestions when asked what policies, projects, or programs DC should implement to make DC transportation safer. Responses included more crossing guards, increasing the number of stop signs, safety programs for aggressive drivers, and increasing civilian knowledge regarding safe transportation. 

In addition, participants had the opportunity to pose their own questions. They asked “Why are there more bike and bus lanes in Columbia Heights than Ward 7 and 9?,” “What’s the safest form of transportation?,” and “How is DC planning to mitigate all the traffic?”

At the end of the event, participants shared what they had learned at the event. Many participants learned that 46,000 people lost their lives to traffic crashes in 2023. Other responses included the importance of bike safety, the need for more safety measures to protect bicyclists, speed as a contributing factor to traffic crashes, and how areas with predominantly black populations are burdened with an disproportionate number of freeways. 

We ended the event on a high-note with pizza and light refreshments! WABA looks forward to continuing working with youth to advance traffic safety, and ensuring youth perspectives are part of the transportation safety engagement in DC.