Testimony of Payton Chung, Smart Growth Committee, Sierra Club DC Chapter
Before the Committee on Transportation & the Environment on Thursday, May 13, 2021
Regarding The Need to Fully Fund the Vision Zero Enhancement Omnibus Amendment Act
Thank you, Councilmember Cheh, for convening this hearing and for being a champion of smart growth and transportation issues in DC. The Sierra Club is the nation’s oldest and largest environmental advocacy group, and we have 3,000 dues-paying members in DC.
The Sierra Club is grateful that the Committee on Transportation and the Environment is meeting today to have a roundtable regarding the surge in traffic crashes, fatalities, and injuries in the District. We are here today to speak in support of additional funding for D.C. Law 23-158, the Vision Zero Enhancement Omnibus Amendment Act of 2020.
Vision Zero represents the goal of eliminating traffic deaths. While the DC government has made efforts to provide safer infrastructure, a recent increase in traffic fatalities has made it clear that much more needs to be done. For this reason, we urge the full funding and implementation of this act. In particular, we would like to emphasize the importance of provisions that mandate pedestrian infrastructure improvements, reduce speed limits and turn-on-reds, and enhance crash response and reviews. These items are crucial to improving the safety of our roads as we must reduce the most common opportunities for potential crashes.
Street safety is a climate issue. Transportation is responsible for more than a fifth of DC's greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Department of Energy and Environment's Greenhouse Gas Inventory. To meet DC’s climate commitments of 50 percent emissions reductions by 2032 and carbon neutrality by 2050, the District needs (to quote the Clean Energy DC plan) “to get people out of cars” and onto zero-emissions and much more energy-efficient modes like walking and biking. This can only happen in significant numbers by creating a safe environment everywhere across our city, so everyone can feel that bicycles, walking, and new alternatives like electric scooters are reasonable and safe ways to travel.
Over half of Americans polled by People For Bikes said that they wanted to bike more for transportation, and most would-be cyclists cited fear of car crashes as a worry. A majority of Americans want to cut their transport carbon footprints ten-fold, if only we had safer streets.
While the Council and DDOT staff have done commendable work on planning for a sustainable future and improving bicycling infrastructure and laws, unfortunately this issue has not received the urgency it deserves. We are in the midst of a climate crisis. DC residents are continuing to die in avoidable traffic incidents in numbers higher than when DC initially adopted Vision Zero. Meanwhile, the existing process unfortunately spends too much time addressing complaints and hostility that are ultimately rooted in our decades-long history of promoting vehicular traffic and the needs of drivers over the needs of commuters using alternatives.
The city’s Vision Zero and climate goals are not compatible with this car-centric mentality, and the MoveDC plan has already laid out a carefully thought-out plan for the city’s transportation future to achieve these wider goals. Therefore, the Sierra Club strongly supports funding the Vision Zero Enhancement Omnibus Amendment Act, especially funds that would expedite the process to construct bicycle lanes, sidewalks, and other traffic safety improvements in alignment with the MoveDC plan and other expert recommendations.