Kamloops VISION Zero - The Good, the Bad,The Questionable

UPDATE - Kamloops VISION Zero Adopted: Councillors Bepple / Bass put forward and seconded a motion to adopt the VISION Zero strategy and action plan as written without understanding the costs.  Councillor Neustaeter asked for an amendment to have each action item associated with a cost that the council can decide on, the motion was seconded by Councillor Sarai and passed without any objection.  This should allow council to decide whether or not to act on individual sections of VISION Zero Kamloops road safety Strategy next year when the budget is released. No councillors asked any questions or raised any concerns raised by the KCSC. The closest concern raised was by Councillor Sarai regarding pedestrians being endangered by E-Bikes and scooters.

Today in the Committee of the Whole, the City of Kamloops is discussing VISION ZERO.  VISION ZERO Kamloops is a shift in thinking from designing transit systems around moving vehicles, to safely moving human beings. It incorporates safety systems into vehicles, road design and aims to reduce accidents to zero. Kamloops has adopted a Target of 2039 for ZERO accidents.

As a design idea, this makes sense. This idea has wide support from safety advocates, as well as the radical urbanist factions in larger cities who advocate for bike-centric development.

The Good:

KCSC believes there are benefits and lessons to be learned in Kamloops VISION ZERO thinking, such as designing roads to be safer, adding barriers between pedestrians and vehicles, increasing round abouts and right hand turn lanes etc. There are many general design features that can be improved on Kamloops roads to mitigate crashes and crash severity. KCSC has no issue with these design concepts, our questions come from the items below:

The Bad:

Of note some of the justifications in VISION Zero seem illogical, as always with sustainable development plans, context seems to be missing. It seems the plans are missing the big picture while focusing on a single result.

Kamloops VISION Zero correctly identifies that pedestrians are seriously injured at a higher rate when a vehicle is involved. This is true and is intuitive.  However, Kamloops VISION Zero is advocating for the same questionable policies as found in the sustainable development goals SDGs, and the Kamloops Community Climate Action Plan: The reduction in personal vehicle ownership. They advocate that placing more citizens into active transport will reduce the vehicles on the road and thus reduce serious accidents. This type of thinking seems right at first until you consider the obvious - Whereas Kamloops VISION Zero recognizes that car on pedestrian crashes are the worst, and pedestrians are over represented in these statistics, the call for more active transport is placing more citizens directly in harms way around the remaining vehicles.

Does this justification make sense? 

There are further questions around whether or not switching to active transport will reduce injuries at all.  If you do not consider that active transport accounts for a great deal of injuries, then yes - You may attain VISION Zero, but if all the plan does is shift the injuries from vehicle occupants to E-bike and scooter pilots, is this program really doing what it claims?  

KCSC would like the city to show that indeed, there will be less overall injuries and deaths with 50% of trips taking place on active transportation.

Additional Data Collected

Like we are seeing with transportation plans, the move to Maas (Movement as a service), and the move towards Smart City development, the government is again asking for more data. It's not clear what benefit of this data will have other than allowing the city to create more accurate reports on bicycle riders. Again we see a request for data and surveillance that will only provide a marginal at best improvement, but that also requires citizens to give up their privacy and be monitored, speed checked and tracked in their daily lives. Kamloops VISION Zero calls for Multi-Modal data gathering where speed and volume of all modes of transport are tracked - translated: The city wants to track and monitor scooters, pedestrians, E-bikes, Ride Shares  - All multi-modal transport in the name of statistics for safety.

KCSC doesn't see any benefit to adding this oppressive and intrusive form of monitoring.

Is this really necessary?  

Should the city be spending any money on this? 

And what are the privacy concerns? 

What equipment will be installed?

You can read the entire VISION Zero Kamloops Document here:

https://kamloops.civicweb.net/document/172541/REP_Vision%20Zero_Reduced.pdf?handle=AE198F4A04064AF7BF84F372021AECD6

 Watch the council meeting live here:

https://www.youtube.com/@CityofKamloops/streams

Today we sent the following questions to council before they received the presentation from the transportation manager.

QUESTIONS TO COUNCIL/MAYOR

Is putting more citizens in harms way, making them safer?

Given that:   Humans make mistakes

Given that:   The data clearly shows that pedestrians are more likely to be seriously injured in an accident when a vehicle is involved

•  Is it logical that the Target Zero claims that increasing active transport (increasing number of pedestrians in harms way of vehicles) will reduce the number of serious accidents?

Will there be a NET benefit in injuries/harm to humans by shifting them to scooters and E-bikes?

Given That: We are moving human beings from being transported within steel boxes with safety equipment, and putting them on bicycles, scooters and E-Bikes. 

Given that: People injure themselves, pedestrians, and even die using active transport (even when no vehicles are involved)

Given that: People travel magnitudes more kms in vehicles than they do on active transport

•  What are the injury rates for bicycles, scooters and E-Bikes?

•  Are the stats comparable in accidents/kms travelled?

•  Will there be more or less people injured from E-Bikes?

•  Overall will there be more or less people injured, and does “Target ZERO” take into account the injuries of active transport users?

Multi-Modal Data Tracking

•  What data will be recorded in the proposed “Multi-modal traffic volume and speed data program”?

•  Is this really necessary?

•  This seems like it will only provide a marginal improvement in safety and understanding, but would result in speed traps and tracking of all modes of      transportation.  There is a privacy concern. But also what is the COST for this, is the cost worth the benefit? 

Note:  No councillors or the mayor asked any questions related to data collection, or whether or not there would be a net benefit in total injuries.

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