“Safe Streets for All” action plan now cued up for Dec. 4 Bloomington city council vote
A revised version of Bloomington’s draft “Safe Streets for All” (SS4A) action plan will appear on the city council’s Dec. 4 agenda.
The plan is supposed to guide the city’s work towards a goal of reducing the number of deaths and serious injuries on the city’s roadways to zero by 2039.
The Safe Streets action plan is proposed to become a part of Bloomington’s transportation plan, which is a part of the city’s comprehensive plan.
It was in April of this year when the council passed a resolution adopting a goal of zero roadway deaths inside of 15 years, and to develop and adopt an SS4A action plan.
At its Wednesday meeting, the city council was poised to adopt the SS4 plan, but decided to postpone consideration—after incorporating the revised plan into the resolution that appeared on the meeting agenda.
The reason for the postponement of the resolution was not because of any doubts about fundamental policy.
The delay was due to the fact that a new version had been swapped in shortly before the meeting. Even though there were no substantive policy changes in the new version, councilmembers wanted a chance to digest the many revisions.
The revisions included correction of typos, updated graphics, three appendices, and reorganization of action items. The revision also includes detailed descriptions of possible future funding, staffing, and other requirements that are needed to complete the plan.
Because the city council will be voting on a version that was different from the one that was previously approved by the plan commission, the revised SS4A plan will have to return to the plan commission for another approval.
If the council approves the SS4A plan at its Dec. 4 meeting, that will still give the city plan commission time to approve the revised version at its Dec. 9 meeting, that is, before the end of the year.
At the Wednesday meeting, planning services manager Ryan Robling told councilmembers that having an adopted plan fulfills an important requirement for grant applications. The SS4A is a grant program administered by the Federal Transit Administration.
The specific action steps in the plan are divided into short-term, medium-term, and long-term items.
Among the short term actions, which can start next year, is the study and implementation of suitable “rapid-implementation, low-cost safety countermeasures” at identified places in the city’s network. An example of such a measure are the stanchions, delineating bumpouts, that have been installed at the crosswalk across College Avenue at 14th Street. They decrease the practical crossing distance for someone using the crosswalk.
Some of the short-term items involve the study or procurement of additional funding.
But the GO (general obligation) bonds that were approved by the city council at its Wednesday meeting are supposed to provide $3.7 million of funding for engineering projects like those that are included in the SS4A action plan.
