Mayor announces the City of Everett’s commitment to achieving zero roadway fatalities

Special to The Advocate

  Mayor Carlo DeMaria is pleased to announce the City of Everett’s commitment to achieving zero roadway fatalities.

  The City of Everett has, for many decades, endured the negative effects of excessive vehicle traffic on our roadways that has impacted the health and safety of our residents. Over the past five years, seven people have lost their lives and 656 more have suffered serious injuries on our roadways due to vehicles traveling at excessive rates of speed, inadequate pedestrian and bicycle facilities, unsafe roadway designs and signals and other infrastructure deficiencies. These deficiencies are the legacy of outdated policies that placed the speed and efficiency of automobiles above that of our residents. The City of Everett recognizes these traffic deaths and injuries as an unacceptable and preventable public health issue.

  As Mayor of Everett, I hereby commit the City of Everett to ending traffic-related fatalities and serious injuries occurring on our streets by 2030.

  Achieving this goal will take a coordinated effort across our City departments and continue the work the City has already done to improve our roadways, intersections and multi-use paths in a manner that the safety and well-being of Everett residents is prioritized first and foremost. It will require making smart civic investments utilizing dynamic partnerships with federal and state agencies as well as our many community partners. I hereby instruct all City departments, divisions and personnel to work with the Planning and Development Department, Transportation Department, Police, Fire and City Services Departments as well other community partners to develop a Comprehensive Safety Action Plan and utilize available state and federal funds to achieve this goal.

  Residents in our community deserve to feel safe whether they walk, bike, ride or drive. Each year, we are reminded of this as students return back to school and we see an increase of our students and residents walking our City’s streets to get to where they need to go. We have taken steps to improve our roadway safety by lowering our speed limit on secondary streets and adding better traffic control measures, but we can do more as a community. As Mayor, I feel it’s important to make this commitment now more than ever.

  By taking these important steps, we will be able to achieve this important safety goal of eliminating roadway fatalities by 2030.