How approaching transportation planning through a public health lens can reduce traffic deaths.

In an interview with Streetsblog for The Brake podcast, outgoing head of Washington state’s Department of Transportation Roger Millar describes why he believes including public health in Vision Zero discussions is key to saving more lives and making U.S. streets and roads safer and healthier for the people who use and live around them.
Discussing Washington’s “safe systems” framework — an approach that prioritizes road design that minimizes the potential harm caused by inevitable human error — Millar notes his focus on “safe land use.” In this view, “What all car crashes have in common is cars. And if you have a threat to public health, the public health community says the first thing you do is, you separate people from the threat.”
For Millar, “if we can create spaces, communities, neighborhoods, centers that are built around mobility or access that does not involve an automobile, or that minimizes the use of automobile, we would be safer. We have to have this safer land use component to the safe systems.”
FULL STORY: What’s Missing From the Safe Systems Approach

Planetizen Federal Action Tracker
A weekly monitor of how Trump’s orders and actions are impacting planners and planning in America.

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DOJ Says Trump Has Power to Roll Back National Monuments
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Maryland Awards $1.25M in TOD-Related Grants
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Judge Rules in Favor of Massachusetts TOD Law
The court rejected an argument that the MBTA Communities law, which requires zoning for multifamily housing, is an “unfunded mandate.”
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