Big changes like lower speed limits and rebuilt intersections are coming to neighborhoods across San Diego as city officials ramp up efforts to boost safety and prevent crashes that kill pedestrians and cyclists. City officials plan to begin reducing speed limits next year in pedestrian-heavy business districts and areas designated as safety corridors because they are used by many walkers, cyclists or vulnerable people like seniors. The city is also planning hundreds of new roundabouts, refuge islands, flashing beacons, countdown timers, widened crosswalks and pedestrian-friendly “delayed green” stoplights. A new “quick build” team will be tasked with installing safety and traffic-calming features at intersections in the immediate aftermath of any future deaths or major crashes there. And city officials will launch a new analysis of fatal crashes to identify traits common to the intersections where they happen and to determine what kinds of changes can be made. The new efforts come as city officials have been forced to concede they won’t meet the main goal of their current citywide Vision Zero campaign, which they launched in 2015 to reduce traffic fatalities to zero within a decade. Annual crashes with severe injuries have remained mostly flat since San Diego launched Vision Zero, hovering around 150 with a high of 184 in 2018 and a low of 113 during the pandemic in 2020. And deaths have actually risen — from 46 in 2014 to 67 in 2021, 69 in 2022 and 70 in 2023. City officials say the worsening death rates could be driven by growth of several things — including distracted driving, the numbers of pedestrians and cyclists and the sheer size of vehicles on city streets. They told the City Council’s infrastructure committee last month that the answer is more comprehensive efforts, and more money — $186 million over the next five years. Vision Zero has gotten $26.7 million per year on average since its launch. That has paid for 56 miles of protected bicycle paths, 16 roundabouts, 102 flashing beacons, 12 guardrails, 125,000 linear feet of new sidewalk and a variety of new traffic signal innovations. Those include 1,000 signals with countdown timers, 300 signals that make noises for visually impaired pedestrians and 150 signals with lead pedestrian intervals — a delayed green for drivers that lets pedestrians get a safe head start crossing. But one thing missing has been tougher police enforcement. Sgt. Gregory Minter said staffing remains a key problem, because officers must prioritize emergency calls over traffic enforcement. And about 150 of the department’s 2,000 officer positions are vacant. But Minter noted that the city does get grants to boost traffic enforcement, citing a recent $1.1 million federal grant that pays for shifts of four officers to spend eight hours on traffic enforcement. He also told the infrastructure committee that enforcement has become more challenging. “Distracted driving is becoming a bigger issue with all the electronics in cars — and our phones,” he said. There’s no indication yet that speed cameras might be pursued as part of an enforcement crackdown. Legislation that took effect earlier this year allowed six cities around California to create pilot programs to use speed cameras to ticket drivers — much the way cities already do with red-light cameras. San Diego wasn’t one of those six cities. Transportation officials said they have no immediate plans to begin deploying such cameras, saying that seeking to participate in such a program was a policy decision the City Council would make. Other Vision Zero efforts thus far have included making it easier for neighborhood leaders and concerned citizens to request traffic-calming efforts by launching a traffic request section of the city website. The website got a record 7,000 requests during the fiscal year that ended in June, creating a backlog of more than 1,000 requests. “Neighborhoods know the problems in their neighborhoods the best,” said Councilmember Stephen Whitburn, chair of the infrastructure committee. Pedestrians cross at the intersection of Sixth Avenue and Juniper Street on Sept. 19, 2024, in San Diego. (Meg McLaughlin / The San Diego Union-Tribune) The city’s new campaign will continue to focus on fulfilling neighborhood requests and revamping intersections, but city officials said they are particularly focused on the effort to reduce speed limits. It was made possible by AB 43, a 2022 state law that gives cities much wider discretion to reduce speed limits on some streets and maintain speed limits on others where they previously would have been forced to raise them. State law generally requires cities to set the speed limit for a section of roadway at the higher end — the 85th percentile — of the speeds cars typically are driven on that street. The rule has frequently forced San Diego and other cities, after analyzing how fast cars typically drive on a street, to raise the speed limit despite objections from elected leaders and nearby residents. AB 43 gives cities the discretion to maintain the speed limit on a segment of road even if a study determines the 85th percentile speed is faster. San Diego officials say this has allowed them to avoid raising speed limits on 86 segments of local roadway since the law took effect nearly three years ago. But city officials aren’t stopping there. They recently secured more than $3 million in federal grants to pay for a comprehensive speed management plan that will allow the city to lower speed limits in special areas. The speed management plan, scheduled for completion in December 2025, will help identify pedestrian-heavy business districts and safety corridors where the city can legally reduce speed limits. City officials have already studied 38 suggested such business districts, formally called business activity districts, and determined 11 of them meet the state’s criteria. To be eligible, an area must have a high concentration of retail and dining businesses, and have marked crosswalks and stoplights or stop signs. The districts are expected to be more common in urban neighborhoods. Of the 11 already deemed eligible, six are in coastal council District 2, four are in urban core District 3 and one is in mid-city District 9. But the state law makes other kinds of areas eligible for lower speed limits, too, if they can be designated a safety corridor, which means there is a high concentration of cyclists, pedestrians or vulnerable people like children, seniors and homeless people. Lowering driving speeds is crucial to reducing fatalities, city officials say. Studies show there is an 8% chance of a fatality in a crash involving a pedestrian at 20 mph, a 20% chance at 30 mph and a 46% chance at 40 mph. Critics note that San Diego is far behind Los Angeles in taking advantage of AB 43. Shortly after the law took effect in 2022, Los Angeles designated 177 miles of streets for lower speed limits. San Diego has not done so on any. The $3 million in federal grants will also help San Diego update its bicycle master plan and study ideal places for so-called slow streets — segments of road where car access is either prohibited or limited. The city created several slow streets during the COVID-19 pandemic but abandoned them after resident backlash. The grants will also pay for a “quick build” team in low-income areas of the city that are deemed historically disadvantaged under federal law. When there is a major crash at an intersection or a large number of complaints, the team will immediately study the situation and quickly make changes like adding a refuge island — a raised area in the middle of a busy street where pedestrians can safely stop. City officials said they will ask for funding in the upcoming budget to expand the quick-build team citywide. Of the hundreds of new traffic-calming projects planned by the city, more than 100 are either under construction or already fully designed and soon to be built. They include 60 continental crosswalks, which feature extra wide white painted lines, and also 20 roundabouts, 20 flashing beacons and eight HAWKS — high-intensity activated crosswalk signals. At a HAWK signal, pedestrians press a button, and approaching drivers see flashing yellow lights, then solid yellow lights and then red lights. City officials said they also plan to change how they analyze previous fatal accidents, for the first time combining reactive and proactive approaches. Maggie McCormick, the city’s deputy director of transportation, said the city will analyze 500 intersections that have characteristics similar to ones where people have been killed in vehicle crashes. The goal, she said, was figuring out the traits shared by those intersections where nobody has died and determine what changes the city can make to the deadly ones. Paul Coogan, chair of the Normal Heights Community Planning Group, urged city officials to spend more on Vision Zero. “The funding for this program is far too small,” he said. “It’s like draining an ocean with a thimble.” City Council members expressed support for the more aggressive approach. “This is a life-or-death issue,” Whitburn said. “We need to act decisively.”