In 2015, a two year-old child was killed at the corner of Bel-Red Rd and 140th Ave NE while on the sidewalk with her mother. Following this tragedy, Bellevue City Council passed an ordinance to pursue adopting Vision Zero. Further votes taken in 2016 and 2020 implemented Vision Zero policies in the city’s Comprehensive Plan and instituted a Safe Systems approach to achieve Vision Zero by a 2030 deadline. Since then, Transportation staff have published annual reports to detail the city’s progress  and strategies implemented to achieve Vision Zero. 

Everyone who has ever lost their life or been seriously injured on Bellevue’s streets has been somebody’s family, somebody’s friend, or somebody’s loved one. Nobody should have to receive the call letting them know that their loved one has been killed or seriously injured just trying to get where they need to go. And if we truly believe that everyone deserves to get where they’re going safely, then we must acknowledge that these outcomes are not only unacceptable, they are immoral.

Vision Zero as a philosophy understands that we can make different choices to create a transportation system that prioritizes the safety of everyone who travels on our streets. We don’t have to accept these losses, these injuries, these irrevocable changes in people’s lives as “the cost of doing business.” We can have safe streets and reliable mobility for everyone who travels in Bellevue. We can have safe streets and economic vitality by enabling people of diverse backgrounds and travel modes to access important destinations. And we can have safe streets and a sustainable, resilient community when we lower our emissions and mitigate climate change by prioritizing infrastructure for low-emission modes of travel. 

Yes! Fundamentally, serious injuries and deaths occur in collisions because the human body is subjected to forces that it cannot survive. Through better street design, fewer cars on the road, and lower speeds, we reduce the likelihood of severe collisions occurring, while making a better city for everyone. Planning a transportation system for Vision Zero has been recognized as a best practice by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), and many more planning agencies. Cities around the world (like Helsinki, Finland and Oslo, Norway) and right here in the United States (like Hoboken and Jersey City) have already seen years without people dying on their streets. Bellevue has the opportunity to be a leader on street safety by being the first major West Coast city to fulfill its Vision Zero pledge.

Using existing street space to create facilities for people who walk, bike, roll and take transit is a fiscally responsible, environmentally-conscious, and safe way to encourage more people to use these modes. The data on these facts are robust and well-studied, so here are just a few points of mention:

• Protected, on-street bike lanes have been shown to reduce collisions and injuries by between 30-50%, improving safety for all road users in the process. 
• Road diets have been shown to reduce overall collisions by up to 47% by reducing conflict points, improving visibility, and naturally lowering speeds – with minimal to no impacts to congestion.
• By making transit faster and more reliable, bus lanes help improve transit ridership and encourage people to take the bus instead of driving. This reduces overall vehicle miles traveled (VMT), which has been shown to have a direct impact on improving safety outcomes.
• By making it harder to speed, complete streets infrastructure can reduce the instances of noisy street racing, which makes our neighborhoods quieter and improves residents’ quality of life.

Rather than relying on costly, long-term projects to expand right-of-way, we believe the most effective way to improve the safety of all who travel in Bellevue with the urgency required is to use existing street space to build this infrastructure.

The state of Washington grants jurisdictions the authority to create a Transportation Benefit District, a legal entity subsumed by the jurisdiction that can levy new revenues that must go specifically to transportation projects and programs. Bellevue has created its Transportation Benefit District but has not yet chosen to collect revenues. The state legislature allows cities to levy sales taxes, vehicle registration fees, and other miscellaneous fees to generate revenue for the TBD.

Bellevue leaders look to be evaluating a 0.1% sales tax on goods purchased within city limits, which is projected to generate approximately $11 million/year, at an annual cost of about $30 per Bellevue household. In addition, implementing a $20 car tab fee on every vehicle registered in Bellevue is projected to generate $2 million annually. The total new revenues would thus be $13 million annually if Bellevue were to enact both of these options. 

Our funding proposal prioritizes infrastructure for people who walk, bike, roll, and take transit, but this does not mean that benefits are restricted to people who use these modes. Implementing lower speed limits and speed cameras will keep everyone, including drivers, safe by preventing reckless speeding and street racing that endangers our communities. Modal filters and increased investment in neighborhood mobility projects will prevent cutthrough vehicle traffic that can endanger seniors, children, and residents of single-family neighborhoods. The construction of new sidewalks and bike lanes creates dedicated space for vulnerable road users that reduces conflicts between people driving and people walking, biking, and rolling. This makes the driving experience less stressful and more predictable. Finally, creating infrastructure that supports people who cannot or have options to not drive helps remove cars from the street, which ultimately reduces traffic for those that still need to drive. 

Washington state’s tax code is currently the 49th most regressive in the nation, in large part because of our overreliance on sales taxes and an absence of a progressive income tax. It is true that sales taxes will disproportionately burden lower income families and people of color. However, these are also the communities that most rely on non-car transportation options like walking, biking, rolling, and taking transit. Because tax policy is set at the state level, the City of Bellevue must use the resources that the state legislature makes available, and a new sales tax is the available revenue stream that enables the most new investment to address the clear need. To mitigate negative impacts, we believe the city should invest these new resources in infrastructure that will benefit the communities that are most impacted, i.e. infrastructure for people who walk, bike, roll, and take transit. 

Furthermore, financial projections estimate a 0.1% sales tax (increasing Bellevue’s total sales tax from 10.3% to 10.4%) would cost the average Bellevue household about $30/year, or $2.50/year. This is not an insignificant sum, but if these funds enable more people to walk, bike, and take transit in their neighborhoods through new crosswalks, bike lanes, and faster bus times, this cost must be weighed against the myriad individual and community-level benefits provided by this new revenue.

With 35,000 housing units and 70,000 jobs coming between now and 2044, Bellevue is a rapidly-growing city. With that increased density will certainly come growing pains, but we can mitigate the negative impacts through smart transportation investments. Adding lanes to our streets encourages more driving, makes people outside of cars less safe, and makes our communities less healthy – all while being incredibly costly and not delivering on the promised congestion relief in the long-term.

With limited street space available, the only surefire way to reduce congestion is to reduce the number of vehicles on our streets. Through better land use policies, more affordable housing, and support for community-scale businesses, we can make it easier for more people to access more destinations in our city without a car. But we need facilities and infrastructure that supports people outside of cars while keeping them safe.

Finally, our current street network helps everybody inside of a car get where they need to go reliably. However, whole neighborhoods of our city are inaccessible and outright dangerous for people walking, biking, and taking transit. Sincerely prioritizing the safety of everyone who travels in Bellevue requires us to ask an important question – are drivers willing to spend a few seconds longer waiting at a light or on a street if it means that everybody gets home safely? We believe that answer should be yes.

Part of a safe community is making sure that response vehicles are able to travel to and from an emergency as quickly as possible. According to information from the Federal Highway Administration, safe streets infrastructure like bike lanes, road diets, and transit infrastructure can actually improve emergency response times. This is because these installations – central left-turn lanes, transit lanes, two-way bike lanes, etc. – create space that emergency responders can travel on to bypass other vehicles. Since these infrastructure improvements also help reduce motor vehicle crashes, the benefits to safety are two-fold – all while improving mobility for all who travel on our streets.

Complete streets and tactical infrastructure don’t just keep our community safe. They support Bellevue’s overlapping values of accessibility, sustainability, equity, health, and resiliency in the following ways:

• When we build infrastructure that encourages more people to ditch their cars, we lower emissions and improve air quality, which keeps our neighborhoods healthy and clean. 
• Gas, insurance, maintenance, and all the other costs associated with cars keep vehicle ownership expensive. We create a more equitable transportation system that supports people of all income levels when we make it more possible to get around safely without a car. 
• Tactical infrastructure for people walking, biking, rolling, and taking transit (like on-street bike lanes, crosswalks, and transit lanes) is much cheaper to build and maintain than roadway expansions. Prioritizing investments in safe streets and multimodal infrastructure will keep Bellevue resilient and nimble in the face of upcoming economic uncertainty.  

For more information on Bellevue’s street safety progress, you should consult the city’s Vision Zero Data Dashboard. This webpage shows the locations and data behind serious collisions that have occurred over the last decade, and it’s been a huge source of information for our campaign. 

This campaign is led by Complete Streets Bellevue, an advocacy organization that supports sustainable and accessible transportation options. We engage with the community, form partnerships with other organizations, and work with city leaders to create a better Bellevue. You can support our work by signing up for our newsletter or making a donation through our fiscal sponsor Urban Sparks. If you have questions, you can reach out to our director at crandels@cs-bellevue.org.