By Beatrice Brittneff, Global News Ottawa, December 4, 2019
Reducing the average rate of traffic deaths and collisions causing serious injuries each year by 20 per cent over the next five years isn’t an ambitious enough goal for the national capital, community leaders and residents told Ottawa councillors on Wednesday.
A number of people who use Ottawa’s roads lamented that the City of Ottawa isn’t adopting ‘Vision Zero’ – a program that aims to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries – in its new road safety action plan for 2020-2024.
“This is a ‘Vision 20 per cent reduction,'” Ecology Ottawa’s executive director Robb Barnes said of the proposed plan.
The new road safety plan – the city’s third – has been two years in the making and was announced by the mayor and transportation committee chair Stephen Blais last week. The third generation of the plan is proposing new initiatives to enhance safety in four main areas – cyclists, pedestrians, high-risk drivers and rural roads – in order to reach its 20 per cent goal by 2024.
https://globalnews.ca/news/6253664/ottawa-traffic-death-reduction-plan-reaction/