 Background
The
District of Saanich launched the Safer City Project in
September 2002. The identification of road safety issues
by the community is vital to ensure that the Safer City
project effectively
addresses the community's needs.
The program is supported through community participation and
action. Community stakeholders include the business community,
volunteer organizations (e.g. Speed Watch and Block Watch),
School District and Parent Advisory Councils and Residents' Associations.
Safer City is based on a similar program in Gloucester, U.K. In
January 2001, the City of Kamloops was
chosen to implement the Safer City pilot project. At the time,
it was the first plan in BC to put the theory of community
road safety planning into action. The experience gained, and
the tools and techniques developed for this project, provide
the basis for developing the Safer City Plan in Saanich.
KEY FEATURES Of the
Safer City Project 
The following features are the key elements that contribute to the success of the Safer City project.
A multi-disciplinary approach
Given the broad scope of the plan, there is a need for a comprehensive and multi-disciplinary team of practitioners. The management team includes engineers and planners from the District of Saanich, the Saanich Police and ICBC. There are specialist consultants supporting the project, including the project manager of the Gloucester Safer City project, who has been employed by local consultants to assist in this program.
Reactive and proactive projects
Safer City includes both reactive and proactive components. The reactive approach focuses on improving "unsafe" locations. The main elements of the proactive approach are the introduction of Safety Conscious Planning and Road Safety Audit processes, which aim to prevent unsafe situations from occurring in the first place.
Area - wide approach
An important difference between this project and other conventional road safety approaches, relates to the geographic scale of the areas being addressed. In general, Safer City will focus on area-wide approaches to dealing with issues rather than just working in "small pockets" of the City.
Policies
Policies for safety conscious land use, transportation and infrastructure delivery will be formulated. Such policies, once accepted by Council, will provide the foundation upon which safety conscious decision-making can be made.
Empowering Practitioners
An important component of the Plan relates to the "empowering" of public and private sector practitioners in state-of-art road safety. In this regard, CD-ROMs and web-based programs, developed by ICBC for bicycle planning, development planning and school safety planning will be provided, with accompanying training.
A unique element of the project is the development of the Safer Transportation Network Planning (Safer-TNP) software, which has been custom-developed for use in the Safer City project.
Community Consultation
Consultation with the community is most important to ensure that the Safer City project will be effective and sustainable. The project applies significant effort in identifying safety issues perceived by the community, and raising their awareness of the importance of road safety. The identification and evaluation of potential solutions to road safety issues, by the community, is of equal importance.
|
