As I wrote in this Streetsblog USA article (November 28, 2025), some headlines suggest that Vision Zero is falling short in the U.S., but a closer look at what’s happening in Vision Zero cities tells a different – and more encouraging – story.
Case in point: Austin, Texas released an impressive 10-year report acknowledging that its citywide Vision Zero goal is still far off while also highlighting what is working to improve road safety. This includes reducing serious and fatal crashes by 86% at sites where they invested in traffic-calming improvements, by 15% on arterials where they lowered speed limits and by 42% where they added protected intersections. Austin’s 10-Year Vision Zero Report shares many additional on-the-ground success stories, along with analysis showing the city is saving hundreds of millions of dollars annually thanks to these road safety investments.
The Bluff Springs Road safety project in Austin led to a 30% reduction in crashes and a 58% decrease in high risk speeding.
Instead of labeling Vision Zero as a failure after not reaching the grand goal in its first 10 years of work, Austin’s leaders acknowledge the immense challenges, commit to scaling up what is working and remain committed to their goal. As Austin City Manager T.C. Broadnax states in the report:
“The headwinds we face in getting to zero are many: an inherited built environment that historically prioritized speed over safety, uncertainty in federal policies and funding and the rising size and weight of vehicles on our roads, to name a few. Yet even amid these challenges, we have seen real, measurable progress.”
Austin is not alone. Hundreds of projects in cities across the country show what’s working to improve road safety, including:
- Orlando reduced traffic fatalities by nearly 40% between 2020 and 2024. One specific strategy of enhancing street lighting at high-crash roadway segments helped reduce crashes by 34%.
- Columbus transformed a six-lane street to a two-lane street with a protected bike lane in each direction, resulting in a 50% reduction in crashes and 89% reduction in excessive speeding.
- San Francisco reduced speeding by an average of 72% in locations where speed cameras were added earlier this year.
- Milwaukee reduced “life-changing injury crashes” by 28% where they invested in Vision Zero improvements completed in 2023. Improvements include adding a speed hump on a street and successfully reducing excessive speeding from 30% to 2% ; and adding a two-way protected bike lane and traffic calming measures on another street, resulting in a reduction of speeding from 20% to 3%.
Bike riders on W. Highland Boulevard in Milwaukee. Source: Urban Milwaukee
As stated in the first Washington Post article (November 19, 2025) in a series (second, December 4, 2025):
“The evidence is irrefutable that Vision Zero improvements — such as adding crosswalks, giving pedestrians more time to cross and narrowing multilane roads in busy areas — do work, according to multiple transportation officials and engineering experts.”
The same story also acknowledges that these effective safety measures are slowed – sometimes blocked completely – by deeply entrenched barriers, stating:
“Motorists are hostile to measures that slow traffic and favor pedestrians. Local leaders give token or tepid support. Spending on pedestrian-friendly improvements is not prioritized. The U.S. government, meanwhile, never backed up its pledge with federal action or significant funds.”
But it's important to remember that all of those barriers can be overcome with enough public demand for safe streets and political will to make change that will save tens of thousands of lives each year. So don’t let skeptics write off Vision Zero as ineffective without taking a closer look.
Laura Rubio-Cornejo, Los Angeles Department of Transportation General Manager, was quoted in the Washington Post article, sharing what we're seeing in case after case: “Where we are redesigning streets, we are seeing the most improved safety outcomes.”
Now we need to show the public demand to ensure that decision makers flex the political will for road safety that has been too slow (or missing) in the past. It is time to scale up and double down on what works for Vision Zero and safe streets for all.