Santa Rosa, California offers a promising model to advance Vision Zero in a (mostly) suburban environment. Like many American cities, Santa Rosa (population 170,000) boasts a challenging mix of road designs and land uses, with some roads originally designed for higher speeds than needed. Santa Rosa’s team analyzed safety issues while developing its Vision Zero Action Plan and found that the majority of serious crashes were related to high speeds and conflict points between road users.
In our September webinar, we talked with Santa Rosa Transportation Director Dan Hennessey, about how his team’s work is focusing on proactively and systematically managing speeds by improving street designs and lowering speed limits.
Hennessey emphasized two main ways to reduce severe injury and fatal collisions: One is by separating people in time and space and reducing the likelihood that a crash occurs (exs: designing Complete Streets with separated space for people walking and biking, and improving intersections). And the other is by reducing speeds in various ways, which particularly helps reduce the severity of crashes that do occur.
Addressing High Speeds Systematically
Recognizing that high speeds are a significant risk factor, Santa Rosa has implemented a Safe System approach that manages speeds across the road network, particularly in high-risk areas. The city’s Vision Zero Plan includes 47 specific actions designed to lower speeds and make streets safer for all users, specifically emphasizing changes that can proactively prevent severe crashes.
New state legislation, Assembly Bill 43, has been instrumental in Santa Rosa’s efforts to manage speeds. This bill gives California cities the authority to reduce speed limits by an additional five miles per hour in areas where people walking are mixing with drivers, such as business districts.
“We took advantage of that immediately,” Hennessey explained, to lower speed limits on more than three dozen streets identified as part of the High Injury Network (HIN). Santa Rosa’s HIN makes up just 10% of the city’s streets but accounts for nearly 70% of its severe crashes. Simultaneously, their HIN, when overlaid with their equity-priority neighborhoods, highlighted that many of the most dangerous roadways run through lower-income and marginalized communities (this is, unfortunately, very common in U.S. communities – read more).
Santa Rosa’s approach goes beyond just lowering speed limits. Its Vision Zero work also emphasizes self-enforcing street design, where the physical design deters higher, dangerous speeds. Examples include narrowing travel lanes, raised crosswalks, curb extensions, and speed humps. “Speed limit reduction by itself, is not going to be the end all be all, but this does provide us an opportunity to create a self enforcing loop of speed limit changes and design changes,” Hennessey explained.
Scaling up Safety-Focused Street Design
Along with lowering speed limits, Santa Rosa is prioritizing street design changes that separate users in time and space. This includes creating dedicated, safe space for people walking, biking and driving, along with redesigning intersections so that they improve visibility and improve these common conflict points.
California's new daylighting law, which passed in 2023, has become a key part of this strategy. The policy prohibits vehicles from stopping, standing or parking within 20 feet of a marked or unmarked crosswalk. Daylighting increases visibility for both drivers and pedestrians, offering everyone a better view of their surroundings, reducing the risk of unexpected conflicts. Santa Rosa is leveraging this new law as an opportunity to apply design improvements across its High Injury Network, focusing especially on intersections and high-risk corridors in historically underserved neighborhoods.
SFMTA’s before and after daylighting’s impact on visibility
This systemic approach moves beyond isolated changes, or spot improvements, and toward more consistent citywide designs that improve visibility and safety.
As Hennessey explained, it’s important “to communicate to drivers and pedestrians what the expectations for them are. If they see this in a couple of individual locations, you know, that might be treated as this is unique to this space. And maybe I'm aware of it, maybe I'm not. But if you see it everywhere, this becomes part of our identity.
Quick-build projects are another tool Santa Rosa leverages to bring rapid, adaptable safety improvements to the community. Using flexible, temporary materials, the city can test various traffic-calming measures—such as narrower travel lanes, speed humps, and curb extensions—and adjust based on community feedback. They also organize “chalk-the-street” events to engage community members on potential street design changes, then gather feedback for the decision-making process. These hands-on events offer a chance for community members to envision the impact of proposed changes, literally, on their streets and public spaces.
Chalk the street, quick build project in Santa Rosa
Santa Rosa’s efforts demonstrate how even communities with challenging road networks can use Safe System approaches to advance safety for all on the roads. For communities across the country, this is an inspiring reminder that it is possible to prioritize safety over speeds.
For additional resources on speed management and the Safe System approach, check out the resources below:
- Fundamentals of the Safe System Approach, Vision Zero Network
- Prioritizing Safe Speeds in Vision Zero Planning & Actions, Vision Zero Network
- Safe System Approach for Speed Management, USDOT
- City Limits: Setting Safe Speed Limits on Urban Streets, NACTO
And, especially for those in California:
- California Safe Speeds Toolkit, SafeTREC at UC Berkeley
- Safe Speed Limit Setting - New Flexibility Under California State Law