Join Strong Towns San Diego's letter to the Mayor and City Council to make San Diego's streets safe!

Dear Mayor Gloria and Councilmembers,

On behalf of Strong Towns San Diego, we are calling for immediate, citywide action to make our streets safe for children and families.

On October 20th, three students walking to Pershing Middle School in San Carlos were hit by a driver. Twelve-year-old Andrew Olsen was killed, and his sisters hospitalized. In the past year alone, multiple serious crashes near the same school have injured other children. And more in similar locations around the city. These are not accidents. They are the predictable result of design choices that make it feel safe to drive fast where people walk.

Across San Diego, we have built stroads, wide, high-speed corridors that try to function as both streets and roads but fail at both. They move cars too fast for the neighborhoods around them yet too slowly to serve as true through routes. They are designed for speed, not safety, and the result is tragedy.

This is not only a moral emergency. It is also a financial one. Nationally, traffic crashes cost society more than $340 billion every year in emergency response, medical care, lost productivity, and property damage. $40 billion alone just in pedestrian and cyclist injury. A single severe crash can cost a city hundreds of thousands of dollars in police, fire, legal, and long-term care costs. In contrast, studies show that traffic-calming investments generate a net positive financial return when accounting for reduced injuries, lower liability, increased local spending, and higher property values (Daniels et al., 2019; Litman, 1999; Miller et al., 2004).

In other words, San Diego cannot afford not to act. We recognize that the city has already committed to installing a stop sign at this intersection, but we think that action stops short of the real root causes of this crisis. Quick-build safety projects are one of the few investments that improve both the city’s fiscal outlook and everyday life for families. At a time when San Diego is struggling to raise revenues and increasing fees elsewhere, this is an opportunity to strengthen the city’s financial condition in a way that visibly benefits residents. It would save lives, reduce long-term costs, and offer a much-needed public confidence win that shows the city can deliver rapid, tangible results.

We urge the city to launch a citywide rapid deployment traffic-calming program this fiscal year, beginning with corridors within a quarter mile of schools, parks, and neighborhood business districts.

Recommended immediate measures:

• Lane narrowing and re-striping to reduce travel speeds while maintaining flow.
• Daylighting and painted curb extensions to restore visibility at intersections.
• Flexible posts, planters, or modular islands to protect crossings and create refuge zones.
• Raised crosswalks and speed tables near schools and parks.
• Flashing beacons and speed feedback signs in school zones.
• Painted medians or chicanes to visually break up long, fast segments.

These interventions are affordable, reversible, and proven. They can be implemented through existing maintenance and striping budgets and align with San Diego’s Vision Zero, Complete Streets, and Climate Action Plan goals (Vision Zero Network, 2025; Circulate San Diego, 2024).

Beyond immediate action, the city should adopt a procedural reform to ensure street safety remains on autopilot. Under current practice, traffic engineers use the 85th percentile rule to justify raising speed limits when most drivers exceed them. This approach rewards unsafe design. San Diego should instead use that same benchmark to measure design effectiveness. If 15 percent of drivers are exceeding the posted limit, it is evidence that the street’s geometry and environment are unsafe and were not designed according to the city plan. The remedy should be a design correction, not a speed limit increase. By using the 85th percentile metric as a safety feedback tool, the city can automatically trigger road diets and traffic-calming adjustments that make safe driving the natural behavior rather than the exception.

Strong Towns San Diego stands ready to partner in this effort through community engagement, tactical pilot projects, and ongoing support for engineering reform. The choice is simple. We can pay for safety now, or pay for tragedy later.

San Diego deserves streets that reflect its values and leadership that invests where the return is greatest: in human lives and in the long-term fiscal health of the city itself.

Sincerely,
Strong Towns San Diego
strongtownssandiego@gmail.com
www.strongtownssandiego.org

Key References 
Daniels, S., et al. (2019). A systematic cost-benefit analysis of 29 road safety measures. Accident Analysis & Prevention. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001457519313090
 Litman, T. (1999). Traffic Calming: Benefits, Costs and Equity Impacts. Victoria Transport Policy Institute. https://www.brunk.org.uk/pdf/calming.pdf
 Miller, T. R., et al. (2004). Pedestrian and pedalcyclist injury costs in the United States. Injury Prevention, 10(2), 81–86. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3217422/
 Vision Zero Network. (2025, Jan 6). Where We Invest in Vision Zero, We Make Progress. https://visionzeronetwork.org/where-we-invest-in-vision-zero-we-make-progress/
Circulate San Diego. (2024, Nov 11). Vision Zero at Ten Years. https://assets.nationbuilder.com/circulatesd/pages/8029/attachments/original/1731433844/Vision_Zero_at_Ten_Years_-_Compressed.pdf
 Altago. (2020, Oct 13). Quick-Build Guide. https://altago.com/wp-content/uploads/Quick-Build-Guide-White-Paper-2020-1.pdf