Safe Streets for All (SS4A) is the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) comprehensive approach to significantly reducing serious injuries and deaths. The approach requires partnering with community stakeholders to commit to a local goal of moving closer to zero roadway fatalities and serious injuries. Central to the effort is the development of a Safety Action Plan to identify priority actions and changes to target the most significant and urgent problems. 

The Mountainland Association of Governments (MAG) has received a federal SS4A grant to develop a Safety Action Plan for Utah, Wasatch and Summitt Counties that will outline a holistic, well-defined strategy to prevent roadway fatalities and serious injuries in each county. 

Currently, the team is analyzing crash data from throughout the participating MAG counties to understand what types of crashes are happening most frequently and where they are happening. This information will help designate a High Injury Network showing the areas with the greatest concentrations of high-severity crashes. This data gives the team information needed to determine the priority locations for implementing safety improvement projects and what kinds of projects are likely to reduce crashes at these locations.

It means that specific locations or street corridors will be identified which are unsafe and a plan on how to mitigate the hazards will be put into place. This is just one step in the process to improve safety within Utah, Wasatch, and Summit Counties.  

The data helps agencies move towards zero fatalities and serious injuries. It identifies crash hot spots, emphasis areas (where crashes of several types occur often), and vulnerable road users (pedestrians, cyclists, and wheelchair users). An analysis of equity will occur to highlight underserved areas in each of our communities and how these populations utilize the transportation network. 

Policy and process changes
To enact real change, the Safety Action Plan must position MAG and its local member governments for successful and easy implementation of safer streets. An evaluation of existing frameworks against national best practices and identifying inconsistencies or barriers to implementation will occur. The plan will be heavily influenced by the understanding and information gained through stakeholder and community engagement and data analysis; as such, the findings from those tasks will influence policy, programmatic, and procedural recommendations to eliminate barriers to safer streets.  

The development of a regional safety countermeasures toolkit will occur. This tool kit will identify impactful countermeasures, connect them to prevailing crash types within the MPO/RPO, and detail design and implementation considerations. The toolkit could be adopted by member governments or used to inform local design standards or guidelines changes.

Strategy and project selection

The project team will identify projects and treatments to address localized and systemic safety issues enumerated through data analysis. We will utilize FHWA Proven Safety Countermeasures, Highway Safety Manual Crash Modification Factors, and cost/benefit evaluation to select the most effective treatments.  

Additional groups will be brought in to help refine project selection. We will consult with respective local government staff for project identification and selection. We understand that most safety projects will be implemented at the local level and recognize that if local governments are not on board with recommendations, the projects will never move outside the pages of the report. Additionally, the engineering design and cost estimate team will be integrated early to provide insight regarding feasibility and practicality for project selection and get a head start on the concept report process.

Plan development and adoption

The project team will develop comprehensive Safety Action Plans meeting SS4A requirements for self-certification for the MAG (MPO in Utah County and RPO – Wasatch Back in Wasatch and Summit Counties). The documents will clearly identify the projects and programs—both short-term and long-term—that can be implemented to establish a safe systems approach and reduce fatal and serious injuries. Because of the visual nature of the crash analysis, the project team will produce companion online materials like our story maps as done for other cities which improves the understanding of the project for officials as well as the public. We will present each Safety Action Plan to the respective MAG MPO Board and Wasatch Back RPO Board for approval.

A series of meetings with the MPO and RPO are currently being held. Online open houses were held in 2023 and the recordings can be seen below on each County’s page on this website (navigate to the top to access). This website will be kept up to date during the project's duration. An online survey was conducted and the results can be viewed here.

We currently have an interactive map available to gather feedback from Utah, Summit, and Wasatch Counties’ residents and visitors. You can access it in the next section called “Comment Map.”

There will be in-person public meetings in each county and information about these meetings will be displayed on this website.

Pop-up events will be held in each of the three counties. These events are to promote the project and gather public input. These may occur at community events and festivals, biking/walking trails, rec centers/games, or setting up a canopy and a-frame signs to engage passersby in busy areas. There will be a newsletter about the project to provide updates, social media posts on Facebook and Twitter, a project email and a hotline will all be available to the public.

Additionally, interactions between stakeholders will be collected and added to a database for transparency and documentation purposes.