Seattle needs to make it easier, not harder, for the Department of Transportation to improve safety on our streets. To that end, the City Council should not pass Resolution 32097, which is scheduled for a vote Tuesday.

The resolution, which was passed unanimously out of the Land Use Committee rather than the Transportation Committee, contains some language that is either very unclear or conflicts with existing city policy and the best design practices for safe streets and accessibility. The resolution requests that SDOT present to both the Freight Advisory Board and the City Council Transportation Committee before making safety improvements to streets designated as Major Truck Streets so that SDOT staff can “demonstrat[e] that adjacent land uses and through traffic will not be compromised.” It also requests that Seattle “prioritize freight movement on streets classified as Major Truck streets in planning, funding, and developing street improvements within and near the Manufacturing Industrial Centers and surrounding areas.”

The problem is that safety is Seattle’s top priority on Major Truck Streets, or at least it is supposed to be. SDOT just published their full “Vision Zero Top-to-Bottom Review” a couple months ago, and it states as its top recommendation: “Incorporate Vision Zero and Safe Systems approaches into every project and program.” There are no asterisks or exemptions for truck streets here, nor should there be. Even Seattle’s Freight Master Plan, which was developed along side freight interests and approved by the City Council, states, “The Seattle Department of Transportation’s top priority is safety. It is crucial that our freight network provide freight facilities that ensure people driving delivery vehicles and trucks, both large and small, can travel safely among people walking, riding bicycles, taking transit, or driving other vehicles.” As the Pedestrian Advisory Board notes in a letter opposing the resolution (see below), “Major Truck Routes are already responsible for more than half of all pedestrian fatalities.” This is despite these streets making up only 8% of the city’s streets.

SDOT should be empowered to act quickly whenever the department has an opportunity to improve safety on these streets. SDOT has never “compromised” any freight routes through the implementation of safety improvements. If anything, the city has done freight a disservice by allowing so many major and minor truck streets to continue operating without safety improvements to reduce conflicts with other road users. Operating on streets with an increased risk of injuring or killing somebody is not in a truck driver or freight operator’s best interest.

Safety advocates and freight interests are not enemies. This resolution has caught people off-guard, which is creating unnecessary friction. Seattle needs to better coordinate safety and freight work so that everyone is on the same team, and this resolution ain’t the way to do that. Instead, look at the plans for E Marginal Way, a major road project on a vital freight street that has been designed from the start with safety at the forefront. Likewise, the emergency 1st Ave S bike lanes during the January Spokane Street Bridge closure were a great example of SDOT moving quickly to successfully address an emerging safety issue while also keeping freight moving on a Major Truck Street. These are not opposing interests. We are all in this together.