Bloomberg text - part1 The Manhattan skyline is seen from Jersey City, New Jersey. The Manhattan skyline is seen from Jersey City, New Jersey.Photographer: Christopher Occhicone/Bloomberg CityLabTransportation How Jersey City Got to Zero Traffic Deaths on Its Streets This bedroom community outside of New York City scored the biggest traffic safety success story of 2022. Here’s how they did it. ByJohn Surico+Follow December 28, 2022 at 8:00 AM EST It’s been another bad year on the roads of New Jersey. Mirroring national trends, the Garden State saw a spike in traffic fatalities after the pandemic’s onset in 2020, and the pattern hasn’t let up. Roadway deaths jumped nearly 20% between 2020 and 2021, and have come down less than a percentage point since, within a morbid margin of error of 2021’s high.

But a different story is playing out in Jersey City.

In 2018, the booming mini-metropolis across the river from New York City made headlines for being the first city in New Jersey to adopt Vision Zero, the international traffic safety framework that established the goal of zero traffic fatalities. Several other cities across the US did so as well. But Jersey City has succeeded where many have fallen short, going a full year without a single traffic fatality on its roads.

That Vision Zero milestone comes with a caveat — it only reflects the roads that the city maintains. Several major corridors that cut through its downtown belong to Hudson County or the state, and have continued to rack up crash victims. Still, Jersey City is about to end its safest year on record, bucking a deadly national trend. And local leaders are intent on pushing forward with more improvements that will eventually encompass more of the city and region.

relates to How Jersey City Got to Zero Traffic Deaths on Its Streets A fresh bike lane in downtown Jersey City. Cycling rates have grown as the city has added protected infrastructure.Photo: John Surico/Bloomberg CityLab To explain how they managed to pull off a remarkable road safety reversal, Jersey City policymakers, advocates, community members and planners zeroed in on several key ingredients. It’s a formula that could serve as a model for other municipalities as the US stares down a deadly crisis on its streets.

Show, Don’t Tell The area near St. Pauls Avenue between JFK Boulevard and Tonnele Avenue is a tangle of thoroughfares and jurisdictions. It’s also been a longtime traffic safety headache for local residents; drivers tend to barrel down St. Pauls — a city street — as a cut-through to avoid Route 139, the often-packed state highway that funnels drivers to the Holland Tunnel.

New York Proposes Congestion Pricing With New Tolling System Cars inch their way along the route to New York City in Jersey City in August 2022.Photo by Kena Betancur/VIEWpress via Getty Images So, after surveys, audits and light-touch interventions like speed humps and crosswalks, city planners tried something else. One week in April, a crew descended on St. Pauls and installed small-diameter “mini-roundabouts” at two intersections, using whatever materials the city had handy: traffic cones, planters, barrels, plastic delineators, paint. The instant traffic circles — the city’s first — forced drivers to slow down as they negotiated the crossings with pedestrians and other vehicles.

The roundabouts were only temporary — after a week, they disappeared, as promised. The city found that traffic volumes increased even as speeds came down about 10%, and the feedback from surveyed residents was overwhelmingly positive: 72% of respondents supported making the circles permanent. They were also asked to later vote on three more redesigns, one of which briefly converted St. Pauls into a one-way for two weeks in late November.

Read more: Yes, Vision Zero can work These kinds of pilots have become the city’s preferred method of engagement, says Barkha Patel, the city’s director of infrastructure — a new role that combines transportation and public space. Community meetings in advance of road redesigns famously tend to go sideways, while the actual physicality of a demonstration helps to build consensus, albeit imperfect. It also reaches people who might not be able to make it to a meeting or Zoom at 6 p.m. on a weeknight. Instead, it meets them where they live.

“We’ll do notices, let people know what it is, and then for a few days, staff will be out there to interact with the public and explain what’s going on, and how to use the improvement,” said Patel. “Then we’ll take it away whenever we’ve committed to it. Because that transparency with the community is a really big part of it, too.”

“I’ve Never Filled Out a Permit” Jersey City is the rare municipality that has embraced the spirit of tactical urbanism — a practice where quick DIY fixes are deployed to nudge officials to make more permanent changes. That approach is what attracted Street Plans, a design and planning firm that helped the city write its ambitious bike master plan, which followed a similar approach.

“I’ve never filled out a permit here!” Mike Lydon, the firm’s co-founder, told me as we walked around Jersey City’s downtown. “Typically you’re convincing engineers for months at a time, and they’re hemming and hawing, arms crossed. The only thing I’ve had to do is sometimes let the parking department know to go bag the meters or put up signs that say you can’t park here in the morning. That’s it.”

We stood in front of Grove Street, a popular area with development arising around the PATH station there. The road, steps from City Hall, had a two-way bike lane installed in 2019. It was then converted to a one-way street during the early days of the pandemic, to make space for a pop-up pedestrian plaza with outdoor dining. Elsewhere, vehicle-restricted “Slow Streets” emerged, and a car-free transformation of a stretch of Newark Avenue was improved and made permanent.

relates to How Jersey City Got to Zero Traffic Deaths on Its Streets A stretch of Newark Avenue was transformed into a pedestrian-only mall.Photo: John Surico/Bloomberg CityLab “We took advantage of less cars on the street,” said Mayor Steve Fulop in an interview at his office. “And we said, let’s try to do things that we probably couldn’t do as easily under regular circumstances. That included a lot of redesigning of roads.”

That effort preceded 2022’s Year of Open Space, a themed series of public space pop-ups where residents were invited to see different versions of what their street or corner could look like. Street Plans designed several of the parklets, which had free programming, food and workshops.