City of Gainesville awarded federal transportation grant to improve roadway safety

Press release from City of Gainesville

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – The City of Gainesville has been awarded $800,000 in grant funding through the Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) program, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced this month.

The award will be used by the City to assess stretches of roadways, within city limits, where lighting conditions may contribute to crashes among roadway users, especially at high-risk locations for bicyclists and pedestrians. City transportation staff also will evaluate streets where travel speeds pose higher risks to pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorists.

“For some of our neighbors, walking and cycling are the main transportation options; for others it is a choice. However, safety is a shared responsibility for all neighbors,” said Gainesville City Manager Cynthia W. Curry.

The risk of severe or fatal injury to a roadway user increases at higher speeds, with nearly 30 percent of these crashes occurring along roads with speed limits of 45 mph or higher, as noted in the city’s Vision Zero Action Plan. Data from the action plan, including crash severity, crash type, speed, and other factors, were included in the City’s application for the federal grant.

Vision Zero Action Plan data also were part of the SS4A grant submissions by the University of Florida and Alachua County; they received $791,000 and $880,000 in SS4A grants, respectively.

“Adding in local matches, that’s nearly $3 million to advance roadway safety in our community,” said Transportation Planning and Parking Manager Debbie Leistner. “City, County, state, and UF staff are all part of a multi-agency Vision Zero working group where we share data and work together toward the common goal of ending traffic deaths and severe injuries.”

City staff will collaborate with UF counterparts on road safety audits involving SW 34th Street and SW 35th Place, as well as with Alachua County staff in its assessment of two high-risk roads within city limits: SW 20th Avenue and N. 16th Avenue.

“Improving streetscapes and dangerous stretches of highway can save lives, and the people who rely on our roads and streets every day often already know where improvements are needed but until now lacked the funding to address them,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “With this latest round of grants, funding will flow directly to communities across the country to help put life-saving projects in motion, building on our ongoing work to bring traffic fatalities down to the only number that’s acceptable: zero.”  

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law established the SS4A program and has provided nearly $3 billion to more than 1,600 communities in three years of funding to improve roadway safety planning. The Gainesville City Commission adopted a Vision Zero policy in 2018 with the goal of eliminating traffic deaths and serious injuries in the city by 2040.