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To some, New Jersey is known for a throaty-singing rock n’ roll icon, a fictional mob family, and the delicious delicacy known as the pork roll. However, in Hoboken, a new legacy is emerging that is having a deep impact on residents and visitors alike.
The past decade has seen many cities across the U.S. adopt Vision Zero, which originated in Sweden in the 1990s as a pledge to eliminate traffic deaths and severe injuries. The initiative involves nearly 50 cities including automobile-heavy places such as Atlanta and Houston, and smaller communities like Bellevue, Washington. However, Hoboken stands out from its counterparts through a set of ambitious policies that have made it one of the safest communities in the country for pedestrians and cyclists.
The city announced in January that it has now been seven years since the city’s last traffic-related death in 2017. Collisions resulting in minor injuries decreased by 18 percent between 2022 and 2023, while crashes with serious injuries dropped by 62 percent.
Mayor Ravi S. Bhalla announced an executive order in 2019 to designate Hoboken as a Vision Zero city with its goal of eliminating all traffic-related deaths and injuries by 2030. Hoboken’s Vision Zero Action Plan was officially implemented in 2021, so the city had gone three-straight years without a traffic death before they launched their Vision Zero effort.
“We are committed to making Hoboken streets safer for all our residents and visitors and the ambitious Vision Zero initiative to eliminate all traffic deaths and injuries by 2030 is key to making that a reality,” Bhalla said.
Image Source: Adobe Stock
So how has Hoboken achieved Vision Zero success where others haven’t? The Mile Square city did it their way, or My Way as Hoboken’s favorite native son Frank Sinatra would sing. Among Hoboken’s Vision Zero policies are speed regulations that included lowering the citywide speed limit to 20 miles per hour.
“Every mile per-hour reduction in speed matters. A five mile per hour reduction in speed can be the difference of a couple dozen feet when it comes to reaction time and stopping distance versus 25 miles per hour,” said Ryan Sharp, Hoboken’s director of transportation and parking.
A street planning concept known as “daylighting” has also been instrumental in Hoboken’s improved pedestrian safety. Daylighting is the practice of removing parking spots closest to an intersection to prevent parked cars from blocking the visibility of pedestrians, drivers, and cyclists.
In 2023, Hoboken installed 418 vertical delineators (mostly plastic flexible bars) in the asphalt near intersections and crosswalks. The additions included daylighting at 65 intersections adjacent to a park, school, public housing, and a senior building. Now anytime Hoboken repaves a street, city planners ensure the corners are daylighted.
“The improved sight line that you get when you daylight corners at a crosswalk or intersection allows more reaction time for everyone involved in that conflicting movement,” Sharp said. “We use concrete if we have the funding available, so there are curb extensions or bump outs that physically reduce the crossing distance for pedestrians.”
Multi-way stop signs were added to 14 Hoboken intersections in 2023, plus nine new curb extensions and upgrades to 27 curb ramps to improve ADA accessibility. These safety improvements also come with some cosmetic value for Hoboken, a city on the Hudson River that often deals with flooding.
“If we really have a lot of funding for a project, we will build out the curb line to look like a bump out but instead of filling that in with concrete, we’ll fill it in with a rain garden and we’ll make it vegetated,” said Sharp. “So it will have a lot of stormwater management improvement as well, which is important in Hoboken where it floods a lot from rain.”
Hoboken has also implemented bike lanes on 40 percent of the city’s linear street miles. This year, the city will begin construction on its Sinatra Drive Redesign Project that includes a 12-foot wide, two-way protected bike lane and 14 high visibility crosswalks added to the waterfront area.
“Humans make mistakes, they’re fallible and therefore crashes are inevitable. So we have to move away from a model where we’re putting all the responsibility on individuals and their behavior,” Sharp says. “We need to instead use a systems approach to try to prevent these bad outcomes from happening before they happen. And it doesn’t mean that we’re okay with crashes happening, we still try to prevent them. But what’s more important now is making sure that if a crash does happen, it has a less severe outcome for anyone who was involved in it.”
Situated between the often traffic-packed Lincoln Tunnel and Holland Tunnel, Hoboken’s population of around 60,000 makes it one of the most densely populated cities in their region. However, the pre-industrial design of the city, where European settlers first arrived in the early-1600s, supports Hoboken’s ability to reach zero traffic fatalities, says Sharp.
“Hoboken benefits from having pre-industrial infrastructure where streets are often narrower than they are in Sunbelt cities and places that were designed post-World War II around automobile travel. When you have narrower streets, typically you have slower speeds,” he says. “Hoboken benefits from having a lot of one way streets, which inherently reduces the number of conflicts at intersections. I think Hoboken is a proving ground that if you design your streets to look like they do in Hoboken, then Vision Zero works.”
While communities throughout the country are questioning the effectiveness of their own Vision Zero initiatives, Hoboken’s is flourishing. Their mix of policies and practice have led them to see dramatic gains where other cities haven’t seen increases. But Mayor Bhalla indicates that continued action is needed to keep Hoboken’s citizens safe. “Deliberate actions, such as comprehensive road redesigns and lower speed limits citywide, have propelled our success thus far but we are unwavering in our dedication to aggressively implement Vision Zero in every aspect of our major infrastructure projects, prioritizing the protection of the most vulnerable, including seniors and children.”
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