Complete_Streets_Safety_Assessment.pdf

City of Calabasas Complete Streets

Safety Assessment Issues, Opportunities, and Suggested Strategies

Final Report

September 2024

Disclaimer text. This report was produced in cooperation with the City of Calabasas. Funding for this program was provided by a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The opinions, findings, and conclusions are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the OTS, the University of California, and/or the agencies supporting or contributing to this report. This report does not constitute a standard, specification, or regulation. The agency that is the subject of this report is hereby granted a non-exclusive right to copy and distribute this report for its own or its stakeholders’ non-commercial use. All other uses of this report require written permission from the University of California, Berkeley Safe Transportation Research and Education Center (SafeTREC).

City of Calabasas Complete Streets Safety Assessment

Table of Contents Table of Contents List of Figures List of Tables Acknowledgments Disclosures Executive Summary

1. Introduction

2. The Safe System Approach

2.1 Influence on Roadway Design and Operation

2.2 Integrating the Safe System Approach into the CSSA

3. Background

3.1 Overview of Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety

3.2 Pedestrian and Bicycle Crash Data

3.3 Areas of Focus

3.4 Street Story

4. Benchmarking Analysis Results and Recommendations

4.1 Enhancing Safety through Accessibility

4.2 Policies and Programs, Safety Implementation Plans and Policies

4.3 Safety Data Collection and Assessment

4.4 Pedestrian and Bicycle Network Planning and Design

4.5 Pedestrian and Bicycle Support Program

4.6 Additional Areas to Consider for Safety Improvements

5. Complete Streets Audit Results and Recommendations

5.1 Overview

5.2 General Citywide Suggestions

5.3 Focus Areas

5.4 Conclusion

Appendix A: Glossary of Pedestrian Improvement Measures ...... Error! Bookmark not defined.

Appendix B: Glossary of Bicycle Improvement Measures ........... Error! Bookmark not defined.

Appendix C: Resources List and References .............................. Error! Bookmark not defined.

Appendix D: Street Connectivity .................................................. Error! Bookmark not defined.

List of Figures Figure 2.1 U.S. Department of Transportation Safe System Approach Graphic Figure 2.2: Federal Highway Administration Safe System Roadway Design Hierarchy Graphic 14 Figure 2.3 Increasing driver vehicle speed reduces vulnerable road user crash survivability and narrows the driver’s field of vision Figure 2.4 The Safe Systems Pyramid Figure 3.1 Calabasas Vicinity Map Figure 3.2 Map of Pedestrian Crashes in Calabasas (2019-2023) Figure 3.3 Pedestrian Crashes by Day of Week and Time of Day in Calabasas (2019-2023) ...22 Figure 3.4 Pedestrian Crashes by Pedestrian Action in Calabasas (2019-2023) Figure 3.5 Map of Bicycle Crashes in Calabasas (2019-2023) Figure 3.6 Number of Bicycle Crashes per Day of Week per Time in Calabasas (2019-2023) ..25 Figure 3.7 Number of Bicycle Crashes by Type of Crash in Calabasas (2019-2023) Figure 3.8 Pedestrian Crashes in and around Focus Areas of US-101 and Parkway Calabasas (2019-2023) Figure 3.9 Pedestrian Crashes in and around Focus Areas of Paul Revere Drive & Eddingham Avenue (2019-2023) Figure 3.10 Bicycle Crashes in and around Focus Areas of US-101 & Parkway Calabasas (2019-2023) Figure 3.11 Bicycle Crashes in and around Focus Areas of Paul Revere Drive & Eddingham Avenue (2019-2023) Figure 4.1 Relationship between Vehicle Speed, Victim Age, and Fatalities Figure 5.1 City of Calabasas Study Areas Figure 5.2 Mulholland Highway and Paul Revere Drive Recommendations Figure 5.3 Class II Bike Lane Modifications on Mullholland Highway at Paul Revere Drive Figure 5.4 Mulholland Highway and Eddingham Avenue Overview of Recommendations Figure 5.5 Calabasas Road and 101 Freeway Interchange Recommendations Overview Figure 5.6 Calabasas Road and Parkway Calabasas Recommendations Overview Figure 5.7 Class IV Protected Bikeway Details on Calabasas Road at Parkway Calabasas

List of Tables Table 4.1 Benchmarking Analysis for Enhancing Safety through Accessibility Table 4.2 Benchmarking Analysis for Policies and Programs, Safety Implementation Plans and Policies Table 4.3 Benchmarking Analysis for Safety Data Collection and Assessment Table 4.4 Benchmarking Analysis for Pedestrian and Bicycle Network Planning and Design Table 4.5 Benchmarking Analysis for Safety Data Collection and Assessment

Acknowledgments The CSSA team thanks the agency staff and community members from City of Calabasas who provided invaluable contributions to the benchmarking review and field audit to make the Complete Streets Safety Assessment in this community a success. Their knowledge and insight were instrumental to the completion of this project.

Disclosures This report was developed with the best information available to the authors at that time.

This report summarizes crash data reported in the Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System (SWITRS) retrieved from the Transportation Injury Mapping System (TIMS). The current version of 2022 and 2023 SWITRS data is provisional and is subject to change when it is finalized.

The benchmarking analysis aims to provide the City of Calabasas with information on current best practices and how the City of Calabasas compares. Cities have differing physical, demographic, and institutional characteristics that may make certain goals or policies more appropriate in some jurisdictions than others. Ultimately, the City of Calabasas staff will need to determine where resources and efforts are best utilized to meet local development and infrastructure goals for people walking and biking.

The recommendations presented in this report are based on limited field observations and limited time spent in the City of Calabasas by the CSSA technical evaluators. These recommendations are based on general knowledge of best practices in pedestrian and bicycle design and safety and are intended to guide local staff in making decisions for future safety improvement projects. The recommendations might not incorporate all factors that may be relevant to the pedestrian and bicyclist safety issues.

As this report is conceptual in nature, conditions may exist in the focus areas that were not observed and may not be compatible with recommendations in this report. Before finalizing and implementing any physical changes, staff may need to conduct more detailed studies or further analysis to refine or discard the recommendations in this report if they are found to be contextually inappropriate or appear not to improve pedestrian and bicyclist safety or accessibility due to conditions including, but not limited to, high vehicular traffic volume, high speeds, physical limitations on space or sight distance, or other potential safety concerns.

https://tims.berkeley.edu/

Executive Summary

The City of Calabasas requested that the Safe Transportation Research and Education Center at the University of California, Berkeley, conduct a Complete Streets Safety Assessment (CSSA) study. The CSSA is organized into three core activities:

1. Reviewing historical crash data and trends with an emphasis on crashes involving people walking and biking;

2. Conducting a benchmarking assessment of policies, programs, standards, and guidelines; and

3. Conducting a complete streets field audit of specific locations with suggestions to enhance conditions for people walking and biking.

The objectives of the CSSA are to improve safety and access for people walking and biking.

The City of Calabasas’s goals for the CSSA are the following:

• To reduce speed and improve safety along major arterials

• To improve access for people walking and bicycling in neighborhoods along major corridors that connect to open spaces

• To improve access to campus communities for people in all modes

• To advance the goals of the City of Calabasas’s General Plan Draft Circulation Plan, which include the following transportation system goals:

o Provide easy and convenient access to all areas of the community.

o Maintain and improve present traffic flows while maintaining Calabasas' rural, small-town sense of place.

o Protect significant environmental features.

o Reduce dependence on single occupant automobile travel by providing a high level of pedestrian, bicycle, and public transit travel opportunities.

o Consider the movement of people and vehicles in the design and operation of transportation systems.

o Recognize the special mobility needs of seniors, youth, and persons with disabilities.

o Provide opportunities for recreation activities to increase community health and well-being.

o Preserve a sense of comfort and well-being throughout the community by minimizing the intrusiveness of commercial/business park and regional traffic on neighborhood streets and quality of life.

o Contribute to a reduction in vehicle miles traveled.

o Facilitate emergency evacuation in an efficient and timely manner.

A field audit was conducted on May 23, 2024, to observe and document field conditions with City of Calabasas Department of Public Works staff and consultants.

The report is organized into the following chapters:

1. Introduction

2. Safe System Approach

3. Background and Crash History

4. Benchmarking Analysis Results and Suggested Enhancements

5. Complete Streets Field Audit Results and Recommendations

Background Calabasas is located in Los Angeles County with a population of approximately 22,227. Of its residents, the majority, with 74% percent, identified as White and about 9% identified as Hispanic or Latino.1 The median household income in Calabasas in 2022 was $154,079, higher than the statewide median household income of $91,551.2 It had an estimated daily vehicle miles traveled on local roads of 159,040 in 2021.3 The vicinity of Calabasas is shown in the figure below.

The Safe System Approach The U.S. Department of Transportation, California Department of Transportation, and California Office of Traffic Safety have all adopted the Safe System Approach. The Safe System Approach considers five elements of a safe transportation system — safe road users, safe vehicles, safe speeds, safe roads, and post-crash care — in an integrated and holistic manner. Creating a Safe System means shifting a major share of the responsibility from individual road users to those who design, operate, and maintain the transportation network. The Safe System Approach anticipates human mistakes by designing and managing road infrastructure to keep the risk of mistakes low, and if a mistake does lead to a crash, reducing the impact to the human body to limit the potential for fatality or serious injury.

1 QuickFacts. United States Census Bureau. Retrieved from https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/ 2 Profiles. United States Census Bureau. Retrieved from https://data.census.gov/profile/ 3 California Office of Traffic Safety. OTS Crash Rankings. Retrieved from https://www.ots.ca.gov/media-and-research/crash-rankings/.

https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/ https://data.census.gov/profile/ https://www.ots.ca.gov/media-and-research/crash-rankings/

The CSSA project team identified two main arterials, Calabasas Road and Mulholland Highway, for walk audits based on crash history and conversations with the applicant to understand local safety concerns. During the field assessment, the CSSA project team integrated the Safe System elements into a discussion with participants to prompt safety improvements at the study locations. To develop comprehensive recommendations that address the Safe System Approach, the CSSA project team also reviews responses from local agency staff to the benchmarking survey, especially those related to local plans and policies that are already in place or underway.

The CSSA focuses primarily on infrastructure-related countermeasures, with an emphasis on improving the safety of people walking and biking. Prioritizing safe target speeds and changing road geometry to manipulate crash angles can help reduce the risk of fatal and severe injuries.

Through the benchmarking assessment, the CSSA team also provides some non-infrastructure insight on safety countermeasures such as education, outreach, and post-crash care. All elements of the Safe System Approach can be applied to corridor and intersection studies moving forward to create an approach that creates layers of protection for all road users.

Benchmarking Analysis and Potential Improvements To assess pedestrian and bicyclist safety conditions in City of Calabasas, the CSSA team conducted a benchmarking analysis to understand how the existing conditions compared to national best practices. Through an electronic benchmarking survey conducted with City of Calabasas staff, the CSSA team identified their active transportation policies, programs, and practices and categorized these into three groups:

● Areas where the City is exceeding national best practices

● Areas where the City is meeting national best practices

● Areas where the City appears not to meet national best practices

While suggestions are provided for each category, local agencies have differing physical, demographic, and institutional characteristics that may make certain goals or policies more appropriate in some jurisdictions than others. Ultimately, county or local agency staff may determine where resources and efforts are best utilized for meeting local development and infrastructure goals for pedestrians and bicyclists.

Suggestions for potential improvement or further enhancement to City of Calabasas’s existing programs and policies are presented in Chapter 4.

Complete Streets Audit and Potential Improvements The major corridors of Mulholland Highway and Calabasas Road were chosen based on the City of Calabasas’ concern over pedestrian and bicyclist safety due to elevated vehicular, bicycle, and pedestrian activity in each area.

The following four locations were selected for analysis:

1. Mulholland Highway & Paul Revere Drive located near Alice C. Stelle Middle School

2. Mulholland Highway & Eddingham Avenue

3. Calabasas Road & 101 Freeway On/Off-ramp

4. Calabasas Road & Parkway Calabasas

Positive practices, as well as pedestrian and bicycle safety and accessibility issues were identified during the field audit. Many of the strategies suggested in this report are appropriate for grant applications, including Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) or Active Transportation Program (ATP) funding. The strategies may also be incorporated into a bicycle or pedestrian master plan, which set forth bicycle, pedestrian, and streetscape policies for the City of Calabasas, or can help identify, and prioritize capital improvement projects.

The suggestions presented in this report are based on limited field observations and time spent in the community by the CSSA team. These suggestions, which are based on general knowledge of best practices in traffic engineering and planning in pedestrian and bicycle design and safety, are intended to guide staff in making decisions for future safety improvement projects on the selected corridors and they may not incorporate all factors which may be relevant to walking and bicycling safety issues.

As this report is conceptual in nature, conditions may exist in the focus areas that were not observed and may not be compatible with suggestions in this report. Before finalizing and implementing any physical changes, City of Calabasas staff may choose to conduct more detailed studies or further analysis to refine or discard the suggestions in this report if they are found to be contextually inappropriate or appear not to improve bicycling safety or accessibility due to conditions including, but not limited to, high vehicular traffic volume or speeds, physical limitations on space or sight distance, or other potential safety concerns.

1. Introduction The Complete Streets Safety Assessment (CSSA) is a statewide program of the University of California, Berkeley Safe Transportation Research and Education Center (SafeTREC). Through this program, the CSSA project team conducts crash data analysis, a benchmarking review of local policies, programs and practices, and a transportation safety assessment of select sites to identify safety improvements that align with the Safe System Approach. The objective of the CSSA is to improve safety and accessibility for all people walking and biking in their communities.

The City of Calabasas requested a CSSA to study the following four locations:

1. Mulholland Highway & Paul Revere Drive located near Alice C. Stelle Middle School

2. Mulholland Highway & Eddingham Avenue

3. Calabasas Road & 101 Freeway On/Off-ramp

4. Calabasas Road &Parkway Calabasas

The City of Calabasas’s goals for the CSSA are the following:

• To reduce speed and improve safety along major arterials

• To improve access for people walking and bicycling in neighborhoods along major corridors that connect to open spaces

• To improve access to campus communities for people in all modes

• To advance the goals of the City of Calabasas’s General Plan Draft Circulation Plan, which include the following transportation system goals:

o Provide easy and convenient access to all areas of the community.

o Maintain and improve present traffic flows while maintaining Calabasas' rural, small-town sense of place.

o Protect significant environmental features.

o Reduce dependence on single occupant automobile travel by providing a high level of pedestrian, bicycle, and public transit travel opportunities.

o Consider the movement of people and vehicles in the design and operation of transportation systems.

o Recognize the special mobility needs of seniors, youth, and persons with disabilities.

o Provide opportunities for recreation activities to increase community health and well-being.

o Preserve a sense of comfort and well-being throughout the community by minimizing the intrusiveness of commercial/business park and regional traffic on neighborhood streets and quality of life.

o Contribute to a reduction in vehicle miles traveled.

o Facilitate emergency evacuation in an efficient and timely manner.

The CSSA project team facilitated a kickoff telephone meeting with local staff on April 16, 2024 to better understand the community’s needs. The CSSA technical evaluators conducted a site visit with local staff on May 23, 2024, to observe and document field conditions. Following the field audit, the CSSA technical evaluators shared with the local agency staff their preliminary recommendations for site-specific improvements based on their observations and current best practices for designing transportation systems for people walking and biking.

This report provides an overview of the Safe System Approach and summarizes the findings of the crash data assessment, the benchmarking analysis, and the observations and recommendations from the field audit. Additionally, this report includes four appendices covering pedestrian and bicyclist improvement options, a resource list, and street connectivity.

2. The Safe System Approach Traffic crashes can irreversibly change the course of human lives, touching victims, their families and loved ones, and society overall. The costs of traffic crashes include substantial economic and societal impacts, such as medical costs, lost productivity, and reduced quality of life. Cities, counties, and tribes need to work to solve the complex problem of traffic safety in their communities to reduce the number injuries and deaths. The Complete Streets Safety Assessment (CSSA) program provides an opportunity to integrate the Safe System Approach (SSA) into programs, policies, and design decisions related to active transportation improvements to address the underlying road safety concerns in communities statewide.

Moreover, the goal of a Complete Street is to ensure the safe and adequate accommodation of all road users.

The Safe System Approach to road safety started internationally as part of the Vision Zero proclamation that no one should be killed or seriously injured on the road system.4, 5 It is founded on the principle that people make mistakes and that the road system should be adapted to anticipate and accommodate human mistakes and the physiological and psychological limitations of humans.6 The Safe System Approach acknowledges the vulnerability of the human body — in terms of the amount of kinetic energy transfer a body can withstand — when designing and operating a transportation network to minimize serious consequences of crashes and ensures that if crashes occur, they “do not result in serious human injury.”7

Countries that have adopted the Safe System Approach have had significant success reducing highway fatalities, with reductions in fatalities between 50% and 70%.8 The Safe System Approach is the foundation for the National Roadway Safety Strategy released by the United States Department of Transportation in 2022. Statewide, the California Office of Traffic Safety and Caltrans have both adopted the Safe System Approach and a Vision Zero goal for road safety planning. The principles and elements of the Safe System Approach can be seen in Figure 2.1.

4 Johansson, R. (2009). Vision Zero - Implementing a policy for traffic safety. Safety Science, 47, 826-831.

5 Tingvall, C., & Haworth, N. (1999). An Ethical Approach to Safety and Mobility. Paper presented at the 6th ITE International Conference Road Safety and Traffic Enforcement. 6-7 September 1999, Melbourne, Australia.

6 Belin, M.-Å., Tillgren, P., & Vedung, E. (2012). Vision Zero - a road safety policy innovation. International Journal of Injury Control and Safety Promotion, 19, 171-179.

7 World Health Organization (2011). Retrieved on: June 3, 2024 Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020 (PDF).

8 World Resources Institute (2018). Sustainable and Safe: A Vision and Guidance for Zero Road Deaths. Retrieved on June 3, 2024 https://www.wri.org/publication/sustainable-and-safe-vision-and-guidance-zero-road-deaths 6 World Health Organization (2011). Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020. Retrieved on: June 3, 2024 Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020 (PDF).

7 World Health Organization (2011). Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020. Retrieved on: June 3, 2024 Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020 (PDF).

https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/82568/WHO_NMH_VIP11.07_eng.pdf?sequence=1 https://www.wri.org/publication/sustainable-and-safe-vision-and-guidance-zero-road-deaths

Figure 2.1 U.S. Department of Transportation Safe System Approach Graphic

Preliminary Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System (SWITRS) crash data for 2022 suggests that traffic crashes caused nearly 4,500 preventable deaths and over 200,000 injuries in California. People walking, biking, and rolling are especially vulnerable to death or serious injuries when a crash occurs. Through collective action on the part of all roadway system stakeholders — from traffic engineers, planners, public health professionals, and vehicle manufacturers to law enforcement and everyday users — we can move to a Safe System Approach that anticipates human mistakes, with the goal of eliminating fatal and serious injuries for all road users.

2.1 Influence on Roadway Design and Operation

Kinetic energy has long been identified as the cause of injury, such that if a crash occurs, the peak forces at the point of contact determine the degree of injury.9 10 11 Managing the forces of kinetic energy to a level that the human body can tolerate is critical to the Safe System Approach12.

9 Haddon, W. (1980). Advances in the epidemiology of injuries as a basis for public policy. Public Health Reports, 95(5), 411–421.

10 De Haven, H. (1942). Mechanical analysis of survival in falls from heights of fifty to one hundred and fifty feet.

Reproduced in Injury Prevention, 6(1), 62–68 (2000).

11 Gangloff, A., 2013. Safety in accidents: Hugh DeHaven and the development of crash injury studies. Technol. Cult.

54 (1), 40–61.

12 Tools like the Safe System Project-Based Alignment Framework developed by the Federal Highway Administration provide practitioners to assess and compare roadway locations and potential improvements through a SSA lens.

https://highways.dot.gov/safety/zero-deaths/safe-system-project-based-alignment-framework

In the transportation system, kinetic energy risk is present based on three factors:

1. Exposure: the presence (or potential presence) of two or more users or a user and a fixed object

2. Likelihood: the chance that a conflict occurs between those users/objects based roadway design, intersection control, or other contextual conditions

3. Severity: the intensity of the energy should the conflict occur (driven by speed, mass, and angle), which is not mitigated by other factors (such as in-vehicle occupant protection)

Systemic assessments of roadway networks can identify and proactively address when these risk factors are high, meaning the consequence of a mistake could be severe.

The Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) and the Road to Zero Coalition articulate that to anticipate human mistakes, best practices for a Safe System seek to:

● Separate users in a physical space (e.g., sidewalks, dedicated bicycle facilities);

● Separate users in time (e.g., pedestrian scrambles, dedicated turn phases);

● Alert users to potential hazards; and

● Accommodate human injury tolerance through interventions that reduce speed or impact force.

Recent guidance from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) characterizes engineering and infrastructure countermeasures and strategies along a hierarchy to help transportation practitioners prioritize efforts that will facilitate increased application of the Safe System Approach principles as seen in Figure 2.2. Specifically, the Safe System Roadway Design Hierarchy breaks down efforts into four tiers and seeks to: (1) eliminate severe conflicts through physical separation; (2) reducing vehicle speed; (3) manage conflicts in time; and (4) increase attentiveness and awareness.13 The FHWA further clarifies a combination of strategies from multiple tiers would be the most effective, reinforcing the Safe System principle that redundancy is crucial.

13 Hopwood, C., Little, K., and D. Gaines. (2024). Safe System Roadway Design Hierarchy: Engineering and Infrastructure-related Countermeasures to Effectively Reduce Roadway Fatalities and Serious Injuries (FHWA-SA-22- 069). US Department of Transportation, Washington, D.C.

Figure 2.2: Federal Highway Administration Safe System Roadway Design Hierarchy Graphic

Nearly one in three – 31.7% of the 4,428 – traffic fatalities in California in 2022 was associated with excessive speed or traveling at speeds deemed unsafe for the driving conditions.14 In 2021 through AB43, California authorized local governments to reduce speed limits on many roads, including state highways, in business and residential areas and other roads identified as “safety corridors” without following the “85th percentile rule” which often caused transportation agencies to raise speed limits. This new authority aligns with the Safe System approach and allows local jurisdictions to target speeds based on user context. Moreover, Caltrans issued Design Information Bulletin (DIB) 94 in 2024 related to “complete streets” which provides local agencies with more flexibility to design context-sensitive facilities to better serve the needs of all travelers, including guidance for selecting treatment tools based on speed and volume context.

For vulnerable users, such as people walking, biking, or otherwise not in a vehicle, speed is a determining factor in survivability. Figure 2.2 depicts how a person’s chance of surviving being struck by a vehicle increases from 20% at 40 miles per hour (mph) to 60% at 30 mph to 90% at 20 mph. Moreover, as drivers increase the speed of the vehicle, their peripheral vision narrows.

This results in decreased depth perception and a reduced ability to notice others on the road, such as people walking and biking. Reducing speed in the presence of vulnerable users is a key Safe System strategy. Approaches include:

● Physical roadway designs (width, horizontal alignment) to limit speeds;

● Traffic calming treatments that induce slower speeds;

● Traffic signal timing that minimizes high-speed flow; and

● Traditional or automated enforcement15 that discourages speeding

14 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (2023). Traffic Safety Facts: California 2018-2022.

15 Assembly Bill (AB) 645 was signed into law in October 2023 authorizing six California cities (Glendale, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose) to pilot automated speed cameras for five years.

Figure 2.3 Increasing driver vehicle speed reduces vulnerable road user crash survivability and narrows the driver’s field of vision.

Many traffic safety efforts continue to lean on individuals to “do the right thing” to stay safe rather than apply lessons learned from the public health sector to invest in system-wide safety interventions. Ederer (2023) proposed the Safe Systems Pyramid16, which acknowledges kinetic energy as the root cause of injury and introduces a public health-based intervention framework to address this cause with strategies that require the least individual effort and have the broadest population impact. For example, interventions that require more individual effort (e.g., driver education programs, educational campaigns) have the least impact on improving system-wide safety, and those that change the context of transportation have the largest impacts on safety (e.g., affordable housing near transit, zoning reform). This framework provides guidance when transportation decision-makers cannot do it all, giving priority towards projects and interventions that will most impact safety outcomes.17

16 Ederer, D., Thompson Panik, R., Botchwey, N., & Watkins, K. (2023). Adaptation of the Health Impact Pyramid into the Safe System Pyramid. Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Vol. 21.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trip.2023.100905.

17 Mitman, M. et al, (2024). Why and How to Focus on Kinetic Energy Risk, ITE Journal: The Journey to Safer Communities. 39-45. https://ite.ygsclicbook.com/pubs/itejournal/2024/march-2024/live/index.html#p=38 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trip.2023.100905 https://ite.ygsclicbook.com/pubs/itejournal/2024/march-2024/live/index.html#p=38

Figure 2.4 The Safe Systems Pyramid

Figure 2.4 Safe Systems Pyramid adapts public health principles, like the Health Impact Pyramid and Hierarchy of Controls, to more fully address roadway safety needs.

Strategies at the base of this pyramid focus on reducing and limiting exposure upstream that affect where, when, and how people enter the transportation system and become exposed to risk. This includes Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) mitigation, in terms of both the duration of travel as well as the location and mode. Middle-of-the-pyramid strategies look for opportunities, on top of exposure mitigation, to limit conflicts through the separation of users in space and time, and limit severity through speed management and reduced angles of crashes. Less preferred strategies in this framework focus on educational interventions that are conditional on individual behavior change. In alignment with the SSA, education can be effective when they are combined with efforts from other tiers in the pyramid to strengthen redundancies.

Conventional safety practice is primarily reactive, largely based on data provided to engineers and planners in crash reports. However, the primary purpose of crash reports is to document the moment of the crash and the time immediately preceding it to determine “fault” across the involved parties (such as needed for insurance claims). As such, it shifts the responsibility for the crash to an individual, rather than assessing opportunities to intervene at the system level.

The Safe Systems Pyramid recommends focusing on root causes of the crash by considering the W’s of safety:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590198223001525

• Who was involved; what is their personal story?

• Where were they traveling from and to? Why were they on this road?

• Why were they traveling on that day, at that time?

• Why did they use their selected travel mode?

• Why was the road they were traveling on designed the way it is?

Creating a Safe System means shifting a major share of the responsibility from individual road users to those who design the road transport system. “Individual road users have the responsibility to abide by laws and regulations” 18 and do so by exhibiting due care and proper behavior in the transportation system. While road users are responsible for their own behavior, a safe system requires a shared responsibility with those who design, operate, and maintain the transportation network: including the automotive industry, law enforcement, elected officials, and government bodies.19 In a Safe System, roadway system designers and operators take on the highest level of ethical responsibility to look at crashes holistically and systemically, and recognize that crashes are not only caused by a driver’s error.

2.2 Integrating the Safe System Approach into the CSSA

The Safe System Approach involves anticipating human mistakes by designing and managing road infrastructure to keep the risk of mistakes low, and if a mistake does lead to a crash, reducing the impact to the human body, so it does not lead to a fatality or serious injury. The first step in incorporating the Safe System Approach into the CSSA is a benchmarking analysis.

The benchmarking analysis, based on the Safe System elements, evaluates the local agency’s programs and policies and how their existing efforts incorporating best practices related to access and comfort for people walking and biking compare to national best practices. The aim is to fully institutionalize SSA in the local agency’s program, practices, and policies, rather than on a case-by-case basis, and by identifying and removing barriers to its adoption.

The CSSA project identified focus areas (i.e., intersections and corridors) to conduct a comprehensive walk audit based on crash history and conversations with the applicant to understand local safety concerns. During the field assessment, the CSSA project team integrated the Safe System elements into discussions with participants to prompt safety improvements at the study locations, considering the “Ws” of safety noted above.

The CSSA field assessment focuses primarily on infrastructure-related countermeasures, with an emphasis on improving the safety of people walking and biking. Specifically, the CSSA seeks to reduce speeds to a target speed for the road context, separate road users in space and time

18 World Health Organization (2011). Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020. Retrieved on: June 3, 2024

19 World Health Organization (2011). Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020. Retrieved on: June 3, 2024 for that context, and change road geometry to manipulate crash angles as proactive strategies to address kinetic energy risk for fatal and serious injuries.

This CSSA report compiles considerations for the local agency to institutionalize a Safe System Approach into programs, practices, and policies and to directly apply the SSA lens through field assessments and countermeasure selection.

3. Background on the City of Calabasas Calabasas is in Los Angeles County with a population of about 22,227 people. The majority of its residents – 74 percent – identified as White and about 9 percent identified as Hispanic or Latino.20 The median household income in Calabasas in 2022 was $154,079, higher than the statewide median household income of $91,551.21 The City of Calabasas had an estimated daily vehicle miles traveled on local roads of 159,040 in 2021.22 The vicinity of Calabasas is shown in Figure 3.1.

Figure 3.1 Calabasas Vicinity Map

3.1 Overview of Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety

One of the goals of the Complete Streets Safety Assessments is to make walking and biking safer and more accessible for all residents and visitors in Calabasas. In this section, we provide a summary of traffic crashes by statewide ranking, detailed analyses of crashes involving pedestrians and bicyclists to determine high-risk groups, high-priority locations and behaviors that need to be addressed, when crashes are occurring, as well as discuss the importance of underreported and near-miss crashes.

Office of Traffic Safety Ranking for Pedestrian and Bicycle Crashes The California Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) maintains crash rankings to facilitate comparison between cities with populations of similar size and to identify and address potential emerging or ongoing traffic safety issues. The rankings are based on the Empirical Bayesian (EB) Ranking Method that gives weights to many different factors, such as population, vehicle miles traveled, and crash counts. Rankings are available for incorporated cities and only include local streets

20 QuickFacts. United States Census Bureau. Retrieved from https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/ 21 Profiles. United States Census Bureau. Retrieved from https://data.census.gov/profile/ 22 California Office of Traffic Safety. OTS Crash Rankings. Retrieved from https://www.ots.ca.gov/media-and-research/crash-rankings/.

https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/ https://data.census.gov/profile/ and state highways within the city limits. Counties are also assigned a statewide ranking. Data for the OTS rankings are taken from the Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System (SWITRS), the California Department of Transportation, and the California Department of Finance. The most current OTS statistics (2021) grouped Calabasas within group E, as compared to 101 cities in California with a population between 10,001-25,000.

OTS crash rankings are only indicators of potential problems, and there are many external factors that may either understate or overstate a city’s ranking. Per the OTS rankings, in 2021, Calabasas was ranked 34 out of 101 cities of similar population size for people killed or injured in a traffic crash (with a ranking of “one” indicating the worst). For pedestrians and bicyclists killed or injured in a crash, Calabasas ranked 76/101 and 32/101, respectively. Calabasas ranked 19/101 for alcohol-related crashes, with similar rankings for drinking related crashes for drivers under age 21 and drinking-related crashes for drivers ages 21 to 34. For nighttime (9 p.m. – 2:59 a.m.) crashes, Calabasas ranked 19/101. Calabasas ranked 48/101 for speed related crashes and 46/101 for DUI arrests.

3.2 Pedestrian and Bicycle Crash Data

Crash data is vital to compete for funding at the state and federal levels to implement safety improvements. SWITRS, maintained by the California Highway Patrol, is the state's official traffic records database. It captures reported crashes that resulted in injury or death. The 2022- 2023 SWITRS data used is provisional as of May 2024 and subject to change before it is finalized. The CSSA project team retrieved SWITRS crash data for Calabasas from the Transportation Injury Mapping System (TIMS) database for 2019 through 2023. TIMS is a tool developed by SafeTREC to provide quick, easy, and free access to SWITRS which has been geo-coded by SafeTREC to make it easy to map crashes. The data presented below includes police-reported crashes that occurred within the city limits. Note that two of the reported crashes occurred within city limits on or near ramps of US-101 and therefore may be under the jurisdiction of Caltrans and not of the city.

In the five-year period 2019 to 2023, there were 19 crashes involving pedestrians and bicyclists in Calabasas, including one fatal crash and two serious injury crashes. Of these 19 crashes, one crash occurred on a state road.

Pedestrian Crashes From 2019 to 2023, there were eight crashes involving pedestrians in Calabasas. Among the nine victims of these pedestrian crashes, there was one person killed and one person seriously injured. The majority of pedestrian crashes resulted in minor injury23 with 75% of total crashes.

About half, 56%, of pedestrian crash victims were male. Age demographics of pedestrian crash victims varied, including two victims 14 or younger. The top Primary Collision Factor (PCF)

23 Minor injury is the sum of two victim degree of injury categories: suspected minor injury and possible injury.

https://tims.berkeley.edu/ violations include pedestrian right of way (63%), pedestrian violation (25%), and unsafe starting or backing (12%).

Figure 3.2 shows the spatial distribution of pedestrian crashes by severity. Due to the low number of fatal and serious injury crashes, no pattern appears in crash distribution. The one fatal pedestrian crash occurred on US-101 southbound, a state-owned highway, and Las Virgenes Canyon Road. It is unclear if this crash occurred on US-101, on a US-101 ramp, or near a US-101 ramp. If the crash occurred on US-101 or on a US-101 ramp, Caltrans has jurisdiction over those roads and not the City of Calabasas. The one serious injury pedestrian crash occurred at Park Granada & Parkway Calabasas.

Figure 3.2 Map of Pedestrian Crashes in Calabasas (2019-2023)

Figure 3.3 and Figure 3.4 show an analysis of pedestrian-related crashes in Calabasas. Figure

3.3 shows the distribution of when pedestrian crashes occurred. The majority of crashes occurred in the window of 6 a.m. – 9 a.m. Monday to Wednesday, or 3 p.m. – 6 p.m.

Wednesday and Thursday. Due to a limited number of pedestrian crashes, it is difficult to determine a pattern. The majority of crashes occurred in the dark with 50% of pedestrian crashes occurring in the dark with no streetlights and 13% occuring in the dark with street lights not functioning. The remaining 38% of crashes occurred in daylight.

Figure 3.3 Pedestrian Crashes by Day of Week and Time of Day in Calabasas (2019-2023)

Figure 3.4 Pedestrian Crashes by Pedestrian Action in Calabasas (2019-2023)

Figure 3.4 shows the distribution of where pedestrian crashes occurred. The majority of pedestrian crashes, 75%, occurred when crossing the road with four crashes happening when the pedestrian was crossing an intersection in the crosswalk. The remaining 25% of crashes occurred in the road, including the shoulder.

Bicycle Crashes Within the five-year period of data analyzed from TIMS, 11 crashes involving bicyclists occurred in Calabasas. Among the 11 victims of these bicycle crashes, there was no one killed and one person seriously injured. The majority (91%) of bicycle crashes resulted in minor injury24. The ages of bicycle crash victims varied, with one school-aged student between age 15 and 19. Of bicycle crash victims, 82% were male. The top Primary Collision Factor (PCF) violations were improper turning (50%) followed by unsafe speed (20%).

Figure 3.5 shows the spatial distribution of bicycle crashes by severity. A serious injury bicycle crash occurred at Calabasas Road & Parkway Calabasas, at the northern border of Calabasas.

Bicycle crashes were clustered along major arterials including Mulholland Highway (four crashes), Calabasas Road (one crash), Las Virgenes Road (one crash), and Lost Hills Road (one crash).

24 Minor injury is the sum of two victim degree of injury categories: suspected minor injury and possible injury.

Figure 3.5 Map of Bicycle Crashes in Calabasas (2019-2023)

Figure 3.6 Number of Bicycle Crashes per Day of Week per Time in Calabasas (2019-2023)

Figure 3.6 shows the distribution of when bicycle crashes occurred. The majority of crashes occurred in the window of 3 p.m. – 6 p.m. Monday to Thursday, with the highest number of crashes occurring Tuesday between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. and Friday between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m.

Out of the 11 bicycle crashes, 10 occurred in daylight and one occurred in the dark in areas with street lights.

Figure 3.7 Number of Bicycle Crashes by Type of Crash in Calabasas (2019-2023)

Figure 3.7 shows the distribution of types of bicycle crashes that occurred. Approximately 45% of bicycle crashes were broadside crashes, 27% occurred from a sideswipe, and 8% occurred from a rear-end crash.

3.3 Areas of Focus

The areas of focus for the Calabasas CSSA study include the intersections and approaches of Calabasas Road at Parkway Calabasas and at the US-101 Freeway, and the intersections and approaches of Mulholland Highway at Paul Revere Drive and at Eddingham Avenue.

Pedestrian Crashes in and around the Study Focus Areas

Figures 3.8 and 3.9 depict the pedestrian crashes that happened in the focus areas of this study.

Figure 3.8 depicts one serious pedestrian crash at Parkway Calabasas & Park Granada, and one injury crash at Calabasas Road & Parkway Calabasas.

Figure 3.9 depicts one injury crash at Eddingham Avenue & Mulholland Highway.

Figure 3.8 Pedestrian Crashes in and around Focus Areas of US-101 and Parkway Calabasas (2019-2023)

Figure 3.9 Pedestrian Crashes in and around Focus Areas of Paul Revere Drive & Eddingham Avenue (2019-2023)

Bicycle Crashes in and around the Study Focus Areas

Figure 3.10 and 3.11 depict the bicycle crashes that happened in the focus areas of this study between 2019 and 2023.

Figure 3.10 shows one serious injury crash and one injury crash at the Calabasas Road & US- 101 Onramp, where Caltrans has jurisdiction and not the City of Calabasas. The serious injury pedestrian crash occurred at the intersection of Park Granada & Parkway Calabasas.

Figure 3.11 shows no bicycle crashes on focus corridors. There was one bicycle crash on Daguerre Avenue & Dardenne Street, near the focus area.

Figure 3.10 Bicycle Crashes in and around Focus Areas of US-101 & Parkway Calabasas (2019-2023)

Figure 3.11 Bicycle Crashes in and around Focus Areas of Paul Revere Drive & Eddingham Avenue (2019-2023)

3.4 Street Story

Despite our best efforts, pedestrian and bicycle crash underreporting is common. Research suggests that a crash is less likely to be reported if there is no injury, little property damage, or only one party is involved.25, 26, 27 Street Story (https://streetstory.berkeley.edu/) is a crowdsourced community engagement tool developed by UC Berkeley SafeTREC that allows residents, community groups, and agencies to collect information about traffic crashes, near-misses, general hazards, and safe locations to travel. Once a record has been entered, the information is added to a map and aggregate table of publicly accessible data.

25 Stutts, J.C. and W.W. Hunter (1998). Police reporting of pedestrians and bicyclists treated in hospital emergency rooms. Transportation Research Record J. Transportation Research Board. 1998 (1635), 88-92. Available at:

https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/ped_bike/docs/00144.pdf.

26 Sciortino, S. et al (2005). San Francisco pedestrian injury surveillance: mapping, ,under-reporting, and injury severity in police and hospital records. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 37(6), 1102-1113. doi:

10.1016/j.aap.2005.06.010.

27 Loo, B.P. and K. Tsui (2007). Factors affecting the likelihood of reporting road crashes resulting in medical treatment to the police. Injury Prevention, 13(3), 186-189. doi: 10.1136/ip.2006.013458 https://streetstory.berkeley.edu/ https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/ped_bike/docs/00144.pdf https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2005.06.010 https://doi.org/10.1136%2Fip.2006.013458

Staff can use this free tool to collect information from residents for local needs assessments, transportation safety planning efforts, safety programs, and project proposals.

Jurisdictions can create custom boundaries through the Street Story tool to collect data for local needs assessments or to support local traffic safety planning efforts, safety programs, and project proposals. At the time of this report, 0 reports were input in Street Story for Calabasas.

4. Benchmarking Analysis Results and Recommendations

To assess pedestrian and bicycle safety conditions in Calabasas, the CSSA team conducted a benchmarking analysis to understand how the site’s existing conditions compares to current national best practices, including consistency with the Safe System approach. Through a holistic view of first anticipating human mistakes and keeping impact energy levels to the human body at tolerable levels, the Safe System Approach aims to eliminate fatal and serious injuries for all road users.28

An electronic questionnaire was sent to the CSSA site’s staff with an optional interview. Their responses are denoted by the yellow fill in the benchmarking matrix seen in Tables 4-1 through Table 4-5. The benchmarking questionnaire was separated into five categories:

● Enhancing Safety through Accessibility

● Policies and Programs

● Safety Data Collection and Assessment

● Pedestrian and Bicycle Network Planning and Design

● Pedestrian and Bicycle Support Programs

Each benchmarking category addresses one or more of the Safe System Approach elements (Safe Road Users, Safe Vehicles, Safe Speeds, Safe Roads, and Post-Crash Care) while also incorporating best practices related to access and comfort for people walking and biking.

Suggestions for better aligning each topic with best practice benchmarks are also noted for the the City of Calabasas’ consideration.

The CSSA team compared staff’s benchmarking questionnaire responses for each category against national best standards. The CSSA team also reviewed the city’s website and relevant documents to identify the city’s pedestrian and bicycle policies, programs, and practices. Based on these findings, the CSSA team assigned one of three ratings to each category:

● Exceeds national best practices;

● Meets national best practices; or

● Does not meet national best practices.

The CSSA team did not assign a rating if the city did not provide a response to a question.

28 Goughnouor, E. et a. (2021). Primer on Safe System Approach for Pedestrians and Bicyclists. FHWA-SA-21-065.

= Federal Highway Administration, Washington, D.C. Available at:

https://s…