Overview
US Department of Transportation awarded the Town of Vinton a grant of funds in 2023 to develop a comprehensive safety action plan as part of the Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) Grants. The SS4A program funds regional, local, and Tribal initiatives throughout the country through grants to prevent roadway deaths and serious injuries. The program focuses on the development of a comprehensive safety action plan and its implementation for all users of a municipality’s highways, streets, and roadways, including motorists, bicyclists, pedestrians, and more.
Using the information from the GIS safety analysis, Timmons Group created community engagement efforts online and in-person to review whether the data captured all areas. Further recommendations were created for the top locations to garner support for innovative intersections and other improvements that have faced public scrutiny.
The crash risk data from the four maps generated by the usRAP analysis was combined to assign each roadway a single risk score. The result is a High-Injury Network ranking every roadway in Roanoke County. The High-Injury Network (HIN) is a collection of streets and roadways where a disproportionate number of severe car crashes, resulting in fatalities or serious injuries, occur. While increasing safety is important on every street, identifying a HIN assists local leaders in focusing their efforts on improvements on areas that will have the greatest impact and save the most lives.
Community engagement and feedback played a critical role in ensuring the development of the Action Plan was done using an inclusive and representative process. The first community meeting took place in the Spring 2024. The April community meeting was an opportunity to introduce the project and its goals to Town residents, as well as gather feedback on the identified fatal and serious injury crash locations. With feedback from the community, the project team moved forward in developing both location-specific and systemic recommendations. The community meeting in the fall
presented these findings to the community and collected their thoughts and comments.
