Report offers ideas on how to make Fort Smith streets safer

A Safe Fort Smith Action Plan presented to the Fort Smith Board of Directors at a study session Tuesday (Aug. 13) focuses on 10 key projects that help the city reach its goal of zero fatality or serious injuries in the city by 2050.

The city received a $280,000 Safe Streets and Roads for All grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to develop a comprehensive safety action plan for the city’s streets in 2023. The purpose of this plan, completed by engineering firm Burns & McDonnell, was to perform a system-wide analysis of the city’s transportation network and identify and prioritize safety improvement projects and strategies to reduce the number of traffic accidents and fatalities in the city, said Matt Meeker, director of streets and traffic control.

Development of the plan also allows the city to be eligible for future grant funding to implement the safety improvements identified in the plan, Meeker said.

Following are the 10 projects selected as priorities, according to the report.
• Garrison Avenue from Second to 14th streets
• Rogers Avenue from 46th to 79th streets
• Grand Avenue from 21st to 37th streets
• Kelley Highway and 50th Street intersection
• Towson Avenue from Phoenix Avenue to Raleigh Street
• Jenny Lind Road from Jackson to Louisville streets
• Rogers Avenue and Albert Pike Avenue intersection
• Park Avenue from North Greenwood Avenue to North 35th Street
• Kelley Highway and 32nd Street intersection
• North B Street from North Sixth to north 15th streets

Though the corridor of problem areas only makes up about 1.7% of the city’s road network, the priority areas represent 44% of the city’s fatal crashes, and 35% of the city’s serious injury crashes. The report identifies specific and general ideas of things that can be done to help at each problem area with estimates of how much safer the projects will make Fort Smith city streets.

“It can be an incredibly daunting task to get there to zero fatality or serious injury accidents,” said Dr. Howard Lubliner, national safety analysis lead with Burns & McDonnell.

RECOMMENDATIONS, DRUNK DRIVING
Lubliner said intersections in the city represent 55% of all fatal and injury crashes, so intersection safety is a very prominent issue in the city. Vulnerable road users represent only 5% of the total crashes in the city but 22% of the fatal and injury crashes in the city.

“A lot of our recommendations do focus on vulnerable users – bicycles and pedestrians,” Lubliner said.

Recommendations focus on coordination with public safety on roadway safety initiatives including reducing speed, increasing knowledge about pedestrian crossings, reducing red-light running, addressing impaired driving, updating city policies to promote safety-centric focus, implementing safety improvements at identified priority locations, and using the local streets safety toolbox to identify safety solutions.

“Drunk driving in Fort Smith was an area of focus that was identified through statistics. … The percentage of  fatalities that are involved with drunk driving have increased substantially over the study period. Fort Smith started below the statewide average and is now above the statewide average,” Lubliner said.

In 2020, the state’s percentage of serious accidents involving BAC of over 0.08% was 26% and of over 0.15% was 17% and Fort Smith’s was 20% and 13% respectively. In 2022, the states numbers were 24% for 0.08% and 17% for 0.15%. Fort Smith’s percentages were 35% and 25%, respectively.

AGE IMPACT, NEXT STEPS
The report showed that approximately 18% of fatal crashes in Fort Smith involved young drivers (ages 15-20 years old), which is a higher percentage than statewide. Older drivers, those 65 and older, and are involved in 12% of Fort Smith fatal crashes compared to 19% at the statewide level.

Fort Smith experienced 41.1 vehicular fatalities per 100,000 population between 2020-2022, below 60.1 statewide, 43.3 in Springdale, and 58.7 in Little Rock, but higher than the 23.2 in Fayetteville. Crash numbers have remained consistent in the last three years and continue on the same trajectory for 2023. The crash numbers show that approximately 25% of all crashes within Fort Smith resulted in a fatal or injury crash, the report said.

As far as what’s next, the report states that “priority corridors, public feedback and momentum for implementation gathered through the Safe Fort Smith planning effort will be leveraged as the city pursues additional grant funding to continue this work.”

The board agreed to put the plan and proposed action on a future board meeting agenda.

“The City of Fort Smith is actually one of the first communities certainly in the state and even in the region to complete their action plan. One of the first recipients to get the action plan grant. It gives you the opportunity to be a trailblazer for that,” said Steven Beam with Burns & McDonnell.