FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - January 23, 2024

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. - The Indianapolis Metropolitan Planning Organization (IMPO) is pleased to announce the launch of its new Vision Zero toolkit on January 23. Vision Zero is a comprehensive approach to transportation safety that seeks to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries while increasing safe and equitable mobility. The IMPO Vision Zero Toolkit is a unique resource available to communities to implement a Vision Zero Policy and work towards the goal of eliminating traffic fatalities.

More than 40,000 people — an average of 100 people per day — are killed, and millions more are injured, in traffic crashes around the country. According to the IMPO Crash Data Dashboard, 30,304 serious injuries, and 1,518 deaths on Central Indiana roads between 2015 and August 2023, a disproportionate number of whom are vulnerable road users such as people walking or biking. While often referred to as “accidents,” the reality is that these tragedies can be prevented by taking a proactive, targeted approach that prioritizes traffic safety as a public health issue.

Vision Zero is a strategy to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries while increasing safety, health, and mobility for all. In the 1990s, officials in Sweden adopted a set of traffic management policies that fundamentally differed from traditional traffic safety policies and set the goal of eliminating traffic-related deaths and severe injuries. This set of policies became known collectively worldwide as “Vision Zero”. While fully eliminating traffic crash deaths and injuries will require action from policymakers, lawmakers, vehicle companies, and healthcare facilities, this toolkit is focused on plans, policies, and design strategies that can actually be implemented at the local level. The toolkit acknowledges that at the local level, infrastructure is the best means of supporting Vision Zero and offers a series of design interventions to implement the vision.

“As the Central Indiana region continues to grow, this toolkit will provide the region with a way to implement vision zero at the scale needed to address traffic crashes,” said IMPO Director Anna Gremling. “This toolkit incorporates strategies already seen across the region from no turn on red policies to modernizing intersections and shifts to bus rapid transit.” The Vision Zero toolkit includes many resources such as key information about Vision Zero, easy-to-implement planning strategies, sample Vision Zero Policies, design strategies for reducing dangerous speeds, and customizable communication tools and strategies.

For more information about the Vision Zero toolkit, please visit the IMPO website at indympo.org/visonzero or contact the IMPO directly at Info@IndyMPO.org.

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Media Contact: Denise Herd

317-641-9063 / denise@herdstrategies.com

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About the IMPO:

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Planning Organization (IMPO) is Central Indiana’s federally designated regional planning organization. The IMPO creates and implements short and long-range plans to advance the region’s goals in transportation, economic development, housing, safety, sustainability, and other quality of life issues. The IMPO is also responsible for distributing certain transportation funds for roads, transit, trails, and other means of moving people and goods around Central Indiana. Our planning region includes approximately 1,500 square miles, 36 member jurisdictions, and approximately 1.78 million residents.

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