Over $3.6 million in federal funding will be given to the City of Salem and Umatilla and Clackamas Counties to improve street safety. The money will be used to develop and update road safety plans. Joseph Marek is the traffic safety program manager for Clackamas County. Treven Upkes is the deputy chief of the field operations division for the Salem Police Department. They join us to discuss what traffic safety looks like in their community and how they plan to use these new funds.
The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Umatilla and Clackamas Counties and the City of Salem will all be receiving federal money to make their roads safer. The nearly $3.7 million in grants are part of the Inflation Reduction Act’s Safer Streets and Roads for All program. That ‘all’ includes pedestrians, bicyclists and drivers. Treven Upkes is the deputy chief of the field operations division for the Salem Police Department. Joseph Marek is the traffic safety program manager for Clackamas County. They both join us now. Welcome to the show.
Joseph Marek: Thanks for having us.
Treven Upkes: Thank you.
Miller: Joseph Marek, first. How many fatalities were there on Clackamas County roads last year?
Marek: We’ve just tallied up the fatalities from 2023. We had 29 fatalities in 26 different crashes on all roads within Clackamas County, so regardless of jurisdiction.
Miller: How did that compare to recent years?
Marek: We were down a couple of fatalities from 2022 which is good. Our three year averages have been bouncing around between 29 and 32 since about 2016. So I think we’re on a little bit of a downward trend right now.
Miller: And Treven Upkes, what about Salem? What do recent numbers in Salem look like in terms of collisions and fatalities on Salem roads?
Upkes: So far, I don’t have the total collisions in the city, but for major crashes and fatalities, between 2021 and 2022, and then this year, we’re averaging about 13 to 15 for the fatal crashes and then resulting in right around an average of about 15 fatalities within those crashes every year. So we’re kind of holding steady with our average number of accidents.
Miller: What are the most common reasons for collisions or fatalities in Salem?
Upkes: When we’re looking at the fatalities, it’s gonna be vehicle versus pedestrian in 42% of our fatal crashes and then it’s followed by vehicle versus vehicle. So obviously when you’re having a vehicle that’s gonna strike a pedestrian, there’s less likelihood of that person surviving, whereas modern vehicles have quite a few safety measures. So you’re gonna have to talk about some pretty high dynamics involved in that situation to cause those deaths when it’s a vehicle versus vehicle. So that’s why we’re seeing such high pedestrian fatalities.
Miller: What about things like speed or drugs or alcohol?
Upkes: Yeah, for contributing factors, we’re seeing about 10% of our crashes are gonna be intoxication-related and that seems to hold steady within those as well.
Miller: Only 12%?
Upkes: Yeah, it’s a little bit lower than I expected when I was looking at that. So when I’m looking at 2022 related incidents, we had 14 fatal collisions and five DUI related to those fatalities and that number seems to kind of hold steady within those.
Miller: Joseph Marek, what trends stand out to you in Clackamas County?
Marek: Well, what we see is a lot of our crashes involve inexperienced drivers. So typically young drivers. We see about 36% roadway departure type crashes where people leave their intended lane of travel, about 34%, and then aggressive driving, those things of speeding, following too close, we see about 30%. Those are our really top three contributing factors and those hold pretty steady over the years. And then you have other things like alcohol and drugs that are contributing factors and those run for us about 20%, [and] pedestrian and bikes are about 16%.
Miller: What do you hope to do, Joe Marek, in Clackamas County, with the new federal money?
Marek: This new federal money is gonna allow us to take a better approach at incorporating equity into our safety planning documents, along with incorporating what is called the Safe System Approach into our planning documents. And the Safe System Approach, it can be thought of as just a very holistic way of looking at safety, because we look at safe road users, safe vehicles, safe speeds, safe roads, post-crash care.
What I love about the Safe System Approach is it’s rooted around these fundamental principles that death and serious injury are unacceptable, that humans make mistakes and that we’re vulnerable, particularly in terms of the forces that may be upon us during a crash. Responsibility is shared and safety is proactive and redundancy is critical. And so we’re gonna be able to incorporate the Safe System Approach into our planning documents, our safety plans along with a real strong equity lens, so we make sure all of our citizens in the county are served well and we can provide the best opportunities for people to get home to their families every night safely.
Miller: What’s an example of a change to the way a road is signed or engineered that you’ve done to make it safer in Clackamas County, or might do going forward, when you take the sort of systems approach?
Marek: Probably one of the best examples is providing signing along corridors so that as you traverse a road, you see consistent signs warning of curves, warning of stops, and that we provide slightly higher level of signing than what we’d normally be required to do, to make sure people can successfully navigate the road. People don’t wake up in the morning and say, oh, today, I’m going to drive off the road on my way to work. People don’t want to crash, that’s expensive, it’s dramatic. And so signing is one really low cost way that we can cover a lot of road corridors and improve safety.
Miller: Treven Upkes, what about in Salem? And I should say that of the nearly $3.7 million in federal funds that we’re talking about, Salem is gonna get the lion’s share: $2.8 million. What are you going to be doing with it?
Upkes: Yeah. So almost all that’s going to be used by our Public Works Department and it’s really gonna be kind of compliment, like what Joseph said. So we’re looking at traffic calming measures. We’re gonna be looking at installing more signage, reducing speed limits in many of our roadways, down to 20 miles an hour in residential neighborhoods. We’re gonna also add speed radar signs, really as a traffic calming measure, not necessarily as an enforcement tool, but the lights that flash and show you your speed just to kind of wake drivers up to realize that they need to be actively engaged in driving and commuting and things like that.
We’re also going to work on a public education campaign, as well as doing some other structural changes to roadways, traffic calming and speed bumps, potentially pedestrian islands, things of that nature that we’ve identified. And the police department works closely with the public works department to identify locations that we feel need these types of things. So it’s going to take that holistic approach once again and also take that equity list to identify those areas that haven’t been served or receive dollars to do roadway improvements in recent times.
Miller: One thing that you didn’t really mention there is enforcement, is more people giving tickets or, say, more red light cameras taking pictures of people leading to tickets. Do you have the resources now, and the inclination now as a department, to step up enforcement?
Upkes: Yeah, like many law enforcement agencies within the state, we’re facing some staffing issues, but we maintain a traffic unit specifically for traffic enforcement and crash investigation of six officers and one sergeant, as well as we do have photo red light and speed on green. And we’re gonna continue those processes. We work closely with ODOT for grant funding, for distracted driving campaigns, for intoxicated driver campaigns and speed campaigns. So we’re gonna continue with this same enforcement push, but as well as education really, making sure that sometimes drivers are just distracted, but not with intention and we just need to remind people of where they’re at, what’s going on. But we will maintain our typical enforcement because that’s usually the best way to gain compliance, or often a way to gain compliance. So we’ll continue with those things.
And in our biannual report for our Photo Red Light Program that we have to submit to the legislature, we’ve seen over the life of that, a 57% increase in [the] number of vehicles in our city. Holding steady on these types of crashes while an enormous increase of roadway usage is actually kind of an interesting take on that and where we’re at.
Miller: Joe Marek, what about people on foot or on bikes or in wheelchairs, people on or in anything but cars? What are you doing specifically for them, for the most vulnerable human bodies?
Marek: So for our vulnerable users, as we’re able to fund it, we’re putting in infrastructure such as rectangular rapid flash beacons at key crossings. And of course, we’re data driven. So we’re looking at where those crashes are occurring and trying to provide those fixes with money that we have, as well as providing bike facilities. We’re building many more separated bike facilities where the bike and pedestrian facilities are physically separated from the roadway by way of a curb and a landscape strip as possible. So, we are trying to address those vulnerable users, particularly in the urban area of the county.
Miller: And Treven Upkes, what about pedestrians, bicyclists, other people not in cars?
Upkes: Yeah, I think we’re once again following kind of those best practices. We, for biking, have identified bike corridors to kind of funnel bike traffic to particular areas where we’ve been able to improve the roadways to allow for a safer passage for bicyclists. With pedestrians, it’s similar, as to what Joseph was saying, with flashing lights, the pedestrian safety islands crossing midway. And then I think we’re also gonna be focusing more on that public education campaign, safe routes to schools, things of that nature where we’re trying to remind people how to be good users of the roadway when out and about. We seem to see a trend of these fatalities happening in the fall and winter time when lighting is very difficult. And so making sure that people are staying aware of their surroundings.
Miller: Treven Upkes and Joseph Marek, thanks very much.
Marek: Thank you.
Miller: Treven Upkes is deputy chief of field operations of the field operations division for the Salem Police Department. Joe Marek is a traffic safety program manager for Clackamas County.
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