Amid record fatalities, creating safe roads for all users is critical

Although the city of Camas’ Everett Street improvement project likely won’t be fully completed until well into the 2040s or even the 2050s, there is no doubt that a good cross-section of Camasonians are already interested in how city staff and officials can help make this two-lane corridor, which leads traffic past Lacamas and Round lakes toward Camas High School, the city’s North Shore and Camas’ northern boundaries, safer not just for drivers but also pedestrians, bicyclists and others traveling through the area. 

And while the City still needs to alleviate many of the concerns of the corridor’s small business owners and residents, the proposed alternative presented to Camas officials in late December seems to have taken seriously the safety concerns of all corridor users. 

The model includes several “mini roundabouts” throughout the corridor, which will likely prove a safer option for drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians traveling to and from the lakes, high school or the parks and open spaces the City plans to include in the still-developing North Shore area. 

According to a report by the Iowa Department of Transportation, which used data from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), not only are roundabouts — including the small type planned for the Everett Street Corridor — safer people traveling in vehicles, with a 76% reduction in injury crashes compared to lighted intersections, but they’re substantially safer for pedestrians (with a 30% to 40% reduction in pedestrian crashes) and bicyclists (10% reduction in bicycle crashes).

The Everett Street preferred design also includes sidewalks on both sides of the road and bicycle lanes separated from the sidewalks by a landscaping buffer and from the vehicle lanes by a raised curb. 

Keeping pedestrians and bicyclists safe in the corridor was something Camas community members who showed up for the city’s Everett Street Corridor open houses and who filled out related surveys said they wanted. 

In fact, Camas Public Works Director Steve Wall said last summer that the surveys showed the community’s desire for the corridor to include bicycle-pedestrian lanes that would be safe not only for serious bicyclists but also those who are casual cyclists and perhaps not as comfortable riding right beside vehicles.

Improving our traffic corridors and providing accessible, safe modes of travel for all residents and visitor — not just those behind the wheel of a car, SUV or truck — is critical to fighting climate change, creating a more livable environment for all ages and turning around the recent increase in traffic, bicycle and pedestrian fatalities in our region.  

As the Willamette Week reported just last week, 2023 was “the deadliest year for Portland traffic accidents in three decades” despite the Portland Police Bureau’s reinstatement of its traffic division in the summer of 2023. In August, 2023, a Multnomah County, Oregon, report found that the increase in traffic fatalities in the Portland metro region is “a significant public health threat” and found that some groups, including Black, Indigenous and other people of color, young people ages 5 to 24, older people over the age of 65, unhoused people and lower-income residents, were at greater risk of dying in a traffic-related incident.

Also last month, the Washington State Department of Transportation released a report showing that serious crashes and fatalities on Washington’s roads have increased by 63% since 2013. 

And NPR reported in November 2023, that “pedestrian fatalities in the U.S. have been climbing steadily, to their highest level in more than 40 years … jumping more than 80% since 2009.” 

One reason for the increase in pedestrian deaths, according to research noted by NPR, is an influx of bigger, heavier, taller trucks and SUVs. 

“The new research adds to growing evidence that bigger vehicles are an important factor in pedestrian fatalities,” NPR noted, adding that researchers at the IIHS had found that “pickup trucks, SUVs and vans with a hood height greater than 40 inches are 45% more likely to cause fatalities than shorter vehicles with a hood height of 30 inches or less” and that “among medium-height vehicles with a hood height of between 30 and 40 inches, vehicles with a blunt front profile were 26 percent more likely to cause pedestrian fatalities than those with sloped fronts.”

That article noted that the average passenger vehicle in the United States has, over the past 30 years, “gotten about 4 inches wider, 10 inches longer, 8 inches taller and 1,000 pounds heavier.” 

Until there is pressure on auto manufacturers to create smaller, safer vehicles — and less demand from consumers who want to drive bigger and bigger vehicles — we will need to plan transportation corridors that can accommodate these types of oversized vehicles while still keeping bicyclists and pedestrians safe and separated by more than just a line of paint. 

As David Harkey, the president of IIHS, told NPR in November, “We really need to think holistically about what we need to do to protect everybody on our roadways — not just those in the vehicle, but those outside the vehicle as well.”

The city of Camas is attempting to do just that with their Everett Street Corridor plans, and we have faith that, as long as city officials don’t intervene too much, seasoned and knowledgeable members of the city’s staff — in particular Camas’ director of public works, Steve Wall, and its engineering manager, Curleigh Carothers — will, in conjunction with experienced consultant teams, be able to figure out parking concerns and ease small business owners’ worries without compromising the corridor’s future safety for all Everett Street travelers.