All right, well, good afternoon.

We have a quorum of Vision Zero Task Force members.

So we'll go ahead and kick off the first meeting.

We will have all the task force members introduce themselves here in a minute.

But let me just start by saying I'm John Barth.

I'm a member of the City County Council representing District 7.

I appreciate the president's confidence in me and allowing me to chair this brand new task force that has a very important charge that we need to accomplish.

So I'd like to thank him.

I'd like to thank the Indianapolis City County Council for supporting the vision behind Vision Zero and the structure of it, which you are seeing now today.

Developing the Vision Zero ordinance that was passed and signed into law.

And now as I say in my in my day job, we are widening the circle to include a lot more people to be involved in this.

And I'll talk about that here in a minute as to why the circle is being widened and why that's so important.

So today's meeting is really a kickoff meeting.

It's aimed at introducing the mission of the task force, discussing the next steps, introducing the task force members to each other.

In many cases, they're they're meeting each other for the first time, and introducing the task force members to the broader community.

I do want to note that the planning process is the most important thing that we're gonna do.

We're gonna create the uh action plan associated with the Vision Zero task force, and that's what these folks on the task force are gonna be doing.

Um be doing that work in public and um really seeking out and um desiring the input from the public.

That's gonna come especially as we dig into this and start having more work product.

And I will describe to you here in a minute um what the work product is, or actually our our friends uh uh from our consultants will describe to you uh the work that they're doing now and what comes next.

And that process will be very intentional in getting a lot of feedback, not only from this multi um disciplinary team, but also broadly um from folks across the city.

Um so let me just some of this stuff I'm gonna say now is um a lot of the people here today are really passionate about this issue, and you you know what we're doing.

Um, but uh some folks are gonna be brand new to this.

Um and in fact, some people on the task force uh are newer to this concept um than others, uh, so they won't know a huge amount about it yet or or a minimal amount.

So part of what we're doing today is really getting everybody to the same place and understanding um both the the task in front of us and what the concept in the vision of vision zero is.

So um bear with us if if you're already an expert on vision zero, because we have some work to do to make sure we have everybody um caught up in it the same place.

So a few comments to start.

Vision zero is a global initiative aimed at eliminating all traffic-related fatalities in serious injuries while ensuring safe, equitable mobility for everyone.

This was launched originally in Europe in the 90s.

It shifts the focus from uh merely reducing accidents to creating a transportation system where no life loss of life is acceptable.

A key component of Vision Zero is shared responsibility.

Success requires collaboration across all levels of government and communities, from engineers and planners, designing safer streets to law enforcement, ensuring traffic laws are followed, uh, to public health workers promoting uh safety education.

Every department in the city has a responsibility to contribute to the culture of safety.

And the responsibility extends beyond the city county council in the government enterprise.

Advocates, community leaders, and neighbors all play a role in this effort by meaningfully engaging in what would be a long process.

This unified approach prioritizes vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians, cyclists, those with mobility impairments, and focuses on designing streets that reduce conflicts with motor vehicles.

Many U.S.

cities, including Columbus, Ohio, who I have, and I know anyone who paid attention to the lengthy process to get here knows that Councilor Nielsen and I really engaged pretty thoroughly with some leaders in Columbus.

And we're lucky, and you'll you'll meet later to have a consultant who has meaningful and long-term experience with the Columbus experience.

But uh I had the opportunity to spend time in in Columbus, Ohio, and plus virtual calls to really learn how they've done their work, and it's been uh impressive.

And one of the things that has really um jumped out of me uh from meeting them was just how the the culture of Vision Zero seems to have really taken hold in city government in Columbus and how they had a real um focused um method of designing the the action plan, implementing the action plan and thinking it through very carefully.

And so that those um that is being uh somewhat of a true north for me because I think what they have accomplished is meaningful and significant and impressive.

Um by joining this movement, we are committing to work together to create a safer, more livable city and to meet the ambitious goal we have of eliminating all fatal and serious crashes on city streets by uh 2035, which was established in proposal 224.

I do want to restate that this is a multidisciplinary, multi-department, multi-agency process, and we have to get it right.

Uh the prioritization that comes with it is part of how we will make sure that we are moving deliberately and intentionally towards the goal of in 2035 from Marion County.

Um I do want to just restate that again because part of what we're doing with Vision Zero is getting this across city, across disciplined team, plus the input of the community to really think hard about what this action plan is and how we're going to execute it.

Part of what really matters is the implementation and the prioritization.

And I think that's uh a challenge sometimes because we're have to we'll have to make some tough choices about what comes first and what we prioritize first.

Um we can't pretend that we don't have uh significant and uh ongoing, hopefully to be resolved in in this or upcoming um sessions of the General Assembly, but we 100% have a uh deficit when it comes to equity uh as far as funding for infrastructure uh in Indianapolis is something we've dealt with and struggled with for a long time.

But by really thinking hard and partnering um internally and externally and coming up with those priorities, we we will start chipping away at this problem and get to our goal by 2035.

Um, we can't pretend that there's not um uh significant challenges with uh tracking uh police officers right now.

We've had uh too few officers for for a long time, um, and that impacts our ability to execute on the amount of enforcement that I know that I and others others would like to see, but there's ways around that.

We have to think that forces us to think hard about other opportunities and and tech technology when it comes to enforcement, although that requires input from the General Assembly as well.

But I guess my point in making those last comments is just to acknowledge that doing this work is um a long-term strategy that involves making um a clear plan that is executed with a line of sight as to what we universally agree are the priorities, but recognizing we have some limitations and we have to do everything we can to mitigate those.

Um I think that's an important point because um there's challenges everywhere around around the city, and we love to make these changes as fast as possible, but doing this real disciplined approach, it gives all of us a way of pulling from the same end of the rope to achieve our the goal that we all have.

And I and to conclude this section is to just say there's a real intentionality here that the three counselors you you see um and the the two counselors sitting next to me when we were writing this proposal and thinking about it carefully, is that the first iteration of it will be um uh in this summer of 2025, and we picked that date to make sure we had a version of it done by then was so it would be done before the budget.

Um the budget is is what matters when it comes to this, and making sure that we start to allocate dollars to the strategies and make sure that they're executable because it's it's easy.

Being someone who's spent my entire life uh in and around government, I've seen my fair share of plans that have been made that everyone supported that no one ever saw again, right?

But that's not what's gonna happen here.

A, because we have this task force that's gonna meet in public, uh, B, because we have the community to hold us accountable, and C, because we uh designed the ordinance in a way that connected the budget process to um this planning process.