The Planning and Development Committee of the Rockford City Council met on Monday, August 24, 2026, at 5:30 PM. The agenda included a presentation on the Pedestrian Safety Action Plan, two funding agreements, and one resolution. All action items were approved by voice vote with no recorded opposition.
Tonight we do have our presentation for the pedestrian safety action plan, so I'll turn it over to Mr. Carter. Good evening. I'm Jeremy Carter, traffic and development engineer in public works. Good evening. I'm uh Jeremy Carter, I'm the traffic and development engineer in public works. Uh Colin Bell, Community Academic Development. I'm the comprehensive planning and design coordinator. So we're going to take a few minutes of your time tonight to talk about the pedestrian safety action plan. The action plan uh came out of a pedestrian safety task force that was formed in July of 2025. Um before we get into the history here, uh want to note this picture. Uh it's on the cover of the uh action plan. Kind of uh shows some of the uh struggles that we deal with here in the city of Rockford. We have a pedestrian uh walking on a goat path and a car driving on the wrong side of the road. Um this is actually North Pierpont. Uh we do have a project that we'll be putting sidewalk and the stretch that is scheduled to begin next year. So um in April of 2025, the mayor announced the creation um of the pedestrian safety task force at a Chamber of Commerce event. During his keynote address, uh he rightfully mentioned that every fatality is preventable. On average, in the City of Rockford, we have 22 traffic fatalities a year, uh, with about six of those being pedestrian fatalities. This is not a problem that is unique to Rockford nationwide. Um we have seen it um an uptick in uh traffic accidents since 2010 uh with the peak being hit in 2021 after everyone started driving after the uh after COVID. So ultimately the pedestrian task force was made up of concerned citizens, uh representative of representatives of local uh employers, uh representatives from the school district, the mass tangent district, our metropolitan planning organization, an older person and city staff, including public works, uh, community and economic development, and um police department. The group met nine times between July and December of 2025. We had a very regimented meeting where we initially started looking at the accident data, um, then went through and determined uh priorities for locations, then discussed possible solutions, and then ultimately um started talking about coming up with uh SMART goals uh that are measurable, obtainable, um, and then um prioritizing the locations and then moving on to the uh actual action plan. Colin Sure. So now we're gonna talk about some of the data. Um the information you're looking at on the map here uh represents all of the crash data that involved a bicycle and or pedestrian from 2015 until 2025. The biggest finding is that crashes are not spread evenly throughout the city. Serious crashes are concentrated on a relatively small number of major corridors and intersections. We also repeatedly saw wide roadways, long crossings, turning conflicts, driveways, and gaps in the pedestrian network as major contributing factors. This pattern supports a targeted corridor-based approach rather than evenly distributed citywide investments. Taking that a step further, this map shows only those incidents that were fatal injured fatal or sorry, were either fatal or severe injuries. These are the primary locations where the serious and fatal crashes were most concentrated. These include the 11th Street Corridor, Harrison Ave and South Alpine Intersection, North Central and Auburn Street Corridor, and then three locations along East State Street, one being at the North Alpine intersection, the other uh Perryville between Perryville and Bell School Road, and the last looked at the in most of the entirety of downtown Rockford, specifically on the east side where there were a concentration of um accidents, like I said. Um the plan recommends using these areas as the basis for the formal high injury network and prioritizing them in future capital planning. For each of the primary focus areas, the plan includes a corridor risk profile that outlines the crash data, the reoccurring conditions, and the top contributing factors at those locations. So some of the key findings. When we looked at these locations in more detail, the same issues kept showing up. Intersections create major conflicts, infrastructure gaps increase exposure, and commercial corridors require more context-sensitive solutions. The plan also makes it clear that engineering alone will not solve these problems. So these key findings provide the foundation for the recommendations, priorities, and our implementation strategies moving forward in the pedestrian safety action plan. Now looking at some of the goals and objectives frameworks that was developed through the committee. The plan supports that through safety priority corridors, safer priority corridors, safer speeds and crossings, and more connected pedestrian network. Improved visibility, better coordination, and ongoing monitoring. Achieving this goal requires a coordinated set of objectives focused on the roadway conditions, infrastructure, operations, and organizational practices that are identified throughout the corridor analysis. The plan recommends addressing physical improvements like crossings, lighting, sidewalks, and speed management, but also focuses on education, enforcement, policy, equity, and monitoring. One of the important recommendations in the plan is to use the crash severity and other factors to consistently prioritize future projects rather than responding to locations one at a time. Each of the 11 recommendations has a page dedicated to providing an overview of that strategy, specific priority locations, and recommended implementation actions. On the right, you can see the recommended category number one in more detail. So for each of these 11 categories, there's a specific page dedicated to it.