Yarmouth has joined a national network of Vision Zero communities that have committed to fully eliminating all traffic deaths. Joe Phelan / Kennebec Journal

The Yarmouth Town Council voted unanimously on Sept. 19  to commit to eliminating all traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2045 and to develop a local Vision Zero Policy in order to help achieve that goal. Yarmouth is the first municipality in Maine to take this step, according to Mike Tremblay, the vice chair of Yarmouth’s Bike and Pedestrian Safety Committee and the director of transit development at Greater Portland Metro.

Yarmouth plans to develop the policy in collaboration with its Bike and Pedestrian Safety Committee, Complete Streets Advisory Committee and town officials. The council took the step at the recommendation of those two committees.

Vision Zero is a road safety strategy that began in Sweden in the 1990s, which posits that the only acceptable number of traffic fatalities is zero.

Central to Vision Zero is the idea that human error is inevitable, and roads should be designed to anticipate mistakes and make sure they don’t result in severe or fatal injuries.

Although Yarmouth is the first municipality to adopt a Vision Zero resolution, and in doing so has become a part of a network of Vision Zero communities around the country, the Greater Portland region adopted a Vision Zero action plan in 2023.

That plan, which was developed by staff from the Greater Portland Council of Governments, outlines a number of achievable goals like developing educational programming aimed at pedestrian and cyclist safety and supporting legislation to allow safety cameras as an enforcement technique, such as monitoring red-light running and speeding.

The town could also choose to rely heavily on the regional policy in developing their own policy, according to Julie Dubovsky, Yarmouth’s assistant planner.

There might be “no need to recreate the bicycle wheel,” she said. “They (can) follow that excellent framework that’s provided.”

Vision Zero has been successful in other municipalities. In New York City, the Vision Zero led to a 30% reduction in traffic injuries from 2014 to 2019. According to a study released earlier this year, it also led to low-income New Yorkers suffering fewer injuries in crashes and saved Medicaid more than $90 million in the first five years in reimbursements for treatments related to traffic injuries.

A Vision Zero policy would build on Yarmouth’s Complete Streets policy, which it adopted in 2015, and encourages building and designing roads so that they are safe for all users, including pedestrians and cyclists – for example, by including right-sized sidewalks on roadways.

The regional policy passed in 2023 details crash data for the Portland region and high crash areas. Between 2016 and 2022, the area averaged a total of 18 fatalities per year attributable to car crashes. The report identified Portland and Biddeford/Saco as fatal and severe injury hotspots.

Statewide, Maine has seen a drop in traffic fatalities, but pedestrian deaths have remained high. The phenomenon mirrors nationwide traffic trends, according to reporting earlier this year from the Portland Press Herald.