Among the transportation-related news on one day (September 5) in Alameda:

city press release and USDOT press release

video posted to Reddit r/alameda and also reported on by KTVU (I didn't walk by until later in the day when the car had been removed and the glass was being swept up from the empty window frames)

Facebook Alameda Peeps post (Note that I have not verified this with AFD or APD. As someone who was run off the road by a big rig dump truck once, my main priority was to get medical care and then be told everything would be alright — I didn't think to file a police report. I'm not going to bother this parent on Facebook by suggesting they do so. I hope the city staffers who are on the Alameda Peeps group can reach out to this parent to see if they want direct assistance.)

This mix is, for better or worse, the world we currently live in.

Starting with the good news: Thank you and congratulations to the Alameda city staffers who worked very hard to secure this "Safe Streets 4 All" award from the Biden/Harris administration. Alameda previously applied and lost, but tried again and won this time. Persistence and preparation paying off!

While the $16 million from the grant program will go specifically toward physical safety improvements along the Lincoln Ave corridor, the impact of the award will hopefully be even greater than that — and of relevance to many other preventable crashes around other parts of Alameda.

As part of the SS4A program, Alameda will get support from the SS4A Technical Assistance Center and "community of practice." Opportunities that can connect this city to other forward-thinking teams of planners, engineers, and leaders across the country.

Many USDOT grant programs also involve invitations to events at USDOT headquarters in Washington, D.C. Perhaps City of Alameda staff and maybe also elected officials will be invited to USDOT headquarters for events related to safe streets.

Even if the focus of this grant will be a specific subset of streets in Alameda, the grant will hopefully also provide Alameda with opportunities to further learn about and implement the USDOT's "safe system" approach of "layered" programs and policies and street improvements that all work together to reduce crashes:

from USDOT "What is a Safe System Approach?"

Fortunately the city's public information officer shared that the two pedestrians hit on Park Street yesterday were not seriously injured (and that the driver of the vehicle was not seriously injured), and fortunately the parent writing that Facebook post says that their child was cleared of injuries by the ER doc.

But unfortunately we currently do live in a city (and a region and a country) in which there are too many crashes, injuries, and fatalities on our streets. There are many reasons for this. And there are many different changes that need to happen to fix this situation. Thank you to City of Alameda staff, consultants, and elected leaders for working diligently to change this status quo. Hope you all get a moment to celebrate before getting back to work!

Safe Streets 4 All in Alameda