ORLANDO, Fla. — After years of being named the worst city in the nation for pedestrians, Orlando is taking a step forward to cut deadly crashes on major roads.
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On Friday, the U.S. Department of Transportation awarded a RAISE grant of $606,000 to the city for six projects to redesign roads in the metro area. The funding comprises 80% of the estimated cost of the initial phase.
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“It’s based on an idea called Vision Zero, in other words, envisioning zero deaths in the future from our roadways,” Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said. “That might be hard to imagine now, but actually, there are cities around the world that have done it.”
The roads include sections of Orange and Rosalind Avenues downtown, Colonial Drive, Semoran Boulevard (including the Curry Ford Road intersection), Orange Blossom Trail and Kirkman Road.
Design improvements could include sidewalk upgrades, new or upgraded bike paths, public transit improvements and intersection overhauls, among other things.
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Buttigieg said Orlando’s grant application was among the 10% of project requests, dollar-wise, to be approved, and said leaders’ attention to detail helped put it over the top.
“Orlando had a very strategic approach,” he explained. “We want to make sure that we as a department are supporting it, because if it goes well, it could also be a model for the rest of the country.”
There was more good news: the timing of the grants couldn’t be better. When the designs are complete, Buttigieg said the projects could be in line for additional grants to fund the construction portions of the projects, courtesy of President Biden’s infrastructure bill.
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He also said the larger bill provided a more consistent funding mechanism for infrastructure in the future and injected more dollars into the annual federal budget.
That means if Orlando’s changes work, more funding could be available to cut down on deaths elsewhere.
“When planners discover a better way to move people and vehicles around safely, then that should be copied and emulated, our department will try to fund that whenever we find a successful model,” he said.
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