Sandy Springs city officials have cut 10 years off a proposed target date to achieve zero fatalities or serious injuries from crashes on city streets.
The city council adopted an amended Safe Streets for Sandy Springs Safety Action Plan during its April 15 meeting. The city received a U.S. Department of Transportation grant to prepare the plan.
Kristen Wescott, transportation services unit manager for the city, said the first goal proposed by staff, after engaging with stakeholders and community members, was to strive to achieve zero fatal and serious injury crashes by 2050 on city-owned streets. A draft of the plan was initially introduced to the city council in October 2024. The city launched development of the plan in August 2024.
A copy of the draft plan and a map showing safety concerns shared by community members can be found on the city’s website.
Council member John Paulson said he thought 25 years was too long.
“I will not support this unless this moves to 2040, and I don’t know totally what the implications are, but we have smart staff, they can figure this out,” Paulson said.
The second goal was to work with the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) to establish safety goals for state routes and limited-access facilities within the city to achieve a five percent annual reduction in fatal and serious injury crashes. Fatal and serious injury crashes were expected to reach zero by 2100 if this progress is made, according to the presentation made by Wescott.
Two-thirds of the crashes occurring in Sandy Springs are on state or federal routes, according to the presentation. Wescott told the council that staff examined the more than 27,000 crashes between 2018 and 2022 to determine the type of accidents and where they occurred.
The Safety Action Plan reported that the greatest number of crashes occurred on the Georgia state route system, including I-285 (27 percent of all crashes), GA 400 (23 percent), Roswell Road (15 percent), and Holcomb Bridge Road (one percent).
Serious accidents continue to occur on the city’s streets. On March 21, a Sandy Springs man walking along Roswell Road was fatally struck by a vehicle driven by a Roswell man, with the driver charged with vehicular homicide.
Thirty-four percent of all crashes occurred on city-owned streets. Among the crashes during this time, 38 crashes resulted in at least one fatality, and 205 crashes involved at least one serious injury. Among the fatal and injury crashes, 39 pedestrians and six bicyclists were killed or seriously injured.
Council member Andy Bauman asked that the city examine traffic-calming measures to reduce crashes. He said a consistent comment from residents is that the process to get traffic calming measures is not user-friendly.
“It would seem incongruent to me as a matter of public policy, that, on the one hand, the council would adopt a zero goal of zero deaths, and not at the same time, take a good hard look at its traffic calming policy,” Bauman said, “and also the amount of money that it would invest in traffic calming, which may be some of the most low-hanging fruit of this.”
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