Cupertino approves plan to end traffic deaths

There’s a car crash in Cupertino about every three days, city data shows. Officials and advocates are trying to change that.

The Cupertino City Council unanimously passed the city’s Vision Zero plan earlier this month, joining a network of more than 60 cities in a national movement to end traffic-related fatalities and severe injuries. The plan aims to reach a net zero in deaths and severe injuries by 2040 through adding safety improvements to several intersections.

Cupertino saw 1,157 crashes between 2012 to 2021, resulting in nine deaths and 74 serious injuries, according to city data. The majority of those incidents happened at intersections along bustling corridors that will be prioritized, including Stevens Creek Boulevard, Homestead Road, McClellan Road, De Anza Boulevard, Stelling Road, Wolfe Road, Miller Avenue, Bollinger Road and Blaney Avenue.

Cupertino will form a task force of community members, city departments, Santa Clara County sheriff and fire departments and partner organizations to make reports about road safety to the city council and public annually, including improvement ideas such as quick-build traffic calming measures and lane changes. The force will begin meeting in the fall. Its success will be measured by reductions in traffic fatalities and severe injuries, the number of citations for the top five causes that led to death or severe injury, safety improvements around transit stops, public awareness levels and the quality of crash and injury data.

Joel Wolf, vice chair of the Bicycle Pedestrian Commission and Cupertino resident of about 38 years, has been a proponent of the plan from the start. He said he’s had multiple close calls on the prioritized corridors as a cyclist for roughly 45 years and as a pedestrian, including walking to a commission meeting.

“We should have been doing this probably a number of years ago, but I think now that we’ve adopted it, I have high hopes for the plan,” he told San José Spotlight.

The idea to create a Vision Zero plan in Cupertino began in 2022, following in the footsteps of San Jose, the first city in the county to adopt a plan in 2015. Other participating local cities include Morgan Hill, which adopted a Vision Zero plan in 2018, and Mountain View and Sunnyvale, which adopted theirs in 2019, according to VTA.

There have been shifts in the approach to Vision Zero since San Jose adopted it. The city will fold its task force at the end of the year and transfer the group’s work to council groups such as the Transportation & Environment Committee.

Tina Kapoor, deputy city manager, said Cupertino is dedicated to ensuring the plan’s success and will begin looking for grants to help fund some of its efforts.

“The Vision Zero concept consists of an approach that recognizes that people are vulnerable and make mistakes, that deaths and serious injuries on the roadways are unacceptable, that redundancy is crucial and that responsibility for roadway safety is shared,” she told San José Spotlight.

Cupertino implemented some road safety measures prior to Vision Zero. The city adopted a local roadway safety plan in 2022 and began preparing improvements for Bollinger Road in January. The city is also collaborating with VTA, Sunnyvale and Los Altos to create a safe route for students heading to school along Homestead Road.

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Cupertino resident Henry Widjaja, 18, said he’s seen a switch in the last four years from the city focusing on improving the roads for cars to improving them for pedestrians and cyclists. This year he helped push for a stop sign near his alma mater, Cupertino High School.

He said traffic safety is worth adding a few minutes to residents’ commutes because it can save lives.

“Do you want a student to be killed?” he told San José Spotlight. “That’s the trade off.”

Contact Annalise Freimarck at [email protected] or follow @annalise_ellen on X, formerly known as Twitter.