This article profiles Jersey City’s implementation of Vision Zero as a way to inform city officials and Boca Raton residents as we plan our own Vision Zero project. To assist the city effort, BocaFirst has developed a number of services on bocafirst.org. They can be found here.
Background on Jersey City’s Vision Zero Project
Jersey City, New Jersey was the first municipality in New Jersey to formally commit to meeting the Vision Zero goals of eliminating roadway fatalities and serious injuries. This commitment was made by an executive order signed by Mayor Steven M Fulop in February 2018. The goal was met for city roadway fatalities in 2022.
Jersey City has some innovative processes and focuses on Vision Zero goals for roadways within its jurisdiction. This is because it has no authority to change state and county roadways. However, Jersey City’s Vision Zero plan does specify some actions to reduce crashes on non-city roadways within its boundaries.
Jersey City Details
The following link has details about the City of Jersey City: Jersey City, New Jersey – Wikipedia
Crash History
Jersey City’s crash statistics copied from their 2022 Vision Zero Annual Report are in the following table.
| JC – All Roads | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 |
| Fatalities | 9 | 9 | 10 | 14 | 5 |
| Severe Injuries | 30 | 30 | 26 | 45 | 10 |
| JC- City Roads | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 |
| Fatalities | 6 | 2 | 5 | 8 | 0 |
| Severe Injuries | 22 | 18 | 17 | 36 | 8 |
The Jersey City Vision Zero Action Plan
Jersey City’s Action Plan took 12 months to complete and was finalized in February 2019. Their goal is to eliminate all city roadway crash fatalities and serious injuries by 2026. Their final report can be found here.
Jersey City’s Action Plan has five themes that are decomposed into specific actions in the plan.
- design safer streets
- promote a culture of safety
- embed Vision Zero in city practices
- enforcement, law and policy
- planning and leveraging data
Lessons for Boca Raton
Some relevant aspects of their Vision Zero project for Boca Raton include.
- Boca is going to have to deal with the state/county vs city roadway situation. There are most likely many more fatalities and serious injuries on state/county roadways within Boca Raton, so it would be wrong to ignore them. Jersey City’s Office of the Mayor is leading a city/county/state task force to focus on solutions for these roadways within the city.
- The mayor of Jersey City provides hands-on leadership in the city’s Vision Zero project. The city’s organizational structure is strong mayor-council where the mayor has executive and legislative authority. Boca Raton, on the other hand, has a weak mayor-council structure where the mayor has no executive authority. Because of the wide Vision Zero plan scope Boca Raton will require strong executive and legislative leadership for Vision Zero success.
- Jersey City hired the Street Plans (street-plans.com) consulting firm to help develop their Vision Zero plan. Miami Beach also retained Street Plans to help develop their action plan. Both cities seem to have developed successful plans.
- Jersey City embraces the concept of Tactical Urbanism to help overcome the problems with resident workshops where many don’t meet expectations. Their idea is to deploy small demonstration projects in a “show, don’t tell” mode.
Summary
The objective of this profile is to provide insights for Boca Raton city officials and residents.
Credits
Valuable information for this article was provided by Tyler Newcomb, a trustee at Home (bikejc.org).
