McGinn: Is safety really a priority on Seattle streets?

Transportation departments often say that safety is their top priority. Former Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn argues that’s not always true.

It’s the reason why the lanes on the Aurora Bridge, the site of a deadly crash on Thursday, were never widened, McGinn told KIRO Radio’s Jason Rantz.

When DOT's say “safety is highest priority” they often mean “unless it affects mobility”. Real priority is more lanes. 2/3

— Mike McGinn (@mayormcginn) September 25, 2015

“We’ve known its unsafe,” McGinn said of the bridge. “But to reduce the number of lanes would upset a lot of people and would be seen as insufficient. Hence safety isn’t the highest priority.”

The Aurora Bridge has three northbound and three southbound lanes, each about 9.5 feet wide. One aspect of Thursday’s crash involving a charter bus and Ride the Ducks vehicle that the National Transportation Safety Board is considering, is the bridge itself. McGinn believes that to make the bridge safer, it needs wider lanes and a median.

Prioritizing safety on Aurora would mean 2 lanes each way and center median divider. We could do that almost immediately. 3/3

— Mike McGinn (@mayormcginn) September 25, 2015

Rantz says that McGinn’s argument isn’t necessarily true. The Seattle Department of Transportation, for example, hasn’t had a problem taking lanes away for public transportation or bike lanes. Just take a look at Dexter Avenue or Second Avenue.

The justification for those areas, McGinn says, is that reducing lanes did not harm mobility. The next step would be to sacrifice mobility for safety. But there’s often a tradeoff when it comes to traffic, he explains, just like in other aspects of life.

“We could have a fire station on every corner…”

Despite his concerns, McGinn believes the Seattle Department of Transportation has done a better job of focusing on safety. It has “turned a corner.” Take Vision Zero, for example; a program to reduce and ultimately eliminate traffic related deaths in the city.