Council Member Julie Won questions DOT on 'daylighting or better'

Okay, thank you so much, Chair Breu.

I want to bring it back to the Vision Zero Reimagined plan that the mayors were on Mondani revealed on September 15, 2026.

The advocates and I are still extremely disappointed that the mayor has walked back on his campaign commitment to support universal daylighting.

And I know that we're going to have the bill heard at another hearing.

But for the Vision Zero Reimagined plan, it commits to daylighting or better, in air quotes, verbatim, at a thousand intersections.

Per year.

Can you please define what better means?

and quantify it or qualify it and what metrics you are used to define that as daylighting or better.

And does this include non-physical infrastructure?

For example, would solely a leading pedestrian interval count?

And does 1,000 intersections mean safety treatments at all crossing locations within those 1,000 intersections?

Thank you, Councilmember.

You know, I think the starting point to answering that is really about the outcomes, and that's really what we're after here.

So with the daylighting or better, it's based on the actual analysis we've done on how these treatments can reduce crashes, basically, or reduce the severity of crashes.

And a lot of that depends on the context of each location.

If it's a narrow street, a wide street, one-way, two-way, we see, you know, basically the other things we're including there as under or better in certain situations could deliver even better crash reduction to daylighting.

And that's why we're defining it that way.

Can you give us a clear example of what qualifies as better than daylighting?

Sure, and there's a longer list, but it could be a new traffic signal.

It could be pedestrianization of a street.

There's a very wide range of things that we've studied that, as the commissioner said, in the right circumstance can provide better outcomes than hardened daylighting.

So we absolutely have a strong commitment to doing more hardened daylighting and setting new highs for how much hardened daylighting we're going to.

We just want to be clear that it's not the only safety treatment that we have in our books, and we want to make sure that we're doing the right thing in the right places to get the maximum safety benefit.

And the 1,000 intersections are all crossing locations within those 1,000 intersections?

How are you quantifying 1,000?

So we would do a safety improvement at that intersection, and when we do that, we look at where is it needed most.

So that still doesn't answer my question.

How are you quantifying 1,000?

If we do safety improvements at that intersection, then it counts towards the 1,000 intersections.

But what we're asking is, does a thousand intersection mean safety treatments at all crossing locations?

I think it's going to depend on the intersection.

As Deputy Commissioner Beaton said, we approach each location individually because we want to maximize the safety benefit.

And so it's around looking at the crash history, the crash data, what kinds of crashes are happening.

You know, is it...

Turning issues?

Is it like T-bone type issues?

That's going to suggest what the right treatments could be.

And so at some intersections, it might be all the corners or all the approaches.

At other intersections, it may be like a major road, you know, intersecting with a minor street.

So that might look different.