Safe Streets Action Plan Meeting Held in Sidney

SIDNEY--On August 29, a Safe Streets Action Plan meeting was held at the Boss City Brewery, and representatives from JM Schaff and the City of Sidney met to discuss ways of making the streets and pathways of our community as safe as possible, with a focus on pedestrian safety. Jamie Weingart of JNW Consulting, Dave Schaff of MC Schaff and team members spoke with members of the Sidney community including City council and City of Sidney representatives, Department Heads from the City of Sidney and members of the Public School community.

The focus of the meeting was to start getting ideas together and to form an Action Plan. The Action Plan is the first of three steps for Sidney to receive its full grant funding for the Safe Streets Program. Five billion dollars was allocated by the Federal Government as part of the 2021 Infrastructure Law for pedestrian safety. Sidney was one of eight communities that were awarded grants by the Nebraska Department of Transportation, and the amount Sidney has been awarded is $300,000.

Jamie Weingart said, "Sidney has an innovative approach to the future in supporting its stakeholders in all demographics."

Dave Schaff added, "This national program is dedicated to communities that are often underrepresented and rural." He said that many communities cannot afford better and safer roads, pathways, and sidewalks, and need grants to pay for these improvements.

City Manager David Scott noted that it was a difficult slog getting through the grant requests, but he and his team were able to get it done. "The reason we were able to get this award was not because Sidney has a problem with traffic or pedestrian safety, but because we saw an opportunity to improve our road and pathway infrastructure and applied for the grant."

The assembled group spoke about dangerous areas such as the intersection near WalMart, the hotels off Route 80, and other problem areas. They also spoke of the danger of electric scooters, driving on sidewalks and recklessly, often by young people and children. Overall, looking at the statistics, Sidney is not any more dangerous to drivers or pedestrians than similarly sized communities. However, there is always room for improvement, and the City Manager recognized an opportunity to improve Sidney's infrastructure and applied for the grant.

The group learned about speed comparisons and the increased likelihood of severe injury or death as speed increases. One of the themes stressed in the meeting was "Humans Make Mistakes", and the importance of factoring in human error when designing safer streets and pathways. The focus of the discussions was to implement proactive design changes and upgrades to prevent accidents and injury and to use as much data collection as possible to give accurate and useful analyses that can be implemented.

The group will use the project website to take surveys and provide more input for the Action Plan phase, which is the first phase of the initiative. When this phase is complete, the initiative will implement these ideas and generate concrete plans for street and pathway improvements.

City of Sidney Mayor Brad Sherman attended the meeting and said, "It's very positive, and I like talking about proactive rather than reactive solutions. I encourage all citizens that would like to give their input on making Sidney's streets safer to go to bit.ly/SS4A-SSAP and fill out the survey."