Dallas has no written plans to curb pedestrian accidents, city audit says

Dallas doesn’t have any written procedures for how to decrease the number of pedestrians hit in traffic, doesn’t check to see if any preventative measures now in place actually fix the risk of accidents and is way behind on making sure old crosswalks are still visible, says a stinging city audit released Monday.

Along with no formal plans, the city’s transportation department doesn’t have any performance measures that address pedestrian safety or any specific goals or timelines for proactively lowering crashes at locations where multiple people have been hurt, even though the department routinely collects crash data.

The city also has a backlog of 1,500 crosswalks in need of re-marking, which would cost $1.2 million.

That’s all according to a routine review of the transportation department by the city auditor, which will be formally presented to the City Council’s government performance and financial management committee next month.

[Read the audit]

In a letter to city auditor Mark Swann responding to the 14-page report, City Manager T.C. Broadnax said the city is already working on plans to address many of the issues raised by the audit.

One of them is Vision Zero, which was requested by the City Council in 2019. City staff is set to present a full plan for that effort to the council this year mapping out ways to improve residents’ safety on roads, including having zero traffic deaths by 2030.

“Coincidentally, the (transportation) department previously recognized several of the issues described in the audit report as needing enhancement,” Broadnax wrote. “Transportation has been developing and implementing solutions to address those issues over the past three years.”

Broadnax could not be reached for comment Monday evening.

City transportation director Gus Khankarli said the Vision Zero plan is planned to be presented to the council next month.

“The Dallas Department of Transportation takes the findings of this audit very seriously,” he said. “Creating a safe transportation system for all users of our roadways, including pedestrians, is our top priority.”

Dallas, the ninth-largest city in the U.S., ranked 5th in 2020 among pedestrian deaths in cities of at least 50,000 people, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The 66 people killed put Dallas below only Phoenix, Houston, New York and Los Angeles.

Among the nation’s 20 largest cities, Dallas had the highest rate of pedestrian deaths per 100,000 people in 2020.

Among the city audit’s findings:

-- Dallas doesn’t have any set criteria for when intersections warrant further investigation to evaluate safety issues in areas where people have been hit several times. There’s no uniform tracking of what improvements are needed. And there are no procedures to see how well improvements are working.

“Due to this, some high injury locations may not be addressed in a timely manner and may cause equity issues,” the audit said.

-- The city has a yearly goal of re-marking 830 crosswalks a year, but last fiscal year funded only 70 crosswalks.

-- The city has seven transportation workers responsible for all crosswalk maintenance in Dallas and the City Council has reduced the budget by more than $400,000 since 2016.

The auditor’s office recommended Khankarli create specific plans to improve pedestrian safety with timelines for when they’re implemented as well as ways to track progress.

Recommendations also included developing written policies to incorporate pedestrian accident data Dallas already collects into those plans as well as a criteria for when to proactively further examine pedestrian traffic issues in specific areas of the city based on trends seen in the data.

Khankarli should also create a plan to clear the backlog of crosswalks that need to be re-marked and include an estimate of how many years it’ll take, the audit said. The city also needs to inspect safety measures, like signals, signs and crosswalks, more frequently, according to the audit.

Federal and state guidelines, for example, call for pedestrian traffic signals being inspected every six months and crosswalks being refreshed every seven years. Dallas requires pedestrian traffic signal maintenance every 18 months and crosswalk re-marking every 10 years, the audit said.

Broadnax wrote that the city does not plan to follow two of the recommendations. He said the transportation department won’t follow federal recommendations that pedestrian and bike safety plans prioritize pedestrian traffic over all other modes of transportation, instead opting to focus on safer roadways for all users.

He also said the city won’t line up maintenance guidelines with federal and state standards.

“While transportation agrees it would be ideal to align maintenance schedules for pedestrian safety with leading criteria, we will accept the risk for this recommendation due to resource challenges and uncertainty, particularly regarding funding and recruiting and retaining an adequate number of skilled employees,” Broadnax wrote.

Khankarli is one of four top city officials included at the end of Broadnax’s letter.

The audit comes as the city is creating and trying to put into place several different traffic-related plans including ones to address thousands of miles of missing sidewalks, and a plan to create guidelines to help city officials prioritize policy decisions and future projects that incorporate multiple forms of transportation for residents.

The transportation audit has been in the works off and on since at least 2020.

Dallas didn’t have a dedicated transportation department until 2017. Transportation was previously part of the city’s public works office.