The Need for Vision Zero Action
Following Mayor Grigoraitis’ election in November 2023, one of the goals she laid out for the city was to make Melrose a “Vision Zero” community. The Melrose Pedestrian and Bicyclist Committee fully supports this goal of completely eliminating deaths and serious accidents on city streets.
The need for such action is clear. Melrose streets have grown increasingly dangerous over the last half-decade, with the number of crashes rising steadily each year since the pandemic. In 2024, there were 329 crashes on Melrose streets—70 more than in 2023. The first weeks of 2025 have already witnessed a 30% increase in crashes over 2024, including a fatality on the Fellsway on the very first day of the year. It is not surprising that Melrose residents consistently rank speeding among their highest safety concerns in the city.
Vision Zero seeks to eliminate deaths and serious injuries on our streets using a “safe systems” approach to street safety. This approach recognizes that we cannot rely on perfect behavior from individual road users to prevent crashes, that human beings make mistakes, and that cities must design and operate streets in a way that reduces those mistakes and minimizes the dangers to others when they inevitably do occur.
In recent years, the city has taken steps to make Melrose streets safer through its adoption of the Complete Streets program and its rollout of an evolving traffic calming pilot initiative. Last year, the city announced it would participate in a regional Vision Zero plan led by the Boston Metropolitan Planning Organization.
We believe that adopting a Vision Zero policy for Melrose is an urgent and necessary next step. To that end, our committee convened a working group to study a range of other cities’ approaches to Vision Zero to find what could work for our community.
As a result of this work, we believe the city should first formalize its commitment to Vision Zero through both a mayoral order and city council resolution, and that the mayoral order should establish a Vision Zero task force comprised of Melrose residents and public officials that have demonstrated a commitment to street safety. The immediate charge of the task force would be to develop a Vision Zero Action Plan in consultation with relevant city departments.
The task force would not have to start from scratch. Our working group has also put together a draft set of recommendations that includes specific actions that can help Melrose reach the goal of eliminating traffic deaths and serious injuries on our streets. Our recommendations are organized around three goals:
1) Building a Safe Community
2) Prioritizing Safe Design
3) Promoting Safe Action
These recommendations draw on best practices from national and peer communities. They show what we believe is possible for Melrose, and are an expression of our support for the mayor’s goal of making Melrose a Vision Zero city.
To learn more about our recommendations, click here to view the plan summary, or click here to review the full draft action plan recommendations.