Project Overview

The City of Tampa, their MPO, and Hillsborough County have effectively competed for over $50 million in Safe Streets for All (SS4A) grants to support the research, development, and construction of innovative interventions to improve traffic safety. The Local Infrastructure Hub produced a full case story on the City’s SS4A grant in January 2024, available here. 

The work across the region is based on the Quick Build Program, which allows the City to rapidly deploy low-cost safety countermeasures in high-priority corridors and across communities to protect vulnerable road users. In partnership with state and local partners, Tampa is leading the largest investment ever in roadway safety for their CIty, and the Quick Build Program is allowing them to swiftly realize the benefits. Less than three years into implementation, Tampa is enjoying a declining trend of pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities. 

Defining Community Challenges and Needs

Through a data driven planning process, the City identified four core elements to a successful traffic safety program: (1) multidisciplinary leadership and commitment, (2) safer roads and safer speeds, (3) community engagement and education, and (4) incorporating data for transparency and accountability. 

In their planning process, the City defined the High Injury Network (HIN), highlighting concentrations of traffic deaths and serious injuries. This allowed the City to:

• Identify the most dangerous roadways within City limits; 
• Define characteristics contributing to injuries and fatalities; 
• Prioritize, design, and fund projects; and 
• Strengthen the City’s efforts to advocate for safety improvements on roads managed and operated by the State and County within City limits. 

In Tampa, the HIN represents 24% of road miles within city limits but accounts for 73% of fatalities. The majority of the HIN corridors are State- or County-owned roads, necessitating collaboration with State and County entities to achieve shared safety goals. The City has leveraged their involvement with the local MPO, Plan Hillsborough, to facilitate enhanced coordination through the organization’s normal processes. 

Implementation: Triage and Preventive Care

Tampa is using their SS4A awards to  implement a Quick Build Program of projects that targets deployment of safety treatments to the highest priority places (i.e., the “triage” component). Quick Build interventions utilize paint, signs, pavement markings, and other temporary materials to implement projects in a shorter time and lower cost than traditional methods. The design draws on nationally recognized standards for safe street design that deploy short-term improvements, while identifying and developing reliable long-term solutions.

Triage projects include: 

• Pedestrian mid-block crosswalks
• Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacons (RRFBs) 
• High-visibility crosswalks
• Street lighting upgrades
• Separated bike lanes
• Narrowed lanes

Preventive Care projects include a package of Safe Routes to Places projects to provide safe access to six schools, four parks, and along four transit routes. These routes and corridors were identified from studies conducted in partnership with Plan Hillsborough and Hillsborough Area Regional Transit. The projects along these routes are being coordinated with Plan Hillsborough, Hillsborough Area Regional Transit, Hillsborough County School District, and other relevant agencies for implementing the countermeasures. 

Countermeasures for these routes include enhancements to signage and pavement markings, sidewalk installation, school speed zone flashers, and other traffic calming measures. 

As part of the preventive care projects, the City is also developing a data-driven and stakeholder-informed comprehensive pedestrian safety action plan, supporting the development of actionable strategies to create a replicable structure and toolkit to implement pedestrian safety strategies citywide and deploy additional Quick Build interventions. 

Conclusion

The SS4A-funded projects and overall implementation of Tampa’s roadway safety interventions embody the largest single investment in Tampa’s roadway safety. Tampa’s ability to systematically deploy the Quick Build projects is enabling them to reap the benefits of investment quickly and in collaboration with local and regional stakeholders. Altogether, the effort will greatly improve safety for all roadway users by rolling out short- and long-term interventions through a data-driven approach and focusing predominantly vulnerable road users who are overrepresented in the crash data. 

The Local Infrastructure Hub originally wrote about Tampa’s SS4A grants in January 2024 as part of the Hub’s Transformative Projects Case Stories, available here.