Essex County is developing a Safe Streets for All (SS4A) Action Plan to reduce roadway fatalities and serious injuries while enhancing safety, mobility, and quality of life for all users, especially vulnerable users such as bicyclists, pedestrians, and people of all ages and abilities. By prioritizing mobility for all roadway users, we can make our streets safer for everyone. This requires a partnership between the government, law enforcement, community groups, and you – those who use our roads every day!

The City of East Orange is a sub-recipient of the USDOT grant funding this initiative. The Plan will include an appendix with recommendations specifically for East Orange. In addition, the County will share crash data and outreach results with any interested municipalities to use for their own SS4A planning purposes.

In the fall of 2024, Essex County began identifying key partners, collecting data, and educating the public about the Safe Streets for All Action Plan. The purpose of the Action Plan is to provide a data-driven and community-led approach to identify safety concerns, produce planning and policy recommendations, and prioritize projects to implement safety interventions.

Key Directives

• Employ low-cost, high-impact strategies to improve safety over a wider geographic area.
• Ensure equitable investment in the safety needs of underserved communities, including underserved urban and rural communities.
• Incorporate evidence-based projects and strategies.

• Align with the Urban Development Authority (UDA) mission to prioritize equity, climate and sustainability, quality job creation, economic strength, and global competitiveness.

The Action Plan will provide a framework for countywide multi-modal transportation safety improvements, categorized into short-, medium-, and long-term implementation timeframes.

As part of the joint effort with the City of East Orange, the Action Plan will also include an appendix addressing the City's unique roadway challenges.

Action Plan Advisory Committee

An Action Plan Advisory Committee (APAC) was created to support the project team and ensure the collaboration of County departments, municipal governments, regional agencies, and community groups to help develop a vision for the Safe Streets for All Action Plan. The APAC will meet three (3) times throughout the planning process, offering background documentation, insights into local conditions, and feedback on draft strategy recommendations.

Funding

Essex County was awarded a Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) planning grant by the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) to develop this SS4A Action Plan. Along with the City of East Orange and other municipal partners, Essex County will develop a holistic, well-defined strategy to prevent roadway fatalities and serious injuries within the county and mitigate roadway safety risks for all residents.

To prevent roadway fatalities and serious injuries, Essex County will use the Safe Systems Approach and help develop a holistic, well-defined strategy to mitigate roadway safety risks for all residents.

In the Safe System Approach, eliminating fatalities and severe injuries for all roadway users is the top priority. It is a way to make roads safer by building several layers of protection to prevent crashes and reduce serious injuries and deaths if they do happen. This method, widely used in the transportation field, treats safety as something shared by everyone involved – drivers, cyclists, pedestrians, road designers, transportation providers, and policymakers.

The approach not only aims to lower the number of crashes but also focuses on preventing the most severe ones. It recognizes that people make mistakes while driving, walking, or biking and works to prevent these mistakes from causing death and serious injury. By identifying and fixing gaps in the transportation network, either through changes in road design or policy updates, the Safe System Approach aims to create safer streets for all.

To learn more about the Safe Systems Approach, visit the USDOT website.