San Antonio Vision Zero Crash Map Project

This map shows pedestrian and cyclist-involved crashes in San Antonio from 2013 to the present day. San Antonio adopted its Vision Zero Plan in 2016. However, the plan contains no benchmarks for holding the City accountable to its Vision Zero Plan. The City is beginning to review and update its original plan, which is a step in the right direction. It is my hope that this dashboard can help both the city and residents have an informed discussion about essential projects and safety implementations to make San Antonio safer for those who decide or are forced to use alternate means of transportation other than a personal vehicle.

The dashboard is set up to help understand where pedestrians and bicyclists are involved in crashes with vehicles. The idea for this project came about after I read several articles detailing European countries' successes at reducing pedestrian traffic deaths to almost 0. I knew that several cities in the U.S. have implemented Vision Zero plans but did not know how effective they have been at reducing roadway deaths. I began by collecting available data from every city that is listed on the Vision Zero Network's site as having a Vision Zero Plan. The data for those cities are available on my GitHub page .

Using the data for San Antonio, I wanted to create a new kind of dashboard that showed all pedestrian and bicyclist crash incidents. The data I collected starts on January 1, 2013 and continues to the present day. I refresh the dashboard monthly with new data. The crash map available on San Antonio's Transportation Department's website is valuable, but I believe it does not show the full picture of how dangerous San Antonio's roads and sidewalks are for residents. The City's dashboard shows all crashes where there was a fatality or a severe injury. However, the data shown on the map only shows a limited range of years and is not filterable - users don't have the option to view only pedestrian crashes, or crashes from a certain year. This is where my dashboard fills that gap.

The first map shows San Antonio's City Council Districts overlayed across the crashes. You can also click on each individual point on the map to find out more information about the type of crash, the date of the crash, and any injuries. The second map shows only bicyclist crashes in San Antonio, along with the City's bike routes. While it may look like the City has an extensive bike route network, there's little to no connectivity between routes and many areas lack basic protection that would make cyclists safer.

All data was collected from the Texas Department of Transportation's Crash Query Information System. The data presented here is likely an undercount of actual crashes involving pedestrians and cyclists.

Check out my site for more information about Vision Zero and this project: https://jackturek708.com/category/vision-zero/

About Me

Hello! My name is Jack Turek and I’m a data scientist who enjoys using data to help explain the world around me. My particular focus area is using data to evaluate public policies, specifically around urban issues – housing affordability, transportation equity, and urban spatial analysis. I’m also a huge sports fan, so you’re also just as likely to see a post diving into how the Chicago Cubs may be doing from a sabermetrics point of view or how my favorite soccer team may or may not make the Champions League.

FYI: On the left hand side you'll see 'Buy Me a Pizza!'. You don't actually have to buy me a pizza, but if you like the dashboard and want to contribute to the project and help keep the servers running, a small donation would be greatly appreciated!