What is a CESAP?

CESAP stands for Comprehensive & Equitable Safety Action Plan. A key goal of the current process is to develop a CESAP for the entire City of Cleveland Heights. The CESAP should be equitable and creative, but also achievable and based on an understanding of the City’s challenges and potentials. The final CESAP should outline steps the City needs to take to realize the commitment of Vision Zero.

What is Vision Zero?

Vision Zero is an international strategy aimed at eliminating all traffic fatalities and severe injuries, while increasing safe, healthy, and equitable mobility for all. First implemented in Sweden in the 1990s, the Vision Zero approach represents a paradigm shift in traffic safety. Traditional road safety strategies often place the responsibility for accidents on individual road users, focusing on preventing collisions through education, enforcement, and engineering. However, Vision Zero acknowledges that humans can make mistakes and therefore the road system should be designed to be forgiving, ensuring that errors do not result in fatal or severe injuries.

What are Complete Streets?

Complete Streets are streets designed and operated to enable safe use and support mobility for all users. Those include people of all ages and abilities, regardless of whether they are travelling as drivers, pedestrians, bicyclists, or public transportation riders. The concept of Complete Streets encompasses many approaches to planning, designing, and operating roadways and rights of way with all users in mind to make the transportation network safer and more efficient. Complete Street policies are set at the state, regional, and local levels and are frequently supported by roadway design guidelines. Learn more at the U.S. Department of Transportation website.

Does Cleveland Heights have a Complete Streets policy?

Yes! In May, 2018, Cleveland Heights City Council approved a Complete and Green Streets Policy. The policy describes the City’s commitment to the comfort and safety of all users of our streets with special attention to the least mobile and most vulnerable. Smart Growth America’s National Complete Streets Coalition staff and the City’s Transportation Advisory Committee were helpful in offering advice on drafting an effective policy. Of 66 Complete Streets policies submitted in 2018, the National Complete Streets Coalition chose Cleveland Heights’ policy as #1. Learn more here.