Building Safety Together: Salem’s Safe Streets for All Plan

Salem is known for its walkable (and spooky) downtown, vibrant neighborhoods, and steady flow of visitors from around the world. Yet like cities everywhere, Salem has not been immune to the troubling rise in traffic crashes that disproportionately affect people walking and biking. In recent years, Salem has experienced hundreds of crashes, including several that forever changed the lives of families and neighbors.

To confront this challenge head-on, the City of Salem created the Safe Streets for All Action Plan, adopted in 2025 and funded through a federal SS4A planning grant. This forward-looking plan sets a clear vision: to eliminate fatal and serious injury crashes on local roads by 2030. It outlines specific projects, policies, and strategies to improve safety for all road users, whether on foot, on bike, using transit, or behind the wheel.

Led by Kittelson & Associates with JM Goldson providing engagement support, the plan combined in-depth crash data analysis with an inclusive outreach process. Our team designed and facilitated a range of creative engagement tools, such as Meetings-in-a-Box, interactive pop-ups, bilingual surveys, and virtual forums with live interpretation that helped bring forward voices not always heard in traditional planning processes. We reached residents at farmers markets, commuter rail stations, community meals, and food pantry programs, ensuring that the plan reflected the perspectives of families, older adults, immigrants, and people with disabilities alongside longtime neighborhood advocates.

This engagement helped shape the plan’s vision and sharpen its priorities. Residents called for safer crosswalks, traffic calming, consistent bike lanes, and better infrastructure maintenance, all of which are reflected in the recommendations. Key actions include redesigning high-risk intersections, expanding protected bike lanes, updating city codes to align with safety best practices, and creating supportive strategies like walking school buses and travel training for seniors.

The Salem Safe Streets for All Action Plan reflects a city determined to match its reputation as a walkable, welcoming place with an equally strong commitment to safety. And it demonstrates how authentic community engagement can strengthen transportation planning while building public trust, identifying shared priorities, and creating solutions that are ready to be implemented.