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Home My WebLink AboutIR 0691INFORMAL REPORT TO CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS No. 23-0691 ypATAite. i Y t t 7A 119,3 To the Mayor and Members of the City Council May 2, 2023 Page 1 of 9 SUBJECT: EFFORTS TO REDUCE HIGH-SPEED TRAFFIC, RECKLESS DRIVING STREET RACING, AND OTHER HAZARDOUS BEHAVIOR ALONG ARTERIAL STREETS The purpose of this Informal Report is to explain the scope of speeding, street racing, and street takeover issues in Fort Worth and what the Fort Worth Police Department and Transportation and Public Works Department (TPW) are doing to address those issues. The report consists of two parts: speeding/reckless driving and racing/street takeovers. Although both forms of hazardous behavior could occur during one incident, each of these issues has different challenges associated with it and requires a different approach when addressing the issues. Speeding/Reckless Driving Speeding/reckless driving is one of the most frequent complaints the Police Department and TPW receive about driving behavior. A major challenge associated with speeding/reckless driving is the large number of lane -miles in the city and street design that facilitates the movement of large volumes of vehicles at higher speeds. TPW Neighborhood Traffic Calming Program TPW's approach to address speeding focuses on implementation of traffic calming measures on neighborhood streets. In January 2022, TPW briefed the Mobility: Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on a Neighborhood Traffic Calming Program (i.e. speed reduction). Through the program, initiated in March 2022, individuals and neighborhoods have the ability to request installation of countermeasures such as speed cushions to slow vehicle speeds on neighborhood streets. Residents can submit traffic calming requests through the MyFortWorth app and the Call Center to receive a program application, which can also be accessed on the TPW webpage. Despite the efficacy of traffic calming tools such as speed cushions, they are not appropriate for high -volume, high-speed thoroughfares due to safety considerations. TPW coordinates with the Fort Worth Police Department to address speeding and racing on thoroughfares and reckless driving in neighborhoods. Traffic calming requests comprise between 20 and 30 percent of TPW's over 1,300 traffic safety requests received annually. TPW has received completed traffic calming applications with required petitions for the following locations: CD Neighborhood Street 2 North Side Clinton Ave W Central Ave to NW 20th St 4 Carter Riverside Primrose Ave (Gwynne to Eagle) 6 Summer Creek Ranch Rush River (Nightingale Dr to Chaparral Creek Dr 7 Seventeen Lakes Seventeen Lakes Blvd (Wild Duck to Canvasback) Wilderness Pass (Green Teal to Martin Creek) Buckwater Way (north of Round Valley) ISSUED BY THE CITY MANAGER FORT WORTH, TEXAS INFORMAL REPORT TO CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS No. 23-0691 ypATAite. i Y t t 7A 119,3 To the Mayor and Members of the City Council May 2, 2023 Page 2 of 9 SUBJECT: EFFORTS TO REDUCE HIGH-SPEED TRAFFIC, RECKLESS DRIVING STREET RACING, AND OTHER HAZARDOUS BEHAVIOR ALONG ARTERIAL STREETS 7 Arlington Heights Lafayette Ave (Tremont to Clover) Clover Ln Calmont to Birchman 8 Meadowcreek South Gettysburg Ln Charleston to Gatlinbur 9 Broadstone @ Trinity Rogers Rd (Riverfront to Collinsworth) Apartments Installations are anticipated to begin in the summer of 2023. Police Department Speeding Initiatives The Police Department deploys two approaches when addressing speeding/reckless driving: reactive and proactive. With the reactive approach, the Fort Worth Police Department responds to complaints about speeding/reckless driving. Those complaints come from 911 calls, school administrators, business owners, and citizens. Generally, we respond after the fact and conduct speeding/reckless driving details to help modify driving behavior to comply with the driving regulations. The proactive approach is slightly different. The Fort Worth Police Department looks at high - accident locations and randomly conducts traffic details to monitor driver behavior and address the on -view violations as they occur. Additionally, we have placed radar trailers and vacant marked patrol cars in certain areas to modify driving behaviors of our citizens. All of these techniques have a significant impact, but they need constant monitoring. For both the reactive and proactive approaches, we use patrol officers, NPOs, and our Traffic Enforcement unit to address these concerns. We gain maximum compliance when our officers are in these areas conducting traffic details. However, when we move our efforts to other areas of the city, the bad driving behaviors return very quickly. The Traffic Enforcement Section has issued a total of 12,932 citations in the last 6 months. School zones are aggressively enforced throughout the school year. Approximately 1,690 stops have been made in the past six months for speeding in school zones. With the large number of schools in our city, we cannot be at every school all the time. However, we rotate our efforts and attempt to be at as many schools as possible to keep our children safe going to and from school. In addition to traffic enforcement conducted as a routine and primary part of the Traffic Enforcement Unit's mission, we also have several Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) Selective Traffic Enforcement Program (STEP) grants in operation, to include one specifically addressing aggressive drivers interacting with or near commercial vehicles (semi-tractor/trailers). Each of these STEP grants must be worked within specific zones provided by TxDOT, primarily ISSUED BY THE CITY MANAGER FORT WORTH, TEXAS INFORMAL REPORT TO CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS No. 23-0691 To the Mayor and Members of the City Council May 2, 2023 Page 3 of 9 SUBJECT: EFFORTS TO REDUCE HIGH-SPEED TRAFFIC, RECKLESS DRIVING STREET RACING, AND OTHER HAZARDOUS BEHAVIOR ALONG ARTERIAL STREETS on arterial surface streets. These zones are determined based on crash data collected by TxDOT and are spread throughout the City in each of the council districts/patrol divisions. Additionally, the Commercial Vehicle Enforcement (CVE) unit also works grant funded details for speeding, strictly on the major freeways within the City of Fort Worth. The CVE unit wrote a total of 77 speeding citations in the most recent six-month period to the drivers of commercial motor vehicles. This number may seem low but, during the stop, the CVE officer will inspect the commercial vehicle, which can take an hour or more. The Traffic Enforcement Section continually enforces traffic code with an emphasis on moving violations and hazardous driving violations. The Section conducts joint team operations routinely throughout the city on the major thoroughfares that run through Fort Worth. The wolfpack operations generally result in 80 to 100 citations per detail. The Traffic Enforcement Sections responds to all speeding complaints that come in weekly from the various division commanders and council staff. The complaints from commanders and city council typically get several responses on various days for each reported speeding or traffic complaint. The various grants the Traffic Division manages target enforcement in high fatality accident prone locations. Even though the primary mission of the Traffic Enforcement Section is to address speeding issues, NPOs and each division continue to address the speeding concerns that occur throughout the city. Attached are the maps of our traffic stops, fatality accident by type, time frame, and cause for the fatality accidents. High -Fatality Locations for the Past Six Months In the past six months, there have been 61 fatality traffic crashes in the City of Fort Worth. Causes of these crashes are as follows: 21 pedestrians struck in the roadway • 7, or 1/3 of the total, are between Rosedale (N), Mansfield (S), 1 35 (W), and Miller (E). • 5 are along 1-30. • 2 are along 183 (Airport Beat) 15 miscellaneous "other" causes, to include medical issues, leaving the roadway for unexplained reasons, unsafe lane change, et. al. 12 failure to control speed to avoid collision 9 speeding 3 failure to yield right of way ISSUED BY THE CITY MANAGER FORT WORTH, TEXAS INFORMAL REPORT TO CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS No. 23-0691 To the Mayor and Members of the City Council May 2, 2023 Page 4 of 9 SUBJECT: EFFORTS TO REDUCE HIGH-SPEED TRAFFIC, RECKLESS DRIVING STREET RACING, AND OTHER HAZARDOUS BEHAVIOR ALONG ARTERIAL STREETS 1 racing* Most along major highways/freeways: • 9 on 1-30 • 6 on 820 • 5 on 1-35 • 5 on 287 between 130 and 820 • 3 on 183 (Airport Beat) • 1 on 287 N Time of day • Only 13 (approximately 21 %) took place during work hours (0800-1600) Racing/Street Takeover Events Most calls made by the citizens as "racing" are better described as "hot rodding" (loud engines, squealing of tires, heavy acceleration, etc.) rather than "racing" (contests of speed). From November 1, 2022, through April 1, 2023, the Fort Worth Police Department has received over 1,000 hot-rodding calls all over the city. • South Division — 221 calls • East Division — 205 calls • Northwest Division — 228 calls • North Division — 161 calls • West Division — 109 calls • Central Division — 150 calls There are several challenges associated with the racing issues in Fort Worth. • We have an overabundance of areas to race/speed in the City of Fort Worth. • The suspects and vehicles are no longer on scene when officers arrive at the call location. • Many of the groups that race have transitioned to social media sites that are private, so the information about their racing activities are hard to monitor. • There is no pattern or trend for some racing activity. • Racing groups are highly mobile and can move from one location to another easily. • These groups use private social media outlets to broadcast their locations. • We usually get short notice about the events due to their secrecy. • Many racers send out scouts before actually racing to determine if law enforcement is in the area. ISSUED BY THE CITY MANAGER FORT WORTH, TEXAS INFORMAL REPORT TO CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS No. 23-0691 ypATAite. i Y t t 7A 119,3 To the Mayor and Members of the City Council May 2, 2023 Page 5 of 9 SUBJECT: EFFORTS TO REDUCE HIGH-SPEED TRAFFIC, RECKLESS DRIVING STREET RACING, AND OTHER HAZARDOUS BEHAVIOR ALONG ARTERIAL STREETS • Racers are constantly changing their tactics depending on the police response. Although there are several challenges, we still have several strategies to address the problem. • Continue to install pole cameras in identified hot spot locations. • Use mobile speed radar/license plate reader trailers in hot spot locations. • Continue to identify and monitor social media sites specifically for racing. • Use Public Service Announcements to warn the citizens about the dangers of racing. • Keep in contact with our regional partners and working group to keep updated on issues they face and strategies that have worked. • Continue to work with TPW on long term traffic calming solutions. Our Directed Response Unit is our quick response unit for racing and street takeover concerns. They are able to address the problem very quickly and work with our Real Time Crime Center and Intel personnel to track the movements of these groups to ultimately take enforcement action. Although there are times these groups make it to several locations prior to our arrival, once we are notified of their presence, we are able to take swift enforcement action. Additionally, when City Council enacted the spectator ordinance, this gave us more options to address the large crowds that assemble at these events. The ordinance has been extremely useful in addressing the racing/street takeover events. Lastly, there is legislation in Austin to give law enforcement agencies more tools and resources to address this ongoing issue. We will closely monitor the progress of these new laws as they make their way through our state government. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Chelsea St. Louis, Senior Capital Project Officer for TPW, at>elsea.St. Lou is(a)fortworthtexas.gov or Executive Assistant Chief Robert Alldredge at Robert.alIdredge@fortworthtexas.gov. David Cooke City Manager ISSUED BY THE CITY MANAGER FORT WORTH, TEXAS INFORMAL REPORT TO CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS No. 23-0691 To the Mayor and Members of the City Council May 2, 2023 Page 6 of 9 SUBJECT: EFFORTS TO REDUCE HIGH-SPEED TRAFFIC, RECKLESS DRIVING STREET RACING, AND OTHER HAZARDOUS BEHAVIOR ALONG ARTERIAL STREETS ISSUED BY THE CITY MANAGER FORT WORTH, TEXAS INFORMAL REPORT TO CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS No. 23-0691 To the Mayor and Members of the City Council May 2, 2023 Page 7 of 9 SUBJECT: EFFORTS TO REDUCE HIGH-SPEED TRAFFIC, RECKLESS DRIVING STREET RACING, AND OTHER HAZARDOUS BEHAVIOR ALONG ARTERIAL STREETS TRAFFIC FATALITY REPORTS BY ACCIDENT TYPE PAST 6 MONTHS C O- r-, 0 11101/22-04101/23 ACCIDENT TYPE r HIT & RUN ACCIDENT r MAJCRACCIDENT r MINORACCIDENT ISSUED BY THE CITY MANAGER FORT WORTH, TEXAS INFORMAL REPORT TO CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS No. 23-0691 CO To the Mayor and Members of the City Council May 2, 2023 .� Page 8 of 9 * r rn { 11973 SUBJECT: EFFORTS TO REDUCE HIGH-SPEED TRAFFIC, RECKLESS DRIVING STREET RACING, AND OTHER HAZARDOUS BEHAVIOR ALONG ARTERIAL STREETS TRAFFIC FATALITY REPORTS BY TIME OF DAY PAST 6 MONTHS o. 7 3 R Ri 11 /01 /22 - 04101 /23 HOUR BLOCK ¢ ¢ : 00:00 - 03:59 0 04:00 - 07:59 0 08:00 - 11:59 12:00 - 15:59 16:00 - 19:59 U 20:00 - 23:59 ISSUED BY THE CITY MANAGER FORT WORTH, TEXAS INFORMAL REPORT TO CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS No. 23-0691 To the Mayor and Members of the City Council May 2, 2023 Page 9 of 9 SUBJECT: EFFORTS TO REDUCE HIGH-SPEED TRAFFIC, RECKLESS DRIVING STREET RACING, AND OTHER HAZARDOUS BEHAVIOR ALONG ARTERIAL STREETS TRAFFIC FATALITY REPORTS BY CAUSE OF DEATH PAST 6 MONTHS IN] 0 IN] 11101 /22 - 04/01 /23 R CAUSE OF DEATH FCS ¢ ¢ ""■ OTHER ❑ PE❑ ROADWAY ❑ ROW Io ROW VIOLATION SPEED SPEED -RACING ISSUED BY THE CITY MANAGER FORT WORTH, TEXAS