11/12/2025
📣Call to Action: Please contact our city council members and city leaders and ask them to pass a median ordinance, which prioritizes safety for all.
Below is a template to help draft your letter. Email addresses for city leaders will be in the comments, to copy/paste. Thank you!
Subject: Request to Prioritize Comprehensive Safety Measures in the Proposed Median Safety Ordinance
Dear Council Members and City Leaders,
I am writing as a concerned resident of Columbia to urge you to support the passage of a new Median Safety Ordinance—provided that its wording incorporates robust, multi-layered protections for all roadway users, including drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, and individuals with disabilities.
While I appreciate the intent to enhance safety, the ordinance must go beyond restrictive measures, to address the root causes of collisions and near-misses on our medians and streets.
To ensure the ordinance is effective, I respectfully ask that you prioritize verbiage that:
• Establishes multiple layers of engineering and design protections, such as raised medians, refuge islands, and advanced signage to physically separate vulnerable users from high-speed traffic.
• Mandates traffic calming on high-risk corridors, including narrowed travel lanes, and roundabouts proven to reduce severe crashes.
• Requires enhanced visibility and accessibility features, including high-intensity lighting, leading pedestrian intervals, and clearly marked crosswalks at all median crossings.
• Aligns explicitly with evidence-based safety recommendations from the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), the Federal Highway Administration’s Proven Safety Countermeasures, and Columbia’s own Vision Zero commitments, as well as our CBB Pedestrian Safety Study.
• Upholds and strengthens our existing City Charter provisions on safe, complete, and accessible streets, ensuring no provisions inadvertently criminalize poverty, homelessness, or routine pedestrian behavior.
These priorities reflect data-driven best practices and will create a safer transportation network for everyone who drives, walks, or transits through our city. I commend the progress on projects already completed and underway, such as the CBB pedestrian safety study and the “Como to Zero” (Vision Zero) initiative.
Como Renewal Project spoke directly with a CBB engineer, who clarified that no medians nor intersections are safe for loitering. I encourage the Council to build on this momentum, with an ordinance that sets a national standard for median safety.
Thank you for your leadership and commitment to protecting all Columbians.
Sincerely,
Your Name
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Columbia Resident