(The Center Square) – Mayor Katie Wilson has signed an executive order aimed at reducing fatalities and injuries on Seattle’s streets and roads, but politics had already entered the equation as the revised initiative begins.
Wilson issued her order on Aug. 21, just a day after City Councilmember Ron Saka, who chairs the Transportation, Waterfront, and Seattle Center Committee, began discussing his own draft legislation in committee to reduce traffic fatalities and injuries.
Saka didn’t mention Wilson in discussing his legislation.
Wilson’s Vision Zero program calls for a variety of safety improvements to enhance safety for pedestrians, motorists, and bicyclists.
They include more protected bike lanes, ten new traffic cameras that fine motorists for speeding, blocking intersections, or running red lights and redesigned traffic intersections to make them safer.
“Everyone should be able to get where they need to go safely, no matter how they travel,” said Wilson at a press conference announcing the initiative. “[But] the simple truth is that, despite having a Vision Zero commitment on the books for over a decade, Seattle has not met our goals on transportation safety.”
Notably, Saka, the City Council’s designated point person on traffic safety issues, was not present at Wilson’s press conference at Cleveland High School in the city’s South End.
Saka didn’t return requests for comment by The Center Square, and Wilson downplayed his absence at a press conference outside the high school.
“We’re going to work together,” she said without explaining why Saka wasn’t there.
Wilson said she appreciated Saka’s leadership on traffic safety issues after reporters pressed her on his absence.
The press conference was attended by Councilwoman Alexis Mercedes Rinck and Councilman Eddie Lin, two of Wilson’s biggest supporters on the council.
Saka has been particularly vocal in criticizing Wilson, attacking her for putting on pause the city’s surveillance camera program and for demanding that Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes resign following the shooting that killed three people at a Seattle food festival in July.
Saka’s legislation, in draft form and still being developed, would establish, among other initiatives, a 72-hour response standard following fatal crashes and grant the chief traffic engineer greater authority to implement urgent safety changes.
Despite differences between Wilson and Saka, the mayor’s office and city council members seem unified in the effort to save lives and reduce injuries from traffic incidents, said Gordon Padelford, executive director of the Seattle Streets Alliance.
“I think the good news is that, unlike some other areas of Seattle involving politics, everyone’s agreed on those goals,” he said in an interview with The Center Square.
Seattle first adopted the so-called Vision Zero Initiative in 2015, aimed at reducing traffic-related fatalities to zero by 2030.
In 2025, there were 25 fatalities, 16 of which were pedestrians.
That’s down from 29 traffic-related deaths in 2024, but pedestrian deaths increased from ten.
Since Seattle launched its Vision Zero program in 2015, more than 1,900 people have been seriously injured and 270 people have been killed in traffic accidents, data from the city shows.
Padelford said former mayors have reduced the impact of traffic safety initiatives, particularly after pressure from motorists who have rejected plans for roads with fewer lanes and stricter speed limits.
“In the past, there were traffic safety projects that got watered down or sometimes canceled because they were controversial for one reason or another,” he said.