ELR Planning & Environmental Team Completes SS4A Action Plan for Bluefield, WV

E.L. Robinson Engineering’s (ELR) Planning and Environmental Services group is excited to announce our completion, in partnership with AECOM, of the Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) Action Plan for Bluefield, West Virginia. SS4A Action Plans are the foundation of the USDOT SS4A grant program and are intended to "develop a holistic, well-defined strategy to prevent roadway fatalities and serious injuries in a locality.” (USDOT) The SS4A grant program has the goal of achieving zero fatalities by 2050.

Accelerated 5-Month Turnaround

Bluefield received a USDOT SS4A grant to complete the Action Plan in February 2023. ELR was awarded the project in late August 2023, completed a full draft Action Plan for Bluefield’s review by the end of December 2023, and submitted the final polished report to Bluefield at the end of January 2024. The record-fast 5-month turnaround on such a complex project enabled completion of the Action Plan in time for the 2024 USDOT SS4A grant application cycle so that Bluefield could pursue capital funding to implement the projects identified within the Action Plan.

The Action Plan entailed:

• Defining an Action Area
• Extensive public engagement including two City board meetings, three stakeholder meetings, eight group stakeholder meetings, and two public meetings
• Collecting and digitizing crash data
• Conducting field review safety audit
• Defining specific projects that safety countermeasures could address
• Prioritizing those projects
• Writing and formatting a final public friendly report

Equity and Public Engagement in Underrepresented Communities

As part of the public engagement process, ELR took equity into consideration with an extensive evaluation of federal equity metrics in Bluefield. This equity analysis highlighted the historically black communities of Northside and East End as being underrepresented. Northside and East End have a rich African American history including the 125-year-old Historically Black College and University (HBCU) Bluefield State University, a rich history of music including Duke Ellington and Tina Turner, and the African American Green Book guide listed Hotel Thelma and Travelers’ Inn. As such, ELR held the first public meeting in the fellowship hall of the Mount Zion Pentecostal Church in Northside to encourage greater participation from these communities. This effort was successful with 37 Northside and East End community members attending the first public meeting to express their transportation safety concerns.

10 Potential SS4A Project to Address Community Safety Concerns

Through the public engagement and data collection, the Action Plan identified 10 projects and associated countermeasures that addressed the community’s safety concerns, including deteriorated sidewalks, lack of streetlights, and poor pavement conditions. The highest priority project the Action Plan identified was the “Hill Avenue (and US 52 Intersection) | Pulaski Street | Hardy Street” corridor in the African American Northside community. This street network serves HBCU Bluefield State University, so improving student safety in transit to and from the campus was the top community concern. The project would seek to improve sidewalks, streetlighting, and intersections while providing wayfinding, transit shelters, and streetscaping.