NEW PORT RICHEY – Fehr & Peers is developing Safe Streets Pasco, a plan designed to reduce transportation-related fatalities and severe injuries.
Pasco County’s Metropolitan Planning Organization won a $320,000 Safe Streets and Roads for All Grant in 2023 from the U.S. Department of Transportation to create a safety action plan.
Kathrin Tellez, a principal with Fehr & Peers, shared her firm’s progress on the plan during the June 25 MPO meeting. Tellez said her firm will be engaged in public engagement in the months ahead.
“We know where crashes are currently happening,” Tellez said. “We have that data, but we want to understand where all those near-misses are happening, where people might not feel safe traveling. What are some of those conditions that we don’t quite know about? So, we want to layer on that lived experience onto the data that we already have.”
Once complete, Safe Streets Pasco will provide county leaders with a prioritized list of quick-build projects as well as long-term investments they can integrate into transportation plans.
Tellez said the focus will be on improving a high injury network, which are the roads with the most of fatal and severe injury crashes.
“We’ve developed a preliminary network, and we’re finding that over half of the fatal and severe injury crashes in the county happen on about 2% of the roads,” she said. “We don’t need to look at everything. We’re going to focus on those roads where we have the highest prevalence of crashes.”
Pasco County has had between 100 to 120 transportation-related fatalities each year between 2019 to 2024. Tellez said a preliminary look at 2025 revealed the numbers are trending downward. Comparing traffic fatalities per 100,000 people, Pasco is slightly below the state average but above the national average, Tellez said.
She also noted the region has a higher rate of motorcycle fatalities than are reported statewide and nationally.
Once that high injury network has been identified, the plan will evaluate the characteristics that make these roads susceptible to crashes. This information could help leaders prevent problem areas in the future.
This can extend to driver and pedestrian behavior as well.
“We know, looking at the data, there’s a fair number of people who were killed that were not wearing their seat belts,” Tellez said. “Can we do more to have outreach to those folks to really encourage seat belt use and other safer behaviors on our roads?”
Pasco County leaders are scheduled to adopt the plan in spring 2026. Fehr & Peers will provide updates with the MPO in the meantime.
