By Tom Scanlon
East Valley Tribune (Mesa, Ariz.)
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Scottsdale ended the year by “bagging” a few prime grants — with the loose theme of road safety.
Scottsdale Police received two traffic safety grants from the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety for Fiscal year 2024.
A Speed Awareness Grant of $80,000 “will allow the Scottsdale Police Department to focus education efforts on the dangers of excessive speed and reckless driving,” according to the December agenda description.
And a $60,000 Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Grant “will fund education and enforcement efforts related to pedestrian and bicycle safety throughout the city to include the entertainment district.”
According to police, “Serious and fatal traffic collisions have consistently remained an area of concern for our department and these grants will assist in addressing these concerns.”
Meanwhile, in 2023, Scottsdale was the only city to submit a request to the Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG) for a safety study program.
The city received $60,000 from the road safety assessment fund to study Scottsdale Road from Paradise Lane to Mayo Boulevard.
According to the application, Scottsdale identified a 1.5-mile stretch “as a segment with high potential for safety improvement through its 2022 Traffic Volume and Collision Report.”
The report breaks the segment into three 0.5-mile increments, “two of which ranked in the top 11 of all street segments in the city for total number of collisions,” the application noted.
The busy stretch of Scottsdale Road has three lanes in each direction separated by a raised median.
According to the application, “this area of Scottsdale is currently experiencing substantial growth with multiple large-scale multi-use developments that are in various stages of the planning and construction process.”
But, there’s more: “There are also some large state-owned parcels in the vicinity of this segment of Scottsdale Road that are expected to be developed in the future.”
On top of that, the road in this area borders Phoenix, where more growth is rapidly happening.
Scottsdale says it will use the money to “determine if changes can be made in the short term to improve safety and if larger changes should be made in the future through development or capital improvement.”
In 2022, Scottsdale received $100,000 from MAG for a “McDowell Road Safety Assessment — Hayden Road to Scottsdale Road.”
According to that application, a 2020 traffic study showed “these segments and intersections were identified for road safety assessments.”
Mark Melnychenko , the city’s Transportation director, said the MAG money is crucial to city planning, following a recent city traffic and collision report.
“Our traffic engineers looked at the collision data and looked for corridors that merit further evaluation,” he said. “Our staff resources are limited, and MAG has additional resources that allow us to use regional and federal funding to evaluate more corridors for additional safety improvements.
“This study will enable us to determine possible safety improvements through this key corridor.”
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