Drawing on his expertise in communications and human centered design, Seattle technology veteran Josh Holland is now working for Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, a nonprofit working to make city streets a safer place to walk, bike, and roll.
A new effort by Holland and others with the organization is visible in signs attached to utility poles and other objects around Seattle. The orange cardboard silhouettes are designed to draw attention to spots in the city where someone has died in a car-related accident.
“Your neighbor was killed in a car crash here,” reads the wording on the signs. “Since 2015, car crashes have killed over 200 people on Seattle streets. These tragedies are preventable.”
A longtime advocate of public transportation and walkable cities, Holland has always been interested in the work being done by Greenways, which got its start in 2011. Now the director of communications for the nonprofit, Holland worked previously in public relations at Nyhus and WE Communications, and was most recently product marketing manager at video editing software maker LumaTouch.
Greenways, a coalition of 16 volunteer-led neighborhood groups, is particularly interested in seeing the City of Seattle redesign four roadways that the group calls the city’s most dangerous: Aurora Avenue North, Martin Luther King Way South, 4th Avenue South, and Lake City Way.
Holland said his background in tech can be applied to how Greenways urges agencies such as the Seattle Department of Transportation to think about improving hazardous streets, whether it’s with the addition of protected bike lanes, or added lead times for pedestrians to cross safely at intersections.
“Technology tends to be very nimble, and is about going out there and making changes and seeing what sticks and what doesn’t, and kind of making tweaks from there,” Holland said.
In 2015, the City of Seattle adopted Vision Zero as a goal and a program to eliminate deaths and serious injuries for all road users by 2030. But there’s work to be done, as the city sees nearly 30 deaths and 180 serious injuries every year, and 2023 is on track to be one of the deadliest years on record.
Greenways says that 80% of people who are killed while walking in Seattle are run over on streets with more than one lane of traffic in each direction, and 80% of people who are killed while biking are run over where there is no bike lane.
Accident locations in Seattle are visible on this interactive map.
The group’s campaign to get signs designed, printed, distributed and hung up by volunteers came about in less than a month, and coincided with The World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims (WDR), an international event that took place on Sunday.
Holland said there’s a lot to think about when it comes to transportation in Seattle, whether it’s cars and trucks, buses, bikes, light rail, pedestrians on foot, or any of the multi micro-mobility options in the city such as shared scooters and bikes.
“It’s a complex system,” he said. “As we look to reimagine the streets and think about these things, we need to really rethink how we get around. For a lot of that, that’s really figuring out ways to make it so the streets are safer for everybody.”
