Wilmington Safe Streets for All

About the Plan

The City of Wilmington is developing a transportation Safety Action Plan with the goal of eliminating fatal and serious injury traffic crashes in the city by 2040. The City is developing a data- and community-driven plan that identifies the actions and strategies necessary to implement proven safety measures that address the most pressing traffic safety issues on city streets.

Latest Updates

Participate in the Wilmington Safety Action Plan Community Survey! The survey leads to an online map where you can drop points to help us identify traffic safety concerns. Survey and map deadline has been extended to Sunday, July 5.

What is a Safety Action Plan?

A Safety Action Plan maps locations where implementation of specific safety measures is most likely to have the greatest impact in preventing serious crashes in the future. These are focused on streets and intersections with the worst crash history and places with similar characteristics – land use, roadway designs, demographics – to those high crash locations. This phase of the project is still underway.

The Plan will identify a number of specific measures that are proven to address the particular traffic safety issues in Wilmington – the most common crash types, the highest crash locations, and systemic roadway design issues that create risk for people using city streets. This phase of the project is still underway.

The Plan will document the strategies and actions that are necessary for the City and partners including DART, DelDOT, and WILMAPCO to implement the proven safety measures quickly and efficiently. This phase of the plan identifies existing projects, programs, and funding sources as well as Federal, State, and private initiatives that are available to carry out this work. This phase of the project is still underway.

The final Safety Action Plan includes a dashboard to track progress towards the goal of zero fatal and serious injury crashes. A draft of the plan will be available for public review in the Fall of 2026.

Online Survey and Map

Community feedback is also being collected through an online survey and map. The map lets people drop points where they have traffic safety concerns or have experienced a previous crash or near miss, and people can see others’ responses and add additional information. See the survey and map here. Skip ahead to the map and toggle “See what others have shared” to see preliminary results. A full analysis of survey results and public outreach activities is underway.

Wilmington Traffic Safety:
A Quick Summary

Every year, five people are killed and dozens are seriously injured in traffic crashes in Wilmington (not including incidents on I-95 and I-495). The effects of these crashes reverberate through the community, the affected families, co-workers, and friend groups. These tragedies and life-altering events are entirely preventable; they are not inevitable or the “cost of doing business.”

The data shows that people on foot, using bikes, and riding motorcycles are the most vulnerable in traffic. People from households with low incomes, no car, and in disadvantaged areas are over-represented in the statistics, and feedback from the community to date confirms this reality. Speeding and impaired/distracted driving are the biggest concerns and, not surprisingly, busy one-way streets such as Walnut Street,  2nd and 4th Streets and main roads like Lancaster, Maryland, and Pennsylvania Avenues and North Market Street carry the greatest risk of serious crashes.

The Wilmington Safety Action Plan is funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Safe Streets and Roadways For All (SS4A) grant program. The SS4A program uses the Safe System Approach to guide the development of the plan; completion of the plan makes the City eligible for future implementation grants. The City, in cooperation with WILMAPCO, hired Toole Design to develop the plan.

Stakeholder and Public Outreach

Pop-Up Events

Project staff have participated in various public events across Wilmington during the first phase of public outreach to learn about the traffic safety issues people face and what they would like to see done about them. Pop-ups also helped publicize the online survey and map. Additional pop-up events will be scheduled later this summer to share findings and collect more feedback.

Events Attended

  • View pop-up event boards here
  • Wilmington Grand Prix Monkey Hill Time Trial: May 15
  • 2026 St. Anthony’s Italian Festival: June 12
  • Delaware Juneteenth Festival: June 13
  • Wilmington Initiatives Open House: June 22
  • West Side Farmers Market: June 24

Community Advisory Committee

The Wilmington Safety Action Plan is guided by Community Advisory Committee made up of representatives of neighborhood organizations as well as DelDOT, DART, WILMAPCO and City staff. View meeting materials for the committee below:

  • Committee Meeting #1 (May 12, 2026): Slideshow
  • Committee Meeting #2 (Forthcoming)