Vision Zero Brookline: Big Promise, Hard Math, and What It Means for Daily Life (and Real Estate)

Brookline’s brand is easy to picture: tree-lined streets, active sidewalks, a strong biking community, and a civic culture that likes to lead rather than follow. But the town’s safety data tells a tougher story. Brookline reports over 1,800 crashes between 2019 and 2023, with three people killed and hundreds injured.

That tension—between identity and outcomes—is why Brookline’s Vision Zero push matters. In April 2025, the Transportation Board officially adopted Brookline’s Vision Zero Action Plan, and the Select Board set an explicit target: zero deaths and serious injuries by 2035. The promise is ambitious by design. The real question is whether Brookline can translate policy into pavement fast enough to change what residents experience at crosswalks, intersections, and school routes.

For homebuyers and homeowners, this is not just a “transportation story.” Street safety shapes how a neighborhood functions: whether errands feel walkable, whether biking is plausible, whether families feel comfortable crossing major roads, and how much “friction” exists in day-to-day living. Those factors influence demand—without ever being the headline in a listing.

The Corridor That Defines the Challenge: Route 9 (Boylston Street)

If you want one physical symbol of Brookline’s Vision Zero challenge, it is Route 9/Boylston Street, a MassDOT-controlled arterial built for regional throughput. A Central Transportation Planning Staff (CTPS) corridor study describes Route 9 in Brookline as an urban principal arterial carrying roughly 30,000 to 42,000+ vehicles per day (with many segments around 40,000/day)—and importantly, the corridor has no dedicated bike lanes.

The corridor isn’t just busy—it’s crossed heavily on foot. CTPS found that at Route 9 and Cypress Street, almost 200 pedestrians crossed during the weekday AM peak hour, with similarly high activity in the PM peak. That’s the heart of Vision Zero’s “people versus physics” problem: high pedestrian demand meeting a road environment that still behaves like a highway.

Speed is the multiplier. CTPS documented 85th-percentile speeds along Route 9 reaching approximately 40 mph westbound and nearly 50 mph eastbound in some segments—numbers that help explain why residents often describe Route 9 crossings as stressful, especially for children, older adults, and anyone moving at a slower pace.

It’s not accidental that schools appear repeatedly in Route 9 discussions. CTPS notes multiple schools adjacent to the corridor and highlights the Clark Road/Kennard Road area as a location of particular concern for crossings (and even documents pedestrian crossing activity at locations where formal crosswalk infrastructure is limited).

“Crashes Aren’t Accidents”: Brookline’s Policy Pivot

Brookline’s Vision Zero framing follows the national “Safe System” logic: humans make mistakes, and the transportation network should be designed so those mistakes aren’t fatal.

Brookline’s own Vision Zero Resolution states that traffic crashes were among the leading causes of violent bodily injury locally from 2019–2023, reporting 3 people killed and 450 injured in that period. The town’s Action Plan page similarly summarizes the period as over 1,800 crashes with 350+ injuries and three deaths (differences here typically reflect counting methods and definitions, but the direction is unmistakable).

One piece of Brookline’s internal analysis is especially relevant for how residents experience risk: the town’s Vision Zero crash memo indicates that state-owned roadways in Brookline have a substantially higher crash rate per mile than town-owned roads. In plain English: the places people often fear most—Route 9, and other state-controlled corridors—are structurally harder for the town to change quickly, even when the need is obvious.

From Resolutions to Construction Schedules: The Speed Hump “Cluster” Strategy

Vision Zero succeeds (or fails) in implementation details: procurement, prioritization, and political stamina.

Brookline’s Traffic Calming work is a good case study. The town has shifted toward a data-driven, cluster-based approach—prioritizing multiple streets together rather than treating traffic calming as a slow, one-street-at-a-time response to whoever complains loudest.

The first cluster is no longer theoretical. Brookline’s DPW documentation shows a competitively bid project covering Buckminster Road, Clinton Road, Tappan Street, Beaconsfield Road, and Clark Road, with a contract award of $410,683 to Mario Susi & Sons Inc. to install 37 speed humps, scheduled for Spring 2026 construction.

Local media has amplified the same direction of travel, with WBZ-TV/CBS reporting Brookline’s plan to add speed humps on several streets (described in that report as 39 speed humps). The exact count may vary based on final design and how the media totals multiple locations, but the more important signal is this: Brookline is putting real money and real dates behind the Vision Zero goal.

From a real estate standpoint, this is where policy becomes tangible. Scheduled capital work tends to change how residents talk about a street: not “we should do something” but “it’s happening this spring.” For buyers who value walkability and lower-stress streets, that can shift perceptions—and for sellers, it can become part of the neighborhood narrative (without overstating it).

The Part That’s Harder Than Engineering: Community Conflict

Traffic calming is popular in concept and contentious in practice. Even in a town that broadly supports safety goals, individual projects can fracture consensus over emergency access, noise, parking loss, and perceived diversion of traffic.

Brookline has seen that dynamic before: past reporting on Babcock Street’s traffic-calming debate shows how quickly “safer street design” can become a neighborhood political fight. Vision Zero demands not only technical design but also repeated community process—especially when changes feel personal (in front of your home) rather than abstract (on a corridor you rarely use).

The town’s cluster approach is partly an attempt to manage this: it reduces the risk that only the most organized blocks get improvements first, while less-resourced streets wait indefinitely. Whether that plays out as intended will depend on how Brookline sequences future clusters and how it defends data-based decisions when opposition is loud.

Near-Misses and Equity: The Story Under the Official Data

A major weakness in traditional crash statistics is that they undercount the day-to-day reality of danger. Many incidents are “near-misses” that never reach a police report but still shape behavior: parents deciding to drive rather than walk, seniors avoiding certain crossings, cyclists rerouting.

BrooklineCAN’s advocacy work has tried to capture that invisible layer. WBZ NewsRadio reported on a Brookline “near-miss” survey, including a hospital worker’s comment noting a pattern of people struck by cars in the area. The point isn’t that the survey replaces official data; it’s that it explains why residents may feel a street is unsafe even when a specific intersection hasn’t yet produced a headline crash.

Brookline’s Vision Zero Resolution also puts equity in the center of the strategy, stating that traffic deaths and serious injuries are borne disproportionately by people with low income, people of color, children, seniors, and people with disabilities. That aligns with national research: Vision Zero Network notes that counties with the highest poverty rates experienced a traffic fatality rate 35% higher than the national average (per population).

Equity also shows up in the enforcement debate. Vision Zero advocates increasingly emphasize that safety cannot rely primarily on policing, given documented concerns about discriminatory traffic stops and inequitable fines and fees; the Vision Zero Network has explicitly addressed these issues in its discussions on rethinking enforcement. Brookline’s documents emphasize “self-enforcing” design—streets that naturally slow vehicles—because engineering changes tend to improve outcomes without depending on who gets stopped.

What Buyers and Homeowners Should Watch Next

Brookline’s Vision Zero story will be measured in milestones, not mottos. Three practical indicators to monitor over the next 12–24 months:

1. Spring 2026 build-out: Do the first-cluster speed humps get installed on schedule, and do follow-on clusters enter procurement?
2. Route 9 progress: CTPS documents long-term concepts (lane reallocation, curb geometry, pedestrian signal upgrades, and the reality that separated bike facilities become more necessary as speeds rise). But Route 9 is MassDOT-controlled, so tangible change requires state partnership and funding alignment.
3. Transparency and metrics: Brookline’s Vision Zero structure includes oversight and progress reporting; the credibility of the 2035 goal will depend on whether the town regularly publishes what improved, what didn’t, and what’s next.

A Fair Housing Note

This article discusses public infrastructure, traffic safety, and policy—factors that can affect quality of life and day-to-day mobility. It is not intended to guide housing choices based on any protected characteristic. Buyers and renters should choose homes based on their personal needs and preferences, and real estate professionals should avoid steering or suggesting where someone “should” live.

Brookline has set a clear target—zero by 2035—and the first major “proof point” is already on the calendar for Spring 2026. Whether Vision Zero becomes a lived reality will depend on Brookline’s willingness to keep making physical changes, even when they’re politically uncomfortable, and to secure meaningful movement on the corridors it doesn’t fully control.