House District 21 covers a suburban area northeast of Newark extending roughly from Kirkwood Highway in the south to Brackenville Road in the north. (If you are not 100% sure whether you live in House District 21, you can search here using your address.) If you live in this district your choice on November 8 to represent you in the Delaware House of Representatives is between the incumbent Representative Mike Ramone and his challenger Dr. Frank Burns. Using a multiple choice format, we asked these two candidates to share their views on four questions related to traffic safety in Delaware. Dr. Burns did not respond but Representative Ramone’s answers are here:
1) In May the 151st Delaware General Assembly voted unanimously to approve the Everyone Gets Home resolution (SCR 94). SCR94 called for reducing traffic fatalities in Delaware to no more than 100 people each year and tasked state agencies to meet that goal by 2025.
Ramone: “Traffic safety should be DelDOT’s top priority. If traffic safety goals are unmet, DelDOT’s capital program should be reoriented and reprioritized in order to meet those goals.”
2) There is significant disagreement among transportation professionals about how limited resources for government traffic safety efforts should be allocated.
Ramone: “Government should focus on reducing fatal crash types.”
3) Traffic safety professionals often describe their work in terms of the ‘3 Es’ (education, enforcement and engineering).
Ramone: “All 3 “E”s – education, enforcement and engineering – are indispensable and we need to do more of each in order to make progress in solving Delaware’s traffic safety crisis.”
4) Many of Delaware’s deadliest roads – including Dupont Highway, Coastal Highway, Kirkwood Highway and Pulaski Highway – have become deadlier over time as commercial development along those roads has increased the number of potential conflicts between vehicles, and between vehicles and pedestrians, entering and exiting driveways and changing lanes either to enter or after exiting driveways.
Ramone: “DelDOT should partner with counties to consolidate driveway entrances and exits onto busy, high-speed, multi-lane highways.”
5) Is there anything else about your record as an elected official, your experience or your views that you think is relevant to improving traffic safety in Delaware for the people you wish to represent in the 152nd General Assembly?
Ramone: “As a business owner in the fitness industry, I always support exercise and safety. The more exercise becomes part of one’s daily life the better the Health of our State will be. Biking is one of the best exercises but it must be safe. Whatever we can do to accomplish that goal we must. Most of these questions seemed to be (All of the above) when viewing each from my perspective. And the Bike Delaware members are a perfect example of how that need to be a partnership. Thank you all for that and your support, Michael.”