Every quarter, a city staff member is featured in the Chanhassen Connection magazine's new series, "The Question I Get Asked The Most Is..."

It is an opportunity for staffers to share with residents the most common questions they receive and provide insight into how the city addresses these important topics. This series helps bridge the gap between residents’ concerns and the City's efforts, offering a deeper understanding of the decision-making processes that shape Chanhassen.

In the city's Spring 2025 edition, Chanhassen Director of Public Works / City Engineer Charlie Howley provides an answer to the question he gets asked the most: "What is the city doing to improve traffic safety in Chanhassen?"

The one question I get asked the most revolves around traffic safety. We often receive inquiries and complaints about speeding vehicles or concerns regarding the safety of specific streets or intersections. These are tough questions to answer because, at the heart of it, is safety, which naturally is of the utmost importance to our residents, businesses and the traveling public. Is something safe or not? And how do we measure safety? Traditionally, the metric is the number and severity of accidents. But if there are no documented accidents, does that mean it’s safe? Most often, safety—or the feeling of being safe—is an emotion, not grounded in data and metrics. That’s the rub and difficulty when answering these types of questions with the public. We need to take into consideration many factors when responding to traffic safety questions. Many times, the response we give is not the answer residents want to hear, but I can assure you that the City takes these inquiries seriously. Delivering a “safe” community is part of our mission statement, which means it’s inherently part our culture and part of the decision-making process in everything we do. The City created a Traffic Safety Committee (TSC) in 2021 to show our commitment to the importance of this topic. The TSC is not just a bunch of engineers in a room giving the same canned responses; it is made up of a broad panel of city staff from all departments. They provide recommendations on improvements and strategies to help with the traffic safety needs of Chanhassen. To learn more about the Traffic Safety Committee, please visit our website.