TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — In a city where traffic and triple-digit heat are part of daily life, residents in one midtown neighborhood say a grassroots effort is already making their streets safer.
Neighbors in Tucson’s Garden District successfully applied for a Safe Streets Mini-Grant through the city’s Department of Transportation and Mobility, leading to the installation of a new traffic circle and other traffic-calming measures along Fairmount Street and nearby roads.
The effort began with residents identifying a persistent safety issue at the intersection of Fairmount and Venice avenues, where speeding and ignored stop signs had led to repeated close calls and crashes
.“We’ve had car accidents on the east-west on Fairmount where people just run the stop sign, excuse me, ran the stop sign,” said neighborhood resident Alice De Buhr.
The Safe Streets Mini-Grant program, launched by the city as part of broader traffic safety initiatives, is designed to empower residents to address such concerns directly. According to the city, eligible projects can include speed humps, curb extensions, traffic circles and other tools aimed at reducing speeds and improving safety on residential streets.
Andrea Altamirano, a coordinator with Tucson’s Department of Transportation and Mobility, said the application process is intentionally straightforward.“We try to make the process very easy for residents to apply for the grant,” Altamirano said.
“We’ve identified three steps in order to apply for the grant.”
Those steps include identifying a problem area, gathering support from neighbors — typically about 60% of affected residents — and submitting an application. The city offers both online and paper application options to improve accessibility.
“We have application available online through our website. But if people can’t access a computer all the time, they can also request a paper application,” Altamirano said.
For De Buhr and her neighbors, the effort to build support was key.
“Then we had to go ‘round the neighborhood and get 60 percent of people affected on the streets,” she said.
Construction of the traffic circle was recently completed, but residents say its impact was noticeable even before the project wrapped up.“
Even before they finished the traffic circle, people were slowing down,” De Buhr said. “It was like ‘Oh dear, I can’t go as fast around this traffic circle — I’ll hit it!’”
City officials say applications for the next round of Safe Streets Mini-Grants are open through December 2026, offering other neighborhoods a chance to pursue similar improvements.
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Eddie Celaya is a multimedia journalist at KGUN 9. Born in Tucson and raised in the Phoenix area, Eddie is a life-long Arizonan and graduate of the University of Arizona who loves the desert and mountains and hates the cold. Previously, Eddie worked in print media at the Arizona Daily Star. Share your story ideas with Eddie at edward.celaya@kgun9.com, or by connecting on Facebook or Instagram.
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