How Lexington mayor candidates would improve traffic, bike, walking safety
Lexington has had nearly 88,000 collisions from 2020 to 2025, according to state and local data — including 1,752 with injuries in 2025 alone and 41 fatal incidents, with 15 pedestrians and one bicyclist killed.
Residents consistently complain about traffic during peak hours and major events. And public transportation is affected: Most Lextran routes do not have high-frequency service on bus routes, making it an often impractical option for many city workers.
The Urban County Council has worked on addressing these issues, most recently through recommendations from its STREEET Safety Task Force’s recommendations for more roundabouts, smaller-scale bicycle projects and increased traffic enforcement.
Leading up to this year’s primary election, five of the seven Lexington mayoral candidates told the Herald-Leader what they would do to make traveling through Lexington safer and more efficient.
Skip Horine and Rama Asmani did not respond to primary election questions from the Herald-Leader.
Linda Gorton: We’re regularly making improvements to traffic safety
Two-term incumbent Linda Gorton said her administration has made continual improvements to transportation in Lexington through regular traffic light retiming, adding new sidewalks and piloting new projects to redesign roads for safety.
“We add sidewalks, bike and pedestrian trails every year, as well as rebuild areas that have safety concerns,” she said.
One such example is the recent quick-build project on East High Street. A portion of the street from Woodland Avenue to Rose Street was reduced to one car lane to make space for a protected bike lane and additional street parking spots for local businesses and residents.
Gorton also has a complete streets coordinator position in her office. Coordinator Brandi Peacher has a “specific focus on all aspects of safety,” Gorton said. “This includes assessing our bike and pedestrian infrastructure to continuously upgrade and improve it.”
Gorton said she communicates regularly with Lextran on how to help improve its service. The city has recently helped fund a downtown circulator bus, connecting people from downtown to the Distillery District and National Avenue on weekend nights.
“It has been well-used thus far,” she said.
The city has also provided some funding for a microtransit pilot for Lextran. Microtransit functions similarly to a rideshare service such as Lyft or Uber, where residents can book a ride on an app and be picked up and dropped off where they wish. In November 2025, Lextran’s general manager told the council the microtransit pilot should begin sometime in 2026.
Raquel Carter: Pedestrian and cyclist deaths are ‘a public safety crisis’
Raquel Carter, owner of Guide Realty, said she would treat bicycle and pedestrian deaths with “urgency in both our planning and public safety strategies.”
“Pedestrian and cyclist deaths are a public safety crisis,” she said.
Her strategies would include building more protected bike lanes — where some kind of buffer like a median or bollard separates cars from cyclists — building ADA accessible sidewalks and adding more raised crosswalks at key intersections.
Traffic signals and road signs should also be modernized, she said, to improve traffic flow while maintaining safe driving speeds. She would target roads with particularly high numbers of collisions to be redesigned with safety in mind.
Carter also wants to work with Lextran to increase transit access to growing areas.
“We will prioritize coordination between transit planning and new development to align routes with housing growth, commercial corridors, and job centers so transit is built into our city’s expansion, not added later,” she said.
She also added that bus stops near schools should be a focus for improved street design to make transit, or walking and biking to school, a more desirable and feasible option for families.
C.E. Huffman: We need automated light retiming for all traffic lights
C.E. Huffman, a public relations specialist at the University of Kentucky, said Lexington needs a system like Los Angeles’ Advanced Transportation System and Coordination Center. The ATSAC Center is able to automatically retime every light in the city as traffic flow, accidents and other circumstances affect drive times and commutes.
“Traffic safety can only be fixed when we have a centralized traffic engineering system that coordinates EVERY traffic light in Fayette County,” he said. He would seek state and federal funding to support the system.
Huffman said he would create a “bicycle czar” and “sidewalk czar” in his office to focus on improving dangerous streets for cyclists and pedestrians.
As a former Lextran driver, Huffman said as mayor he would appoint himself to serve on the agency’s board of directors and “host regular townhalls with Lextran riders on positives and areas for growth.”
He said the downtown circulator and microtransit pilots could not have been funded without city support. That proves the agency needs more direct support from the city to improve service.
“Lextran is not an island or a private company,” he said. “Their budget is separate, but the growth of Lextran depends greatly on LFUCG and the mayor’s office.”
Darnell Tagaloa: We need to ‘create a culture of safety’
Tagaloa echoed many of the ideas of his opponents to create protected bike lanes, target improvements at problematic intersections and improve connectivity between neighborhoods.
“Improving pedestrian and bike safety starts with making it a priority in how we design and maintain our roads,” he said.
He did put a special emphasis on improving education for residents. Safety campaigns for drivers and cyclists will increase awareness on how to safely navigate the city without endangering themselves or others, he said.
“This is about creating a culture of safety, not just reacting to incidents,” he added.
Tagaloa also wants more traffic safety enforcement from the city’s officers, saying, “We must hold drivers accountable by consistently enforcing traffic laws and promoting safer driving behaviors.”
Tagaloa said he already has a strong relationship with Lextran employees and will regularly meet with them to find ways to collaborate.
Greg O’Neal: ‘We will decrease distracted driving’
In an April mayoral forum, landscaper Greg O’Neal said his two biggest campaign issues were increasing litter enforcement and redoing Lexington’s traffic light system.
In a response to the Herald-Leader, O’Neal did not specifically say how he would redo the traffic lights, though he did say in that forum he would be interested in adding more flashing-red lights at intersections throughout Lexington in the nighttime hours to function more like stop signs.
O’Neal said he will work to “decrease distracted driving,” add more shared-use pathways and will “collaborate with Lextran to improve their service throughout the city.”
