City Streets a Mortal Threat to Pedestrians

kennedy

kennedy

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 12, 2007
Messages
2,820
Reaction score
7
From Wired.

City Streets a Mortal Threat to Pedestrians

By Jason Kambitsis, November 9, 2009, 1:08 pm

Ditching the car in favor of walking may be good for your health, but it also can be deadly ? especially if you live in one of Florida?s major metro areas.

A report released today finds more than 43,000 pedestrians nationwide have died this decade on roads the authors complain don?t provide adequate crosswalks and other safety features. The report, by Transportation for America and the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership, says states simply aren?t spending enough to improve pedestrian safety and accessibility. Less than 1.5 percent of total transportation funds are spent on such measures, even though pedestrians comprise 11.8 percent of all traffic deaths and nearly the same percentage of all trips taken.

?As Congress prepares to rewrite the nation?s transportation laws, this report is yet another wake-up call showing why it is so urgent to update our policies and spending priorities,? said James Corless, director of Transportation for America.

The report, Dangerous By Design: Solving the Epidemic of Preventable Pedestrian Deaths (and Making Great Neighborhoods), ranks the 10 most dangerous metropolitan areas for pedestrians. The top four are in Florida.

The 10 most dangerous metropolitan areas for pedestrians in 2007-2008 were Orlando, Tampa, Miami and Jacksonville, Florida; Memphis, Tennessee; Raleigh, North Carolina; Louisville, Kentucky; Houston; Birmingham, Alabama; and Atlanta.

The three safest cities were Seattle; Portland, Oregon; and Minneapolis-St. Paul.

The authors compiled the list after gathering data from all 360 metropolitan areas in the United States. The Surface Transportation Policy Partnership sorted the data using the Pedestrian Danger Index, an equation that takes a metropolitan area?s population and divides it by the number of fatalities in that area. Orlando came out on top with 2.9 pedestrian deaths per 100,000 residents. That?s despite the fact just 1.3 percent of the area?s residents walk to work, the report notes.

Many of the deaths occurred on streets that have few provisions for pedestrians, cyclists or those in wheelchairs. According to the report, of the 9,168 pedestrian fatalities in 2007-2008 where the location of the accident is known, more than 40 percent were killed in a spot where there was no crosswalk. The report notes that only one in 10 pedestrian deaths occurred in a crosswalk. Sixty percent occurred on an arterial road where the speed limit was 40 mph or higher.

The authors complain that states aren?t spending enough to make roads safer for people who are on foot, on a bike or in a wheelchair. The report finds wide disparities in the amount each state spends. For example, Providence, Rhode Island, spends $4.01 per person to increase pedestrian and cyclist safety, while Orlando spends 87 cents.

?Too many transportation agencies have focused their investments on serving vehicles that result in unsafe, unhealthy environments for walking and bicycling,? said Anne Canby, president of the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership. ?It?s time recipients of federal taxpayers? money were held accountable for addressing this epidemic of preventable deaths.?

The report finds minority and low-income communities are disproportionately impacted. African-Americans, for example, have a pedestrian fatality rate of 3.01; the rate is 2.88 for Hispanics. Nationally, the rate for all people is 1.53. People 65 and older are at a higher risk, too, with a pedestrian fatality rate of 2.69.

The authors offer some solutions that parallel a national trend toward reconfiguring streets to make them safer and more appealing to pedestrians without adversely impacting traffic flow.

By using traffic calming techniques like reconfiguring road alignments and installing barriers like roundabouts to slow drivers, streets become more accessible. Expanding the Safe Routes to School program, which installs or improves crosswalks, signals and other features, would make walking and biking safer for children. And more cities are adopting so-called complete streets policies that give all modes of transportation, from walking to driving to riding the bus, equal access and the same priority.

Many of these issues could come up when Congress debates the The Surface Transportation Authorization Act, a 775-page bill outlining how some $450 billion in transportation spending should be divvied up.

?These policy changes would make our streets safer for millions of Americans, whether they are walking, driving or bicycling, and they would promote healthy levels of exercise,? said George Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. ?We must convey to Congress that the status quo is unacceptable and compel legislators to act.?
Click to expand...
 
I remember seeing that the fine for hitting pedestrians in Florida is something absurdly low.

Another reason to hate Florida.
 
What do all the dangerous cities have in common? They're in the south!

What do all the safe cities have in common? They're in the north!

Clearly, southern cities just aren't fit for people to walk in. Maybe there should be a review of obesity studies and find a correlation?

In all seriousness, I have nothing against the south. I do prefer northern climes, but that is beside the point. What strikes me most about this study is, that the three safest cities aren't necessarily the oldest (Atlanta, incorporated 1837, Minneapolis, incorporated 1867). While it would normally be easy to attribute the dangerous streets of sunbelt cities to newer, auto-centric planning, the northern cities mentioned aren't significantly older than the southern ones. Perhaps they had different periods of population growth, with different planning trends at the time, but could the gap really be that major?
 
Don't even break this down into a N v S thing. Northern cities developed in the 19th century more as walkable urban centers while Southern cities (for the most part) developed in the 20th Century more as auto-centric centers. Also there are plenty of pedestrians and bikers who get killed everyday in the North.

[Edit: When I say developed I don't mean incorporated. Sure Atlanta is just as old as many mid-western cities but it had a very different development process. The big cities of the south didn't become major industrial centers until into the 20th Century.]

What it comes down to is this: America: Fuck you if you ain't got a car. This country spend the last century adapting to the car and we are only now starting to swing back towards a more balanced approach to transportation and urban design. Cars shouldn't be banned but they should have to share the road.
 
Asheville, NC is a lovely place to walk, and everything I've read about Savannah GA and Charleston SC says they are also quite nice. (Haven't been to them yet, but want to visit soon.)

For contrast, try walking from Hoboken NJ to adjoining Jersey City. Not much fun.

So yeah, let's not bash the South for this.
 
I don't want to seem callous but I would hardly call +/- 4,500 deaths per year in a population of 300,000,000 an epidemic.
 
There are plenty of walkable, pedestrian places in the South -- even in Florida. South Beach may be the South's best example of an urban environment. New Orleans is another. Richmond is decent, and of course the already mentioned Charleston and Savannah are national treasures. This list goes on. Historically, Washington DC is a Southern city.

This is not so much a North vs. South thing as it is good transportation planning vs. bad transportation planning. Florida is guilty as charged.
 
bdurden said:
South Beach may be the South's best example of an urban environment.
Click to expand...

True, but the drivers are godawful. After a couple of visits there, one thing that stood out in my mind is that it's the only city where I've been afraid for my safety as a pedestrian. I don't think it's necessarily that the car drivers are out to get pedestrians, it's more that they're totally oblivious to them.
 
How many square blocks is South Beach? Four?
 
Okay, so pedestrian friendly Florida = 23 square blocks, pedestrian unfriendly Florida = 65,795 square miles.

Not counting Disney World, of course.
 
czsz said:
Okay, so pedestrian friendly Florida = 23 square blocks, pedestrian unfriendly Florida = 65,795 square miles.

Not counting Disney World, of course.
Click to expand...

don't forget Celebration....

or I guess that's part of Disney's world, so maybe it's covered
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top