The bias in our national philosophy towards high speed mobility has long been a topic that PPS has advocated against. In addition to stifling Placemaking, forcing people into cars has contributed to a host of growing national problems. Most compelling of those problems is the incredible pedestrian carnage. Yet until recently public outcry was minimal and government investment in transportation paid only lip service to annual fatalities that amount to the equivalent of one major airplane crash each month. Fortunately, the pendulum has swung back towards our cities, states, and federal government taking action.  

In a two part series, long time PPS friend and PPS Senior Fellow Jay Walljasper will walk us through the growing new vision to address this tragedy. Part 1 - A New Vision to Fix the Tragedy No One Ever Thinks About - describes emerging pedestrian safety initiatives around the world. Part II lays out the recipe for How to Restore Walking as a Way of Life. - PPS Transportation Director, Gary Toth

New York and other cities confront the fact that 4500 Americans are killed crossing the street each year 

More than 4500 pedestrians are killed by motor vehicles every year on the streets of America--more than those who died in the horror of 9/11.

A recent report from the National Complete Streets Coalition studying ten years of data found that 16 times more people were killed crossing the street than in natural disasters over the that same period. Another 68,000 walkers on average are injured every year. The victims are disproportionately children, seniors, and people of color, according to the report.

This pedestrian safety crisis is even more dire internationally. More than 270,000 people are killed while walking every year--22 percent of a total 1.24 million traffic fatalities, according to the World Health Organization.

“It’s like an airplane falling out of the sky every other day. If that actually happened, the whole system would be ground to a halt until the problem was fixed,” notes Scott Bricker, Executive Director of America Walks, a coalition of walking advocacy groups. “We need to address this terrible problem with the same urgency.”

“Where’s the moral outrage?” asks Katherine Kraft, America Walks’ National Coalition Director and Coalition Director of Every Body Walk!, a collaborative of citizens, businesses, and organizations across many fields convened by the health care non-profit Kaiser Permanente.

Unfortunately, pedestrian deaths (and all traffic fatalities) are viewed as an inevitable side effect of modern life. “People accept this as normal, just as 100 years ago most people accepted that women could not vote,” observes Gil Penalosa, Executive Director of 8-80 Cities, an international organization working to make streets safe for people of all ages.

Yet recent history offers genuine hope for making our streets safer. A generation ago domestic abuse and drunk driving were seen as sad, unalterable facts of human nature. But vigorous public campaigns to prevent these tragedies have shown remarkable results, offering clear evidence that destructive human behavior can be curbed when we put our minds to it.

Sweden Paves the Way for Zero Traffic Deaths

Campaigns to reduce pedestrian, bicyclist, and motorist deaths to zero are now taking shape around the country from Philadelphia to Chicago to Oregon.

This new safety strategy, called Vision Zero, is modeled on successful efforts in Sweden, where overall traffic deaths have been cut in half since 2000--making Swedish streets the safest in the world according to a front page story in the New York Times. Pedestrian deaths in the country have also plunged 50 percent since 2009.

The Economist magazine reports that Sweden accomplished all this by emphasizing safety over speed in road design. The influential conservative newsweekly cites improved crosswalks, lowered urban speed limits, pedestrian zones, barriers separating cars from bikes and pedestrians, and narrowing streets for the impressive drop in traffic deaths.

Sweden takes a far different approach than conventional transportation planning, where “road users are held responsible for their own safety” according to the website Vision Zero Initiative. Swedish policy by contrast believes that to save lives, roads must anticipate driver, bicyclist, and walker errors, “based on the simple fact that we are human and we make mistakes.”  This is similar to the Netherlands’ policy of Forgiving Roads, which has reduced traffic fatalities by 75 percent since the 1970s, compared to less than a 20 percent reduction in the US over the same period.

Three US states that adopted aggressive measures to cut traffic deaths similar to Vision Zero--Utah, Minnesota and Washington--all have seen traffic fatalities decline by 40 percent or more, 25 percent better than the national average.

Streets of New York

In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio won office last year on the promise of reducing traffic deaths in a city where someone is killed or seriously injured by a motor vehicle every two hours on average.

“The fundamental message of Vision Zero is that death and injury on city streets is not acceptable, and that we will no longer regard serious crashes as inevitable,” he wrote in a letter to New Yorkers… “They happen to people who drive and to those who bike, but overwhelmingly, the deadly toll is highest for pedestrians--especially our children and seniors.” Traffic accidents are the largest preventable cause of death for children under 14 in New York, and the second highest source of fatal injuries for people over 65.

In May New York’s City Council passed 11 bills and six resolutions to implement de Blasio’s Vision Zero Action Plan across many city departments, including:

• Increased police enforcement for speeding, failure to yield to pedestrians and dangerous driving;
• A campaign in the state legislature to allow the city to lower speed limits to 25 mph (and 20 mph on some streets), which passed in June;
• Safety improvements such as traffic calming, speed cameras, and “slow zones” on streets;
• Stricter scrutiny of taxi drivers’ safety records;
• Street safety curriculum in schools; and
• Creation of a permanent Vision Zero Task Force at City Hall.

One of New York’s biggest problems, according to walking and bike advocates, is that the police department focuses far more resources on street crime than on street safety, even though 356 people were killed in traffic accidents last year (half of them pedestrians and bicyclists), compared to 333 murders. Advocates cheered when de Blasio chose as his police chief William Bratton, who has spoken out about the need to curb traffic injuries and deaths.

“It’s really impressive what Mayor de Blasio has done,” explains Noah Budnick, deputy director of Transportation Alternatives. “He has put his money where his mouth is” by finding funding for street safety projects and increased police enforcement in an era of tight budgets.

Streets of San Francisco & Beyond

After New York, Vision Zero planning in the US is most advanced in San Francisco, which last year saw a near-record high of 25 pedestrian and bike fatalities. Walk San Francisco and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition recently launched the Vision Zero Coalition with the San Francisco School District and more than two dozen community organizations. Their mission is to encourage city officials to:

• Fix dangerous intersections and streets;
• Ensure “full and fair enforcement of traffic laws,” with an emphasis on curbing dangerous behavior;
• Invest in training and education for all road users, focusing on helping frequent drivers share the road with walkers and bicyclists;
• Eliminate all traffic deaths in the city by 2024.

“Vision Zero is about changing the culture of our dangerous streets….” Nicole Schneider of Walk San Francisco and Leah Shahum of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition wrote recently. “Vision Zero is also about empowering historically underrepresented communities that are disproportionately burdened by traffic injuries and chronic disease.”

The plan has been already been endorsed by the San Francisco Police Department.

A number of local advocacy organizations around the country (New York’s Transportation Alternatives, Walk San Francisco, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, Chicago’s Active Transportation Alliance, the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, Bike Pittsburgh, Oregon’s Bicycle Transportation Alliance and Oregon Walks) are working with the national Alliance for Biking and Walking to launch the Vision Zero Strategic Collaborative to push for these policies across the nation.

America’s Emerging Walking Revolution

America is on the verge of a walking revolution. After many decades in which walking continually lost ground to other modes of transportation and  recreation, there’s growing interest across many fields about restoring walking as a way of life. A diverse network of organizations came together at the first-ever walking summit last year to champion walking as one solution to our health care crisis (one-half hour of walking each day reduces the risk of many major diseases), as a tool for strengthening our hometowns (people out walking heighten the sense of community and security), as a clear route to reducing climate change (more folks walking means less CO2 emissions) and as a boost for the economy (by lowering health care costs and stimulating local business districts).

Katherine Kraft warns, “We won’t increase walkability--which is good for people’s and communities’ health--until we make the streets more safe and comfortable for walking.” Vision Zero, she says, is the path toward a better life for all of us.

“Everyone wants to live in a community that they can enjoy.” agrees Scott Bricker. “Where their children can grow up safely. Where we can all live, work and play without fear at any age. We have the public will to do this.”

Jay’s outstanding articles are the latest in a long line of PPS promotion of roadway safety. For instance, in Exiting the “Forgiving Highway” for the “Self Explaining Road”, we discussed the dramatic reduction in unnecessary road deaths that would have occurred if we followed the Dutch approach to Sustainable Safety.  And In Wider, Straighter, and Faster Not the Solution for Older Drivers, chided the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) for perpetuating the myth that wider lanes will lead to increased safety for senior citizens. Perhaps our most important work is the creation of the Rightsizing Resource Guide, a powerful resource for citizen’s who want to press their transportation agencies to retrofit streets for safer and more equitable operation.