Industrial Rd & Millard Ave in Omaha, America’s worst intersection for pedestrians according to Streetsblog / Photo: Google

The Pedestrian Pandemic
In 2010, the last year the National Highway Safety Traffic Administration (NHSTA) published such figures, a startling 4,280 pedestrians were hit and killed in traffic and 70,000 were injured. For many states, this past year was one of the most deadly in a decade, ending a general decline in pedestrian fatalities. Even still, there is a disturbing cultural willingness to accept these deaths as a necessary evil. The public increasingly blames the victims. The police rarely prosecute, and if they do, the courts are often lenient. In 2012, 136 pedestrians were killed and another 11,621 were injured in New York City alone—and in all that time, only one sober, unacquainted driver was charged.

The Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) just released their annual Urban Mobility Report resulting in the usual public outcry to spend billions of taxpayer dollars to address congestion, because of what time stuck in traffic costs the American economy.  According to AAA, pedestrian deaths and injuries cost American society $300 billion in 2010, that is nearly three times the national cost of congestion as estimated by the Urban Mobility Report.  Where is the public outcry to improve safety?

In the US, Common Law tradition has a clear provision for the right of access. Given that all forms of transportation begin and end with walking, this is essentially a right to be a pedestrian—a right severely restricted by expensive and counterproductive high-speed roads that we’ve built. A key problem in defending this right is that very few laws motivate law enforcement to consider killing a pedestrian as a crime. Involuntary Vehicular Manslaughter is a potential charge, but it’s hard to prove constructive manslaughter since a little speeding is rarely seen as a crime, and the threshold for recklessness is hard to meet. Anecdotally, drivers who kill a pedestrian are better off waiting for the police to arrive, because hit and runs really are about the only time the police reliably pursue these drivers with any prejudice. New laws specifically dealing with pedestrian-vehicle crashes are needed.

Blaming the Victim
In my opinion, our local media outlets are exacerbating the problem. Their stories discount the human loss and reinforce widely held misconceptions. First and foremost, underlying all of the poor media coverage is what I call the “Accident Axiom.” This is the widely-held (but almost never-question) belief that accidents are an unavoidable and innocent consequence of modern motorized society. The assumption here is that crashes not involving excessive speed, alcohol, or gross negligence are presumably the fault of no one, but an unfortunate systemic fluke.

This axiom has two corollaries: the Inherent Risk Corollary and the Reckless Driver Corollary. The former states that in this world of unavoidable accidents, pedestrians and cyclists are senselessly putting themselves in harm’s way by traversing concrete and asphalt. If they get hit, it is a deserved consequence of their poor decision making. And the latter states that those rare instances when a driver is at fault, it is the result of that driver being a reckless and careless individual, a deviant member of society. All blame is attributed to the individuals involved. The road network and driving culture are given immunity.

Recently the focus has been on the bad behaviors of pedestrians: texting, wearing earphones, jaywalking, drunk walking, etc. While there is clearly a personal responsibility to remain aware of your environment, we should not rush to judgement. Freakonomics ran a particularly illogical analysis of drunk walking back in 2011, claiming that it was eight-times safer to drive under the influence. Safer for whom?

As the mounting death toll makes the issue of pedestrian safety harder to ignore, the Reckless Driver Corollary has expanded to include distracted driving, a legitimate problem just like drunk driving. But in the age of TV screens, internet radio, and GPS navigation systems in dashboards, can we really claim distracted driving to be the isolated acts of a few negligent operators? Driving at high speeds with all of these modern additions is a pervasive indiscretion, a transgression a plurality of society idly commits on a daily basis.

I’m from Nebraska, one of the “safest” states for pedestrians, though that statistic is largely a function of our rural population and lack of pedestrians in cities.  Even in the Cornhusker State, 2012 was a 250% increase in pedestrian fatalities over 2011 as reported by AAA. The Omaha World Herald, is particularly fond of stating pedestrians “were not in a crosswalk” when they were hit. But this is often not even true! Victims were often not in a marked crosswalk. By law, crosswalks do not have to be marked; in a city where road salt strips the paint every year, few crosswalks even are. In September, when the World Herald reported on the increase in fatalities, I decided that enough was enough, and I responded by challenging the misconceptions so flagrantly repeated in their reporting. It took mere minutes of research to refute their presumptions.

The state’s traffic laws, Chapter 60 of the Nebraska Revised Statutes, lays out that a crosswalk exists whenever sidewalks are present on both sides of an intersection, regardless of whether there are white lines painted or not.  It goes on to explain a pedestrian can step into an unmarked crosswalk even if an approaching car is in view, so long as the driver has time to stop and there isn’t a Don’t Walk signal.  And most importantly if references a case Vanek v. Prohaska that states, “Violation of a statute is not negligence per se, but is merely evidence of negligence.”  In other words, just because a pedestrian violated these laws, doesn’t mean they should be considered the party at fault.  Given the inadequacy of the infrastructure, it might have been perfectly reasonable to cross in such a way.  Though the original post has since been deleted, you can read the full text of my comment here.

In the early 1900s, cars and their drivers were depicted in editorials, cartoons and accident reports as reckless murderers / Photo: via Peter Norton

The Rise of Motordom—and the Future of the Message
This wasn’t always the media’s modus operandi. In the early 1900s, cars and their drivers were depicted in editorials, cartoons and accident reports as reckless murderers, as grim reapers spreading death across cities and as pagan gods appeased by the sacrificing of children. What changed, mid-century, was that the highway lobby essentially took over the reporting of pedestrian and cyclists harmed by drivers; unsurprisingly, they changed the voice of coverage to presume the innocence of drivers.

Fortunately, there are signs that the narrative might be starting to change. While stories highlighting the injustice inherent in the way we treat pedestrian fatalities are usually the purview of urbanism-friendly publications (think Streetsblog, The Atlantic Cities, et. al.) NPR ran a story last month profiling the impossible task that police face in tracking down hit-and-run drivers involved in vehicle-pedestrian crashes. Brian Williams also covered the topic recently on NBC’s Rock Center, and the segment starts off promisingly enough. Unfortunately, about twenty minutes in, it becomes clear that the story is being framed using the Reckless Driver Corollary, focusing on the fact that drivers involved in the crashes being discussed were on their phones, rather than the fact that pedestrians died.

Solutions
There are many things that can be done to keep pushing the message back to a place that values human life first, and speed and efficient movement of automobiles second. On the policy side, get a Vulnerable Users Law introduced into your state legislature. Vulnerable Users Laws shift the burden of evidence onto the more dangerous individual. Drivers are responsible for cyclists, cyclists for pedestrians. I’m a huge fan of these laws, because pedestrians are put on a pedestal. They’ve been popular in Europe and are catching on in the United States.

You can also pursue other policies like Vision Zero, famously applied in Sweden and currently being campaigned for by Transportation Alternatives in NYC. Essentially, Vision Zero is a directive to eliminate all pedestrian and cyclists fatalities in quick order. The central premise being, “that no loss of life is acceptable.” Concerning law and order, you can find local lawyers to represent and advocate for justice on the behalf of pedestrians and cyclists injured or killed by drivers.

You can work to lower the speed of traffic. More specifically, advocate to decrease the range of speeds driven over a segment of road.  A fundamental belief in traffic engineering is that differences in operating speed causes higher risks of crashes. Spread can be reduced by lowering speed limits and using roundabouts instead of signalized intersections. The end result is travel times remain the same but maximum operating speed and the range of speeds are significantly lowered. Other geometric changes include narrower lanes, pedestrian refuge islands, neck-downs and Rightsizing.

However, only so much will be accomplished until our local papers and the nightly news starts putting pressure on state DOTs and public works departments to keep our citizens safe on foot. So, first and foremost, pay closer attention to the way that pedestrian deaths are portrayed by the local media in your area, and don’t be afraid to put pressure your local news outlets when you see improper coverage that blames the victim. It is easy to find language in your State Statutes that debunk published misconceptions about crosswalks and jaywalking. We all have the right to walk—and like most rights, it’s one that must be defended.

Helpful Resources

• Peter Norton’s excellent presentation on the history of media depictions and societal opinions on pedestrian-vehcile crashes
• AAA report on the societal costs of pedestrian-vehicle crashes
• World Health Organization pamphlet on the risk of pedestrian fatality as a function of traffic speed
• AAA report on the risk of pedestrian fatality as a function of traffic speed
• Transportation for America’s Dangerous by Design, interactive pedestrian-vehicle crash data
• National Highway Transportation Safety Administration pedestrian data
• America Walks, the best starting point for resources, tools and links

In Washington Square Park, light writers make the most of the dark / Photo: Alex Fortney

On the eve of Halloween, I ventured across the East River to cycle through the eerily dark and silent streets of lower Manhattan. With Sandy’s storm surge freshly receded and my sister a refugee on my futon in Bed Stuy, we hopped on bikes and rode into the Financial District to gather clothes and valuables from her apartment one block from the South Street Seaport.

This week, the internet has been abuzz with articles on the relief efforts, the role of climate and ecology in the storm’s severity, and the stark illustration of how a NYC that commutes by car is a NYC in constant gridlock.

While I’ve been very conscious of all of that, what I noticed most on the ground was how social behavior has adapted to this nearly disparate nighttime landscape of the city below 34th Street.  There are no traffic lights, no street lights; there just aren’t any lights at all. For the most part, streets signs and traffic control devices are simply meaningless or invisible. Save for the few with traffic cops, intersections play host to a bizarre dance between cross and opposing traffic. Intuition prevails: minor streets stop for major streets; cars stop for bikes; everyone is stopping for pedestrians. The natural order of transport, untamed.

With no moon and with the light pollution uptown blocked out by the midrises and highrises inbetween, electric light has become an important part of human interaction. Stirring in the shadows of one’s peripheral vision is at once routine and unsettling. We quickly fell in step with the apparent norm when approaching others: each party shines a light at the other, makes an immediate judgement that the strangers are twilight wanders like themselves, and passes by, cordially cautious. It all feels rehearsed and official, as if we all did it in elementary school libraries right after practicing stop-drop-and-roll.

After crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, the incredible darkness was all consuming. Then suddenly, the awe and anxiety terminated by the tower of City Hall, lit like the surface of a star, as though we were astronauts reaching the point of orbit where the sun suddenly bursts forth from Earth’s horizon. Our ride up Broadway was quiet. It is only when we reached the rear entrance to my sister’s building that we began our interactions, talking with the staff loading a truck with the piles of garbage bags filled with 32 floors’ worth of rotting refrigerator contents, and squeezing past other tenants in the fire stairs, meagerly lit by a single glow stick. Out of necessity or fear, everyone simply deferred to trust, assuming others had legitimate reasons to be there, and that no one was up to mischief or criminality.

The NYSE building, presumably lit by generator / Photo: David Nelson

The Financial District was the darkest of all, perhaps reflecting it mostly daytime population. The reds and blues of cop cars and the Stock Exchange’s up-lit columns cut through the darkness. Those columns had attracted a few handfuls of twenty-somethings and I wondered if they had anything to do with Occupy.

Once I had my sister were safely back in Brooklyn, my girlfriend and I rode back into the city, this time to venture uptown. Chinatown, Little Italy, and NoHo were perhaps where the de facto traffic pattern was most pronounced, when crossing the big streets of Canal, Delancey, and Houston.

We were now taking the familiar route of my afternoon commute. In the hard-hit East Village, we passed by a few resilient restaurants and bars operating by candlelight. Glow sticks and LEDs were accessories with purpose here, a part of individuals’ advertised identities. My favorite example was a flamboyant individual who wore a large medallion blinking with orange, green and purple lights. On Saint Mark’s Place between 1st and Avenue A, we found ourselves in the midst of a crowd. As soon as we were about twenty feet away, someone off in the shadows pressed play. We were comically startled. A dozen people started dancing to the harmonies of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrel.  There vehemence of the lyrics seemed particularly apropos, given the situation: “Ain’t no river wide enough,” the radio blared.  We headed towards the Williamsburg Bridge. It was nearly 2am; time to go home.

Reflecting on the sights and sounds of the evening on the chilly climb up the bridge, I was struck by adaptability and endurance of the urban experience. People were defining new norms for social interaction, on the fly. Behavior toward key aspects of city life–individuality, mobility–were adapting to extreme conditions. And, as it turns out, even in the dark, people are still fundamentally attracted to people.

The right performance measures can make great streets for all users as ubiquitous as the American arterial highway / Photo: karmacamilleeon via Flickr

The new transportation bill, Moving Ahead with Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21), became law in the US on July 6th. Since then, MAP-21 has spawned a series of mini-riots in cyberspace.  Every group of professionals and advocates seems to be able to find their reasons to gather up and start lobbing rocks at the metaphorical DOT riot police just trying to hold the line with what Congress gave them. Frustration is a natural and understandable reaction to a major change like this, but the fix is not to holler about the new Federal policy; now is the time to look inward and change what needs to be changed in our own cities and states. This doesn’t mean that we at PPS believe that MAP-21 is not problematic–just that we think it is now time to determine where the real problems are and start working with DOT and AASHTO to fix them.

For the next few days, we have an opportunity to stop throwing stones and participate in a constructive discussion about the future of transportation in the United States. The Department of Transportation has created a website for a National Dialogue on Transportation Performance Measures to inform the implementation of a performance-based system under MAP-21. The site will be accepting public input through this Sunday, September 30th. While some may be skeptical as to whether U.S. DOT will listen, at a minimum, this will allow the transportation reform movement to crowdsource priorities to be addressed.

Principal arterials like this one are currently evaluated mostly on Level of Service and Speed / Photo: Tony Case via Flickr

The Project for Public Spaces has long advocated for silo-busting, both within the transportation policy world and between transportation and other agencies. While the loss of certain dedicated funds, programs, and policies is surely unnerving, the move towards a more holistic transportation planning, design, and evaluation process should be the long term goal. MAP-21 can be seen as a stepping stone towards that future, because a move towards a performance-based system allows for a wide range of objectives and values to be seamlessly integrated into the decision making process. For example, instead of using dedicated funds for sidewalks and bike lanes to retrofit a dangerous roadway, the vision is that multimodal safety and accessibility metrics will lead to a balanced design in the first place.

FHWA has high hopes for performance measures, too:

“Under MAP-21, performance management will transform Federal highway programs and provide a means to more efficient investment of Federal transportation funds by focusing on national transportation goals, increasing the accountability and transparency of the Federal highway programs, and improving transportation investment decisionmaking through performance-based planning and programming.”

With the Sunday deadline fast approaching, the number of ideas has skyrocketed from 29 last Monday to 192 by Wednesday afternoon. The voting system gives each idea a score.  Voting for the idea adds one point to the score. Voting against subtracts one. You can retract and/or change your vote after the fact, as well.

The Association for Commuter Transportation (ACT) currently has one of the top ideas with 90 votes.  They write:

“Performance measures should be defined and measured in ways that reflect all of the benefits of an integrated, comprehensive system based on the movement of people, not vehicles. In particular, this means performance and unit costs for passenger travel should include a mobility and accessibility component such as a passenger mile basis rather than solely a vehicle mile basis.”

However, commenter Dan Kaempff thinks that miles traveled isn’t a good enough metric, arguing that “[g]reater emphasis should be placed on better linking good land use decisions with transportation investments.”

Other comments run the gamut from detailed tracking of bicycle and pedestrian crash rates to indexes of pavement conditions to the spatial and temporal extent of transit coverage.

While numerous individuals have cited the general connection between land use and transportation, relatively absent from the discussion are the core concepts and principles of Placemaking. Streets are places–or at least they should be. Placemakers should be adding to this discussion to make sure that metrics for ensuring quality of place and community engagement get a fair shake. Tools already exist for street audits and evaluating the access and linkages to multi-use destinations. Could these be used to evaluate the national transportation system?

An understandably less popular comment from Sarah Lowery of the Washington State Department of Transportation highlights the fact that some agencies will face difficulty implementing the national measures due to budget constraints. However, Sarah’s point is an excellent one. It highlights just how important it is to make sure that the measures agreed upon in this go-round are useful in the long term so that the next transportation bill, set for two years from now, won’t have to impose a similar burden on local agencies. All the more reason for Placemakers to participate now.