Are Your Streets Safe for Pedestrians?

We are encouraging people to walk more and more for various reasons such as health benefits,to decrease car congestion, decrease CO² emissions, decrease use of fossil fuels the over all socio-economic benfits are huge. http://www.walkinginfo.org/why/benefits.cfm

But are your streets safe for additional pedestrian traffic? The walking population is growing due to various initiaitives such as Safe Routes to School http://www.saferoutesinfo.org/ , initiatives by the EPA to decrease use of cars thus reducing CO² emissions and fossil fule usage,and address growing health concerns of our population.

The Obama Adminsitration has increased funding for walking and biking initiatives to $1.2B. Monies will be spent to enhance and extend the non-car modes of transportation intrastructure such as buses, high speed rail, walking and bike paths.

Americans want and need safe alternatives to driving," Ray LaHood, transportation secretary under Obama, said in a statement. "By making biking and walking safer and more accessible, we'll be able to provide Americans with more choices and help foster more active, livable communities."

Community leaders have you accessed your streets for safety for this growing walking and biking population?

Let’s review some simple accessment tools you can use.

Develop a safe walking task group madeof citizens young and old, engineers,planners, decision makers,and safety professionals.

Utilization of the PEDSAFE,Pedestrian Safety Guilde and Countermeasure Selction System. http://www.walkinginfo.org/pedsafe/about.cfm This contains all the information about the program with a short discussion below..

Pedestrians Most at Risk

Crash involvement rates (crashes per 100,000 people) are the highest for 5- to 9-year-old males, who tend to dart out into the street. This problem may be compounded by the fact that speeds are frequently a problem in areas where children are walking and playing. In general, males are more likely to be involved in a crash than females; in 2003, 69 percent of pedestrian fatalities were male, and the male pedestrian injury rate was 58 percent higher than for females.2Rates for older persons (age 65 and over) are lower than for most age groups, which may reflect greater caution by older pedestrians (e.g., less walking at night, fewer dart-outs) and a reduced amount of walking near traffic. However, older adult pedestrians are much more vulnerable to serious injury or death when struck by a motor vehicle than younger pedestrians. For example, the percentage of pedestrian crashes resulting in death exceeds 20 percent for pedestrians over age 75, compared to less than 8 percent for pedestrians under age 14.3,4

Our sidewalks are shared by many; see below. The furniture/planter zone may also need to accommodate snow storage thus taking away from the actual pedestrian zone.

Below some of the Pedestrian zone has been taken by car overhang thus potentially making this walking area unsafe.

A solution for this would be the installation of car stops/wheel stops to prevent this overhang.

Education needs to be stepped up about pedestrian and bike safety in the United States. Other countries have been walking and cycling for years.
The neglect of pedestrian and bicycling safety has made walking and cycling dangerous ways of getting around American cities. Walking and cycling can be made quite safe, however, as clearly shown by the much lower fatality and injury rates in The Netherlands and Germany. There is no good reason why American cities could not adopt many of the same measures to enhance safety. The necessary methods and technology are already available, with decades of successful experience in Europe.
read more http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/461679_6

Traffic Calming of Residential Neighborhoods

Traffic calming limits the speeds of motor vehicle traffic, both by law -- 30 km per hour (19 mph) or less -- and through physical barriers such as raised intersections and crosswalks, traffic circles, road narrowing, zigzag routes, curves, speed humps, and artificial dead ends created by midblock street closures.[10] Traffic calming gives pedestrians, bicyclists, and playing children as much right to use residential streets as motor vehicles; indeed, motor vehicles are required to yield to these other users. In both The Netherlands [41] and Germany, traffic calming is area-wide and not for isolated streets. That ensures that faster through traffic gets displaced to arterial routes designed to handle it and not simply shifted from one local road to another.

The most important safety impact of traffic calming is the reduced speeds of motor vehicles. This is crucial not only to the motorist's ability to avoid hitting pedestrians and bicyclists but also to the survival of nonmotorists in a crash. The British Department of Transport, for example, found that the risk of pedestrian death in crashes rises from 5% at 20 mph to 45% at 30 mph and 85% at 40 mph.[42]

Area-wide traffic calming in Dutch neighborhoods has reduced traffic accidents by 20% to 70%.[43] Traffic calming in German neighborhoods has reduced traffic injuries overall by 20% to 70% and serious traffic injuries by 35% to 56%.[44] A comprehensive review of traffic calming impacts in Denmark, Great Britain, Germany, and The Netherlands found that traffic injuries fell by an average of 53% in traffic-calmed neighborhoods.[45] In short, traffic calming greatly reduces the danger of traffic deaths and injuries in residential neighborhoods. Traffic calming greatly improves not only pedestrian safety but also the safety of bicycling, since much bike use -- especially by children -- is in residential neighborhoods.
Read more http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/461679

“Traffic calming has its origins in the Dutch "Woonerf" schemes of the 1970's, and since then has been further extended and refined throughout northern Europe, but particularly in Germany and the Netherlands.

“The concept of traffic calming is fundamentally concerned with reducing the adverse impact of motor vehicles on built up areas. This usually involves reducing vehicle speeds, providing more space for pedestrians and cyclists, and improving the local environment.

The original "Woonerf" schemes introduced the concept of shared space between vehicle and pedestrian. Streets were reconstructed so as to tip the balance in favour of the residential function of the street and to reduce the domination of motor vehicles. Speed humps, chicanes, road narrowing, planting and other measures were introduced to both physically and visually reinforce the message that the motorist is only a guest in the area and that the residential function takes priority.

Traffic calming techniques are now applied to whole areas of towns and not just to individual streets. Main traffic arteries, villages, shopping streets and town centres have all been included. Area wide traffic calming schemes seek to calm both the main roads and the residential roads in an area so as to ameliorate the impact of any traffic transfer as a consequence of traffic calming.”
http://www.its.leeds.ac.uk/projects/primavera/p_calming.html#a3
Traffic calming products are now manufactured in North America by RubberForm Recycled Products, LLC. http://www.rubberform.com/ They have been working closely with state police utilizing the speed bumps and humps at checkpoints. To make this work environment safer for citizens and police officers.