Transportation For America » Breaking Down the Blueprint: Improving public health and safety with a 21st Century transportation program

Breaking Down the Blueprint: Improving public health and safety with a 21st Century transportation program

May 22, 2009
By Andrew Bielak

Earlier this week, we talked with you about Transportation for America’s national objective for a healthier, safer transportation system, and showed you the performance targets needed to measure our progress towards these goals.

Today, we’d like to talk about just how we hope to reach these goals through some of the policies and reforms that we propose in our Blueprint.

As some of you probably know, trying to understand federal transportation, and the programs, funding mechanisms, and institutional structures behind it, is no day at the beach — these policy details are complex, confusing, and sometimes, pretty boring. In an effort to create a more coherent national vision for our transportation system, T4 America has drafted a simple and clear set of targets and programs in our Blueprint, which we believe can serve as a more accessible guide for the future of transportation policy.

While the programs throughout the entire Blueprint encourage and incentivize investment in safer roads for all users, more walkable, bikeable communities, and cleaner air, we thought we’d focus here on a couple policies and priorities that exemplify our commitment to improving safety and public health.

Continuing our commitment to reducing deaths and injuries: The last transportation bill, 2005′s SAFETEA-LU, placed a heavy focus on improving safety, and required the creation of detailed plans from state departments of transportation for reducing deaths and injuries. Despite these requirements, we have yet to see clear results and improvements in public safety (Highway deaths have hovered around 42,000 each year this decade, until the plunging economy that resulted in decreased driving lowered them to 37,000 in 2008.) The federal government needs to exert clear leadership in the next transportation bill by holding states and metro areas accountable for showing measurable improvements, and drafting laws at the national level — for example, a freeze on truck size and weights — that will prevent any backsliding on safety issues.

Encouraging active communities T4 America is supporting direct, targeted investment in our towns and cities to help communities complete walking and bicycling networks, shift a portion of trips to these active modes of transportation, and support a more active, healthy populace. We’re also calling for the creation of complete streets by recommending that all new construction of federally-funded roads included accommodations for all users, including pedestrians, cyclists, and people with disabilities.

Prioritizing safety where its most needed The Safe Routes to School Program, which provides our kids with active, safe ways to get to and from school through walking and biking, and is an incredibly valuable tool; for that reason, we believe the federal government needs to ramp up its commitment to this program. In order to provide safe options for older drivers and pedestrians, we’re also supporting a strong federal investment in efforts that will make our transportation system safer and more secure for these users.

For those of you who want more details on these issues, check out our Blueprint in full. For the rest of you, be sure to check back next week as we continue to explore the other reforms that Transportation for America is calling for to create 21st Century transportation system!

Filed under: Campaign Blog
Tags: biking, blueprint, Blueprint breakdown, crashes, public health, safety, walking

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[...] actions have to do with the creation of "complete streets," one of the major reforms advocates are asking for. Streetsblog Network member Design New Haven does a great job of summing up the CDC [...]
http://dc.streetsblog.org/2009/07/30/complete-streets-could-help-america-lose-weight-says-cdc/ Streetsblog Capitol Hill » Complete Streets Could Help America Lose Weight, Says CDC

[...] actions have to do with the creation of "complete streets," one of the major reforms advocates are asking for. Streetsblog Network member Design New Haven does a great job of summing up the CDC [...]
http://sf.streetsblog.org/2009/07/30/complete-streets-could-help-america-lose-weight-says-cdc/ Streetsblog San Francisco » Complete Streets Could Help America Lose Weight, Says CDC

[...] actions have to do with the creation of "complete streets," one of the major reforms advocates are asking for. Streetsblog Network member Design New Haven does a great job of summing up the CDC [...]
http://la.streetsblog.org/2009/07/30/5561/ Streetsblog Los Angeles

[...] actions have to do with the creation of "complete streets," one of the major reforms advocates are asking for. Streetsblog Network member Design New Haven does a great job of summing up the CDC [...]