biking Archives - Transportation For America

Many of the most dangerous states for people walking are planning for more people to die

13 Americans per day were struck and killed while walking from 2008-2017, according to a report released today by our colleagues at the National Complete Streets Coalition. Dangerous by Design 2019 also shows how some of the most dangerous states are, astonishingly, committed to making the problem even worse.

View the rankings and the full report

Download the full report.

Over the last decade (2008 through 2017, the most recent year with data available), drivers struck and killed 49,340 people walking in communities large and small across the U.S. To put that into perspective, it’s the equivalent of a jumbo jet full of people crashing—with no survivors—every month. During a period when fatalities for people inside vehicles went down 6 percent, pedestrian fatalities increased by 35 percent. Since the last version of Dangerous by Design was released two years ago, the problem has only gotten worse: 4 out of 5 states and major metro areas have become more dangerous for people walking.

How are states planning to tackle this problem?

More than a third of all states aren’t planning to do anything at all. 18 states—including 10 of the 20 most dangerous for people walking—planned to actually increase the number of people killed while walking or biking from 2017 to 2018.

New requirements from the Federal Highway Administration require state departments of transportation to set performance targets for traffic fatalities and serious injuries and then monitor their progress over time. Back in 2017, states had to update their safety goals for 2018, which included setting target numbers for deaths and serious injuries among people walking, biking, or using other non-motorized forms of travel.

Did states respond by setting ambitious targets and creating accompanying plans for how they’d spend their share of billions in federal transportation dollars to make their streets safer for everyone? Unfortunately, a closer look at these targets reveals just how low the bar is for safety in many states.

18 states established targets for non-motorized deaths and injuries that are higher than the number of people killed or injured in the most recent year of data reported. With billions in 2018 federal transportation dollars available to them to devote to improving safety, more than a third of all states committed to…doing what they did last year—or worse. 10 of these 18 states are among the top 20 most deadly according to Dangerous by Design 2019.

The only “acceptable” number of deaths on our roadways is zero. We can and must raise the bar by requiring states to set safety targets that reduce rather than increase the number of people killed or seriously injured while walking or biking on our streets, ultimately working toward eliminating all traffic-related deaths and serious injuries. However, to make this vision a reality, we need strong federal policy with binding enforceable requirements that hold states to higher safety standards. Dangerous by Design 2019 helps make this case.

For more information on epidemic of people struck and killed while walking and to see the full rankings of the top 20 most dangerous metro areas and states, view the full Dangerous by Design report.

This content, adapted from Dangerous by Design 2019, was co-authored and edited by T4America staff.

Changing the transportation paradigm, one project selection at a time.

Ringling Bridge in Sarasota, FL. (Image: Rich Schwartz, Flickr)

Thanks to support from the Kresge Foundation, Transportation for America helped several regions around the country take tangible steps toward aligning their spending with their policy goals using performance measures. We asked them about it…here’s what they said.

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”

If that mantra ever needed to be applied anywhere, it’s in the world of transportation investment decision making. The state and regional transportation agencies that make funding decisions often say they want to fund the projects that best align with their community’s goals—such as increasing access to jobs and opportunity, improving health, making more equitable investments, and ensuring a good state of repair, to name a few. But too often, their practices don’t line up with intent. That’s why it is noteworthy that some regions around the country are making real headway to better align their spending with their stated priorities.

In a previous post, we explored this idea of choosing transportation projects that actually match our priorities. But what does it look like in practice to match funding decisions to a goal like economic competitiveness? And how is this process changing the transportation funding paradigm?

From the horse’s mouth

Rather than speak for them, we asked some of the professionals we worked with about how this assistance helped them address the specific transportation goals that their community is focused on. Each community has different goals, and the focus of our work shifted accordingly with each community, but the principle is the same: measure what you want to manage.

Reevaluating the status quo:

Typically, regions prioritize projects using factors like political priorities and geographic distribution, but this approach rarely produces the best set of investments to accomplish a long-term vision with limited funding. By contrast, some of the regions we worked with have established measurable goals and scoring systems to rank potential projects based on those goals. Many common policy priorities like equity and quality of life have traditionally been difficult to measure, so this systematic approach is a game-changer.

“In reviewing our past planning efforts we realized that there was not always a great connection between the projects selected for funding and our long-range plan’s goals. We also had more project requests than funding. Identifying performance measures and targets allowed us to prioritize the projects that would best help achieve our plan’s goals and make the best use of limited resources. T4America helped us refine our scoring process to ensure it was meaningful and performance-based, understood by non-technical stakeholders, and easily implementable by MPO staff.”

– Dylan Mullenix, Assistant Director of the Des Moines Area MPO

“The Lake Charles region is currently updating its long-range metropolitan transportation plan and will soon be selecting priority projects to fund. The Transportation for America team gave us ideas to simplify the measures used in project selection, eliminate duplication, consider the cost-effectiveness of projects, and make our scoring criteria publicly available. These suggestions and examples from other MPOs will allow the region to better prioritize projects based on a clear vision moving forward.”

– Cheri L. Soileau, AICP, Lake Charles MPO Director

Creating equitable and affordable transportation:

Equity was a common thread throughout this work. Many regions consider equity a priority, but have trouble effectively applying it to funding decisions. We helped these regions elevate needed investments in disadvantaged communities to improve access to economic opportunities and essential services. Some regions also wanted to prioritize investments that address community affordability. For example, the Sarasota/Manatee MPO hopes to raise the priority of projects that make it easier to walk, bike, and take transit to food, medical, or education facilities to help reduce the costs associated with accessing those necessities.

“Our partnership with T4A changed the transportation planning conversation in our region by bringing new voices to the table, from health and social service providers to environmental scientists. Using the FHWA performance measures framework, we have gone beyond traffic management and turn lanes to consider affordable housing, access to services for disadvantaged neighborhoods, and advancing best practices. We are confident this will lead to project priorities that consider all modes and that better serve all users.”

– Leigh Holt, Strategic Planning Manager, Sarasota/Manatee MPO

Supporting people who want to walk and bike safely:

Projects that make it easier to walk and bike not only improve the health of residents by providing options for exercise, they also support local economies by contributing to a quality of life that attracts residents and tourists. We helped several regions determine how to use performance measures to elevate the investments that make it easier to walk and bike safely.

“During Transportation for America’s workshop, the team encouraged us to renew our initiatives in active transportation for healthier communities. Our agency had developed a metropolitan bike and pedestrian master plan; however, as a result of the push, we began the process of actually producing every project in that plan. These 57 miles of active transportation improvements will be in place within the next six years! Furthermore, we are now replicating the same award-winning process in a neighboring urban area to further the goal of healthier communities through active transportation across our region.”

– Matt Johns, Executive Director, Rapides Area Planning Commission

Ensuring economic competitiveness:

Many regions measure their economic success by looking at how projects would reduce traffic congestion. But traffic congestion goes up with good economies and down with bad; so while it may be an important transportation priority, congestion reduction is not a good proxy for economic strength. We helped several of the regions determine how to use performance measures to invest in the right projects for the long-term economic vitality of their regions—projects that will help draw a talented workforce, retain residents, and grow a tourist economy.

“The Roanoke Valley Transportation Planning Organization is working to make the region more economically competitive by identifying places where growth is desirable and sustainable because plans for future development enable multimodal connectivity and mobility. The technical assistance provided by T4A helped us better understand performance measures and how we can more directly achieve our transportation and economic development goals through targeted investments.”

– Cristina Finch, Director of Transportation, Roanoke Valley-Alleghany Regional Commission.

These regions are able to make real change:

The six regions we worked with are already leading the way by seeking new ways of doing business. And thanks to Kresge’s support, we were able to introduce them to tools, approaches, and ways of thinking to help them do so. We are excited to see more innovative practices from these regions moving forward.

“The technical assistance provided by the Transportation for America team was more than a typical workshop—it opened the eyes of our local technical experts to a revolutionary way of thinking about transportation planning. We were taught how to better identify what problem we actually wanted to solve in order to avoid jumping to the usual prescribed solutions of cookie-cutter type thinking. In a way, the team provided a deeper validity and appreciation for REAL planning working in concert with engineering, and this is a necessity for better planning in an era when we truly cannot afford to “build our way out” of our problems.”

– Matt Johns, Executive Director, Rapides Area Planning Commission

On National Walking Day, too many Americans are still having to endure unsafe streets

Since we missed recognizing National Walking Day last week while the Complete Streets conference was happening in Nashville, we wanted to come back this week and revisit a T4America post from 2012 looking at what’s actually keeping more people from walking in many of our metro areas.

Originally posted on April, 4 2012.

You may not have known it — its not the most publicized special day on the books — but today is National Walking Day. Some of you may have traded part or all of your drive or transit trip today for a walk to work. But for many, every day is walking day, and it happens on streets with dangerous or inconvenient conditions that no one should have to endure just to walk to school, their job, or the grocery store.

Last Friday, I spent some time driving around the sprawling Atlanta, Georgia metroplex photographing some well-known trouble spots for pedestrian safety. Though some improvements have been made in places, there are still so many unsafe streets, corridors and intersections for pedestrians, finding streets that are dangerous by design is about as easy as blindly putting your finger down on a map.

The Atlanta Regional Commission has helped address some of these problems through their popular and oversubscribed Livable Centers Initiative that gives metro communities small grants to help make a dangerous street safer, improve MARTA access, add new crosswalks or streetscaping, or other small improvements to the built environment that help improve quality of life for residents. And the local group PEDS has had their boots on the ground for years now, working hard to make metro Atlanta more walkable. But we need far more of these kinds of efforts — and similar efforts from others in cities across the country — to make the kinds of improvements we need to save lives and end the 4,000-plus deaths that happen to people walking each year.

Many of these deaths occur simply because the design of a road just hasn’t adapted to the changing needs of all the people who use it.

Consider: at one point, Old National Highway in South Fulton County was probably a sleepy state highway through a relatively unpopulated area on ones way south out of Atlanta. Now, its teeming with retail on both sides of the street just south of Interstate 85. Add in the fact that its a relatively low-income area (read: people more likely to walk or take transit) with apartment complexes on both sides of the main highway and you’ve got a street that no longer meets the needs of everyone who uses it, and certainly not for the people who live there.

Though the first few miles away from Interstate 85 have sidewalks and there are a handful of signalized intersections with crosswalks, sidewalks soon end completely and there are many stretches where there are no safe places to cross for hundreds or thousands of feet — all in an area with MARTA bus stops on both sides of the highway. The sidewalks may end, but the walking doesn’t, as the desire paths through the grass indicate.

Of course, the most well-known road in Atlanta thats dangerous for walking and biking is certainly Buford Highway. This stretch near Clairmont Road is a whopping seven lanes across, with crosswalks often so far apart as to be merely dots on the horizon.

This corridor is lined with more affordable apartments and has also been a popular landing place for Latino and Asian immigrants for years, and many portions of the street are filled with small ethnic shops catering to the local clientele — many of whom are likely to be walking. According to the data in our map, in just the few miles from I-285 south down to 400, 20 pedestrians were killed from 1999-2009. There are stretches with no sidewalks on either side of the street and no safe crosswalks almost as far as the eye can see.

In this picture alone, not only are there no sidewalks but there are nine separate curb cuts where this man could be easily struck by a right-turning car before reaching the next safe crosswalk at the intersection.

Some key improvements have been made on Buford Highway in recent years, though, which have helped to increase safety. Thanks to recent efforts by Dekalb County and the Georgia Department of Transportation, a busy stretch of Buford Highway south of Doraville with high density of retail on both sides of the street received several new signalized intersections as well as new pedestrian-only mid-block crossings that use a special light called a HAWK signal. This is a light that stays dark until a pedestrian pushes a button, activating a light that flashes before turning red for cars. These crossings also include a refuge to shorten crossing distances and give people a safe place to wait while crossing.

And then there’s southern Cobb County, the northern Atlanta suburb where Raquel Nelson was walking when her son was killed and she found herself prosecuted after the fact. Some busy corridors have sidewalks and some don’t — though walking isn’t very pleasant next to seven lanes of traffic — and crosswalks can be interminably far apart.

This photo below bears some similarities to the conditions on the street where Raquel Nelson’s son A.J. was killed, which isn’t too far from here.

Note the bus stop on the other side of the street with a Cobb County bus approaching. See a marked crosswalk anywhere? Perhaps this man is trying to catch the bus? What happens when the bus drops you off and you need to reach a destination across the street? Should we really expect people to walk half a mile out of the frame to find a safer place to cross, and then walk half a mile back?

And some streets around here just have zero accommodation for pedestrians, including a busy street that serves two major universities and the county’s biggest employer (Dobbins AFB/Lockheed) right in the center of the county.

Keep in mind that these pictures represent just one busy American metropolis — there are hundreds more cities and thousands of places with similar conditions that need urgent attention. We have a long way to go to retrofit these streets to help make them safer for everyone that needs to use them. The complete streets provision in the Senates MAP-21 bill would be a step in the right direction, as would be the flexible funding that local governments can use to help address some of these dangerous areas under the Senate bill. (These provisions are a little out of date now. -Ed.)

With 67 percent of all pedestrian fatalities happening on federal-aid roads — many of which that were designed in this unsafe way because of federal design guidelines and standards — theres a clear role for the federal government to play in improving them.

So what would happen in our communities if we started by looking at our map of pedestrian fatalities to see where the worst trouble areas are and devoted a small slice of transportation money into small, tangible improvements like new sidewalks, new crosswalks, and new signals for making walking safer and more convenient? What if we made it a clear priority to make every day National Safe Walking Day?

Wouldn’t we be saving lives immediately? And for a small price?

Coming soon: A new report on how metro areas are building more and better bicycling and walking projects

Metro areas of all sizes across the country are strategizing, developing, and implementing new ways to improve bicycling and walking in their regions. Over the last year, T4America worked with metro areas across the country to collect and document these stories, ideas, and strategies into a guidebook that we’re releasing on December 11.

Join us on December 11th at 12 p.m. EST for a launch webinar where we’ll release Building Healthy and Prosperous Communities: How Metro Areas are Building More and Better Bicycling and Walking Projects and hear from three of the agencies featured in it.

Over the last two years, Transportation for America, in conjunction with the American Public Health Association, has worked with metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) across the country to collect and document stories about how they are planning, funding and building more and better walking and bicycling projects in communities. (Find our previous resources on this topic here and here.)

As the gatekeepers of billions of federal transportation dollars, MPOs have an influential role in expanding and improving options for walking and bicycling. They may establish policies, develop plans, direct funding, and help design transportation projects to allow more people to easily walk, bicycle, or ride in a wheelchair. Doing so can help people get the physical activity they need to be healthy — and healthier residents bring economic benefits for an entire region.

Places that have made biking and walking from place to place a safe, convenient, and enticing choice have produced positive impacts on businesses, jobs, and revenue. When it’s safer and more convenient for people to walk or bicycle as part of their regular routine, more people get the amount of physical activity that science proves they need to reduce their risk of certain chronic diseases.

The following MPOs and scores of others are excelling, but there’s much more that can be done to build the necessary infrastructure to keep people thriving, safe, active, and connected to the places they need to go. The examples in this guidebook can inspire and inform your efforts, help tailor them for your region, and improve upon them to give the residents of your region the bicycling and walking infrastructure they demand and deserve.

The guidebook has detailed profiles of the work of these metropolitan planning agencies:

Atlanta Regional Commission (Atlanta, Georgia)
Broward MPO (Broward County, Florida)
Chattanooga-Hamilton County/North Georgia Transportation Planning Organization (Chattanooga, Tennessee)
Corpus Christi MPO (Corpus Christi,Texas)
Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
Denver Regional Council of Governments (Denver, Colorado)
Mesilla Valley MPO (Las Cruces, New Mexico)
Metro (Portland, Oregon)
Metropolitan Transportation Commission (Bay Area, California)
Nashville Area MPO (Nashville, Tennessee)
Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (Columbus, Ohio)
Puget Sound Regional Council (Seattle, Washington)

During the webinar we’ll hear from three featured MPOs: The Chattanooga TPO will share how they created a new performance measures framework to prioritize multi-modal projects for funding. The Corpus Christi MPO will talk about how they customized a Bicycle Mobility Network through accessibility planning and community engagement. Finally, we’ll hear how Metro in Portland, Oregon encouraged higher rates of active transportation by changing the design of walking and bicycling projects.

Federal program that helps tackle health disparities threatened in ’18 budget

Congress is threatening to eliminate a small yet significant federal program housed within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that helps local communities take concrete steps to prevent someone’s zip code from being the most powerful determinant in their long-term health.

Walking, biking, and access to transit are part of a suite of healthy choices promoted by T4America and our colleagues at the National Complete Streets Coalition. People who walk or bicycle more for transportation are shown to have lower rates of heart disease, diabetes and other conditions that can complicate or shorten lives. And the demand for more opportunities to safely walk and bicycle is at an all-time high, in both heartland towns and urban centers alike.

Scores of communities are eager to find ways to improve the health of their most vulnerable residents — the people most likely to suffer from poor health outcomes — and those less likely to have access to safe streets for walking or biking. They want to know how to steer more of their transportation dollars into projects that will bring significant health benefits and reduce these disparities.

The Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health program (REACH), a small program within the CDC, has helped these communities meet the demand for more active transportation projects, address the wide disparities in health from zip code to zip code, increase access to opportunities, and create a foundation of shared and sustainable prosperity.

REACH is an evidence-based program that directly tackles these health disparities and is the only community health program currently funded at the CDC.

Both the House and Senate Appropriations bills for next year (FY 2018) eliminate funding for this critical program. Please take a moment to send a message to your representatives and urge them to keep it going.

A group of more than 200 diverse organizations — including The National Complete Streets Coalition and Transportation for America — signed a letter urging Congress to provide the program with another $50 million round of funding.

These funds are helping a plethora of communities make healthy living a reality. (We produced a series of case studies that includes some of these communities here.) It equips them to tackle the risk factors for some of the most expensive and burdensome health conditions impacting racial and ethnic groups. Without these funds communities across the country will have an even harder path to reduce disparities like these cited by the CDC:

Non-Hispanic blacks have the highest rate of obesity (44 percent), followed by Mexican Americans (39 percent).
The rate of diagnosed diabetes is 18 percent higher among Asian Americans, 66 percent higher among Hispanic/Latinos, and 77 percent higher among non-Hispanic blacks compared to non-Hispanic whites.
American Indians and Alaskan Natives are 60 percent more likely to be obese than non-Hispanic whites and have the highest prevalence of diabetes, with a rate more than double that of non-Hispanic whites
The incidence rate of cervical cancer is 41% higher among non-Hispanic black women and 44% higher among Hispanic/Latino women compared to non-Hispanic white women.

And as shown by the National Complete Streets Coalition in their last Dangerous by Design report, people of color are significantly overrepresented in pedestrian deaths.

Solving these kinds of pernicious issues doesn’t happen overnight.

But the REACH program is investing directly in local community coalitions with multiple years of awards, providing the time and resources necessary to address the many root causes of racial and ethnic disparities and reverse the upward trend of chronic disease.

Help protect REACH. Congress must continue to fund REACH in FY18 at the same level of investment ($50.95 million) as was provided in FY 2017.

A few of the groups leading the effort have set up an easy page for sending a message here.

Take Action

How are metro areas prioritizing health and building more biking and walking projects?

Though there’s booming demand all across the country to build more projects that can help residents get out and bike or walk — whether for exercise or just for getting around safely from A to B — it can be an uphill battle to do so. How are metro areas upending the conventional wisdom and building more projects that help improve their residents’ health?

How we get around each day shapes our quality of life, especially our health. People who walk or bicycle more for transportation are shown to have lower rates of heart disease, diabetes and other conditions that can complicate or shorten lives. And the demand for more opportunities to safely walk and bicycle is at an all-time high in cities and towns of all sizes across the country.

Communities are responding by planning, funding, and fast-tracking projects to make bicycling, walking, and riding transit safer, more convenient, and more realistic as travel options.

Click to download this new paper

But getting these projects planned, designed and built can be a challenge. How can regions bring more of these projects to fruition?

This new paper, produced with the American Public Health Association, outlines four policy levers MPOs have at their disposal to help increase and improve active transportation projects to meet the demand, decrease health disparities, increase access to opportunities, and strengthen local economies — with specific short real-life stories to go with each.

For the launch of the paper, we had an online discussion with a number of the metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) featured in this paper to hear how they’re successfully prioritizing bicycling and walking projects.

We spent some time exploring the specific policies these MPOs have adopted, and how they’ve implemented them. Catch up with the recording below.

Introducing “Dangerous by Design 2016”

Crossposted from Smart Growth America and the National Complete Streets Coalition.

Dangerous by Design 2016, released today by our colleagues at Smart Growth America and the National Complete Streets Coalition, takes a closer look at the alarming epidemic of pedestrian deaths, which are on the rise after years of declining.

Between 2005 and 2014, a total of 46,149 people were struck and killed by cars while walking. That averages out to about 13 people per day.

Each one of those people was a child, parent, friend, classmate, or neighbor. And these tragedies occurred across the country — in small towns and big cities, in communities on the coast and in the heartland.

The fourth edition of this report being released today again ranks the most dangerous places for people walking by a “Pedestrian Danger Index,” or PDI. It also explores who is most at risk of being struck and killed by a car while walking, including data that looks at pedestrians by age, race, ethnicity, and income.

Explore the online feature to see the full rankings of the 104 largest metro areas in the country and all 50 states, as well as interactive maps of where fatal collisions occurred.

View the data and maps

Join us for the kickoff

Interested in learning more about Dangerous by Design, and what states and metro areas are doing to combat this epidemic? The report authors and other special guests will be talking about this new research during a kickoff webinar today (Tuesday) at 1 pm EST. You are invited.

Register for the event to to learn more about the findings and to hear from the report’s authors, national transportation policy experts, and local advocates about how we can make streets safer by design.

Will Elaine Chao address pedestrian safety?

A confirmation hearing for Elaine Chao, Trump’s nominee for transportation secretary, is scheduled to take place this week, on Wednesday, January 11th on Capitol Hill. We want to make sure pedestrian safety is on her mind.

Tell the Senate Commerce Committee to ask Chao how she plans to address pedestrian safety.

As always, we welcome your reactions, questions, and ideas. Share them on Twitter at the hashtag #DangerousByDesign.

Webinar wrap: How MPOs are prioritizing public health to build prosperous regions

Last week, we had a terrific online discussion detailing how public health professionals are working with regional transportation planners to plan, fund, and support building more state of the art active transportation projects — accompanying the release of Measuring What We Value: Prioritizing Public Health to Build Prosperous Regions.

For this webinar, we were joined by staff from the American Public Health Association, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and metropolitan planning organizations from the regions of Broward County, Sacramento, Greensboro, and Nashville.

Did you miss last week’s webinar or want to see it all again?

Read more about how these four MPOs funded more and better quality bicycling and walking projects in the four new case studies we released last week.
Catch up with the full webinar recording here.
Download a copy of the presentations here (pdf)

Stay tuned for more information targeted at MPO staff, public health professionals and local advocates on how to work with regional transportation planners to plan, fund, and support building more state of the art active transportation projects.

Urban bike trails in cities like Indianapolis, Dallas and Atlanta are proving to have rich economic benefits to city neighborhoods

Affirming a trend seen in other cities, Indianapolis’s eight-mile Cultural Trail has been a boon to the neighborhoods adjacent to it — as well as the city as a whole — increasing property values of homes and businesses and giving residents and tourists a convenient, attractive, unbroken path to walk, bike and move around the city.

Since opening in 2008, the value of properties within a block of Indy’s high-quality biking and walking trail have increased an astonishing 148 percent, according to this recent report on the impacts of the trail. The value of the nearly 1,800 parcels within 500 feet of the trail increased by more than $1.01 billion from 2008 to 2014.

The $62.5 million investment, funded mostly by private or philanthropic donations that leveraged a federal TIGER grant, is an eight-mile landscaped bike and pedestrian pathway through the heart of the city that is, in the words of the New York Times in 2014, an “accessible urban connective tissue — an amoeba of paths shot through with lush greenery and commissioned works of public art.”

Residents and tourists alike have been drawn to the trail, and it’s proven to be not just a quality-of-life asset but an economic one as well, with business and property owners witnessing firsthand the benefits of being close to high-quality infrastructure that makes it safe for almost anyone of any age to safely walk or bike through the heart of the city.

The Cultural Trail is an important cog in the city’s transportation network, which the city hopes to dramatically expand through increased public transportation service in and around the city. It provides an unbroken loop around Indy’s downtown that allows cyclists and walkers of almost any age or ability to safely traverse the city. The trail stitches together neighborhoods and connects to various theatres, hotels, sports venues and shopping areas, among other popular destinations. Spurs reach out into neighborhoods and connect to other city trails, making bike commutes to downtown easier.

A family walking along Indy’s Cultural Trail. http://indyculturaltrail.org/about/

The numbers in this report are eye-opening, but Indy isn’t the only place where investment in ambitious projects to make cities more livable and functional for people have netted sizable economic rewards over the last few years. Dallas and Atlanta have both invested in their own similar in-town, separated, high-quality multipurpose paths to great economic rewards, just to name two.

Some bars and restaurants in Dallas claimed a threefold jump in business since the first day the new Katy Trail opened, centered in Dallas’s Uptown district. In a story last summer, The New York Times described how the Uptown neighborhood changed after the opening of the Katy Trail:

Since 2006, property value in Uptown has climbed nearly 80 percent to $3.4 billion, based on the improvement district’s assessment income. In the early 1990s, it wallowed around $500 million, said Joseph F. Pitchford, senior vice president for development at Crescent Real Estate Equities, based in Dallas. Crescent will begin building a $225 million, 20-story tower this summer that the law firm Gardere Wynne Sewell will anchor.

Dallas added 95,900 jobs in 2013 and is looking to attract young, talented professionals. While the Katy Trail helps, they still have work to do to change their reputation: Dallas was identified as one of the least walkable cities in America by Smart Growth America and George Washington University in their Foot Traffic Ahead report.

In Atlanta, when fully completed, the Beltline will be a 26-mile loop of walking and biking trails (along with transit eventually) in a loop around the city following mostly old railroad right-of-way. The few finished segments are already making a notable difference in property values of homes and businesses that surround it.

Pedestrians and cyclists enjoy the Atlanta BeltLine’s Eastside Trail. http://beltline.org/explore/photos/?setId=72157651531843045

In a 2013 Curbed article, the REMAX realty firm claimed homes near the BeltLine and other city cycling infrastructure that used to stay on the market for 60 to 90 days were now selling within 24 hours. Maura Neill, a realtor who has specialized in the Atlanta market for over 12 years told Curbed, “The new bike lanes are absolutely an attractive selling point, putting Atlanta in the limelight as a progressive city.”

“When people realize the savings of not relying solely on a car, they’re much more inclined to pay a little more now in exchange for saving a lot later,” said Rebecca Serna, executive director of the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition, pointing to some buyers’ willingness to pay upwards of $5,000 extra for a home if it means less traffic and less time spent commuting.

“The old ‘drive to qualify’ [for a mortgage] paradigm is shifting as people forego the family car. Factors like time and money saved are much more valuable than the number of square feet.”

Other cities have also seen a boost in housing prices thanks to nearby bike trails, including Vancouver, which saw 65 percent of realtors featuring new bike paths as a selling point; Pittsburgh, which “ignited commercial and business activity”; and in North Carolina, where property prices increased by $5,000 or more alongside the small Shepherd’s Vineyard greenway in the town of Apex, outside Raleigh, just to name a few of the many recent examples.

The uptick in property values and economic development are often attributed to the preferences of millennials, whom are shown (in our recent survey and others) to have a clear preference for places that provide a range of mobility and transit options, including biking and walking.

With transportation dollars more limited than ever, it’s clear that even relatively small investments in projects like Indy’s Cultural Trail or the Beltline or Katy Trail in Atlanta and Dallas are smart bets to bring significant economic benefits, and also help attract the younger, talented workforce so envied by many top employers.

ICYMI: T4A and SGA Host Federal Policy Webinar; Materials Inside

Yesterday, Smart Growth America and Transportation for America hosted a webinar to review congressional action on the federal surface transportation authorization. If you were able to attend, you will recall that we mentioned how the US Senate is poised to consider the authorization before the full Senate next Tuesday. That continues to be the current timeframe for Senate consideration.

Access the webinar powerpoint here.

As a T4A member, you can access the webinar anytime through this page.

Two action items stemming from that conversation include:

It is highly likely that T4A will be issuing a number of action alerts next week. While we don’t have legislative language on a number of potential amendments, we anticipate movement on issues of local control, freight, TAP, transit funding and TIGER. Member support would be greatly appreciated.
The National Complete Streets Coalition is requesting support to tell FHWA to make more inclusive streets that are designed to be more livable. You can register your comments here: bit.ly/NHSdesign (this weblink is case-sensitive).

Healthy economies need healthy people — Nashville leads the way for other regions

What’s the connection between healthy residents and a healthy bottom line? Why should a local business community care about improving the health of the residents that live there? Representatives from five regions gathered last week in Nashville to learn how providing better transportation infrastructure and building more walkable communities can help improve residents’ health — and boost local economic prosperity and competitiveness.

This post was written by Rochelle Carpenter and Stephen Lee Davis with Transportation for America.

The Nashville Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, responsible for planning and allocating federal transportation dollars in the seven-county Nashville region, has become a nationally recognized leader in prioritizing health when selecting transportation projects.

Getting to that point wasn’t easy, but their hard work to make that shift was kick-started by two related developments: the widespread recognition of a looming health crisis in the least active state in the nation, and the realization that there was pent-up demand among Nashville residents for healthier options to get around —whether safer streets with new sidewalks, trails, transit, or bikeshare.

One economic connection is obvious: employers are often the ones paying a large share of healthcare costs for employees. If those employees are living in a place where it’s challenging to get or stay healthy because of factors inherent to the built environment, that’s a cost that those companies have to bear. If those costs become a known challenge within the business community, it presents a major roadblock when recruiting new employers or trying to retain them.

Whether by continuing to make ambitious plans to bring new bus rapid transit to the city, building new projects that make it easier to walk or bike, or through incorporating health considerations into their process for funding transportation projects, Nashville is trying to stay ahead of their growth challenges, remain competitive for new talent and ensure that their residents can be healthy — all helping to boost the bottom line for the region. It’s a region experiencing some of the fastest job growth in the country, but they know they can’t rest on their laurels.

We’ll be publishing an in-depth profile of how Nashville began to integrate health considerations into their planning efforts sometime in the next few weeks. Watch this space, and sign up for our emails to be notified if you haven’t already. –Ed.

To learn from Nashville’s experiences, T4America and the Nashville MPO — through an ongoing grant from the Kresge Foundation — brought civic leaders and agency staff from Seattle, San Diego, Detroit and Portland, OR, to the Music City last week; sharing best practices and hoping to build on what the others have done.

MPO staff and advocates from Nashville, San Diego, Detroit, Portland and Seattle along with Nolensville staff and leadership during last week’s gathering in Nashville.

Meeting in the Bridge Building overlooking downtown Nashville and the Cumberland River, the group of leaders from across the country saw the rapid changes made in the downtown core to improve streetscapes and public spaces to create vibrant, welcoming places for the many families, professionals and visitors.

While Nashville proper is making significant strides, other communities around the MPO’s seven-county region are also eager to expand their options for walking, bicycling and transit.

The delegation visited the rapidly growing town of Nolensville (pop. 8,000) on the south side of the region.

Nolensville Mayor Jimmy Alexander led Transportation Choices Coalition Executive Director Rob Johnson, Upstream Public Health Policy Manager Heidi Guenin and Transportation for America Field Organizer Chris Rall along Nolensville Road. The town was recently awarded half a million dollars to construct a greenway parallel to Nolensville Road, providing a new safe and convenient route between popular destinations.

Nolensville Mayor Jimmy Alexander described the town’s ambitious goal that local leaders see as critical for their local economy and competitive advantage. “We want to make it possible for every student in Nolensville to be able to walk to school,” he told us. The town has passionately sought and secured federal, state and local funding for multi-use paths, sidewalks and greenways that will eventually link the community’s most-visited destinations: residential neighborhoods, the historic district and commercial town center, schools, Nolensville Ball Park and the Williamson County Recreation Center.

Nolensville’s early leadership in clamoring for more of the infrastructure that makes it easier to safely get around on foot or bike — and the Nashville MPO’s response in providing technical assistance, policy and funding — will help them reach their goal in just a few years time.

The tour of new, energetic thinking on transportation and community development in the area would not be complete without a visit to Casa Azafrán, a community center and home to several nonprofits that serve the thousands of recent immigrants and refugees that are settling in Nashville and helping shape its future.

Renata Soto, Executive Director of Conexión Américas, led the delegation on a tour of Casa Azafrán, including a day care center, culinary incubator, health clinic and classrooms. But since moving to their new location on busy Nolensville Pike in south Nashville two years ago, Soto has witnessed first hand the challenges of poor transportation infrastructure. She took it upon herself to get the city to install the city’s first bilingual crosswalk to allow clients and visitors to safely cross busy Nolensville Pike while welcoming non-English speakers.

During a visit to Casa Azafrán, a community center and home to nonprofits serving New Americans, Renata Soto explains the new bilingual crosswalk installed to make it safer to get to work, the bus stop and several restaurants on both sides of busy Nolensville Pike.

The signs on the new bilingual crosswalk on busy Nolensville Pike.

The promise of a new rapid bus line coming later in the year will help, but challenges remain. “There are so many high school students who could use our facilities,” Soto explained. “But they can’t get here — they’re so close, but so far away.”

This gathering last week in Middle Tennessee offered inspiration, new information and a meeting of the minds to generate new ideas and discuss how to overcome political and technical challenges in our path. Stay tuned as we report more from each of these regions over the coming months.

Its National Walking Day, but too many people will have to walk unsafe streets

The Atlanta Regional Commission has helped address some of these problems through their popular and oversubscribed Livable Centers Initiative that gives metro communities small grants to help make a dangerous street safer, improve MARTA access, add new crosswalks or streetscaping, or other small improvements to the built environment that help improve quality of life for residents. And T4 America partner PEDS has had their boots on the ground for years now, working hard to make metro Atlanta more walkable. But we need far more of these kinds of efforts — and similar efforts from others in cities across the country — to make the kinds of improvements we need to save lives and end the 4,000-plus deaths that happen to people walking each year.

Many of these deaths occur simply because the design of a road just hasn’t adapted to the changing needs of all the people who use it.

This photo below bears some similarities to the conditions on the street where Raquel Nelsons son A.J. was killed, which isn’t too far from here.

Wouldn’t we be saving lives immediately? And for a small price?

New report and map chronicles the visceral reality of 47,000 preventable pedestrian deaths

The 2011 edition of our pedestrian safety report is out today, looking back on the 47,000 people that were killed and 688,000 injured while walking our nation’s streets in the ten years from 2000-2009. Dangerous by Design 2011 examines the problem and several solutions for the epidemic of preventable deaths that far too many have simply accepted as matter of course.

This edition of our national report, along with data and a report or factsheet for all 50 states, comes with a powerful visual: this year, we’ve taken the pedestrian fatalities from 2001 to 2009 that have location data (all but about 5 percent) and plotted them on an interactive map, allowing you to take a look at the streets and roads near you to see how safe or unsafe they may be. Test it out.

https://t4america.org/resources/dangerousbydesign2011/map/

Type an address and once the map draws, click on any point to see the available information about the victim, the date, the location, the street type and even what the road looks like via Google Street View. Here’s a sample from Orlando, rated the #1 most dangerous metro area in the country.

The visual is striking. Shown on a map like this, it’s shockingly easy to pick out the busy arterial roads where fatalities are strung out in a tidy little line following the path of the road. Nationally speaking, the majority of these deaths occurred along these “arterial” roadways that are dangerous by design — streets engineered for speeding traffic with little or no provision for people on foot, in wheelchairs or on bicycles.

Our federal tax dollars actually go to build these streets that are designed to be perilous to children, older adults and everyone else. And yet, right now, some in Congress are considering the total elimination of funding for projects to make it safer to walk and bicycle.

The highways-only lobby insists that pedestrian safety is a “frill” and a local responsibility. But 67 percent of these fatalities over the last 10 years occurred on federal-aid roads — roads eligible to receive federal funding or with federal guidelines or oversight for their design.

That’s right: Federal programs have encouraged state departments of transportation to prioritize speeding traffic over the safety of people in our neighborhoods and shopping districts. Shouldn’t our tax dollars be used to build streets that are safe for all users, and not deadly for those on foot?

The irony is that fixing these conditions is relatively cheap: Existing funds for that purpose — now targeted for elimination — amount to less than 1.5 percent of the current federal transportation outlay. A policy of giving federal support only to “complete streets” that are designed for the safety of people on foot or bicycle as well as in cars would cost next to nothing.

Tell Congress: it’s no time to start cutting funding keeps pedestrians safe.

UPDATE: Within hours of the report’s release, Senator Tom Harkin and eleven co-sponsors formally introduced the Complete Streets Act of 2011, which mirrors its House counterpart — sponsored by Republican Steve LaTourette and Democrat Doris Matsui — in calling for streets that are safe and accessible for all users, whether on foot, in a wheelchair, on a bike or using public transit. The Iowa Democrat, who has introduced similar legislation in the past, mentioned the Dangerous by Design report in his statement this afternoon.

National Geographic on Dangerous by Design

We mentioned this on Twitter when the issue came out back in July, but National Geographic had a nice one-page feature on Dangerous by Design, our study from 2009 ranking metro areas on their relative danger to those on foot and bike, focusing on Florida’s overall risk based on having 4 of the top 10 most dangerous metros. In the last 15 years, more than 76,000 Americans have been killed while crossing or walking along a street in their community, and it’s high time that more attention was paid to this preventable loss of life that we far too often ignore or simple believe to be inevitable.

Click the image to download a PDF of the one-page article, and while you’re at it you could just go ahead and subscribe to one of our country’s best magazines for only 15 bucks.

Helping kids get active and healthy by “keeping them moving”

Toks Nashville Originally uploaded by Transportation for America

Adetokunbo Omishakin, the Director of Healthy Living Initiatives for the City of Nashville, Tennessee, explained the barriers facing children and parents he met in parts of E. Nashville who want to walk or bike outside — but find their neighborhoods not only lacking sidewalks or bike lanes, but often facing crime that can keep them indoors.

A healthier transportation system for America’s kids requires change in federal policy. But change will remain out of our grasp absent a sense of urgency from the everyday people on the ground.

The need for a meeting point between policymakers in Washington and citizens in their neighborhoods was evident in today’s roundtable on childhood obesity, titled “Keeping Kids Moving,” sponsored by Transportation for America, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center to Prevent Childhood Obesity, The Convergence Partnership and PolicyLink.

We’re facing an epidemic of childhood obesity and poor health, and as a few people pointed out, this could very well be a generation of children who live shorter, less healthy lives than their parents if we don’t act now to change things.

The shape and structure of streets, sidewalks and the ability to safely use them has an enormous impact on whether children become overweight or obese. Kids get more physical activity and lead healthier lives when they can bike and walk to school, play in local parks and reach recreational opportunities with ease. Among American children between the ages of 10 and 17, 32 percent are overweight or obese, and many are at risk for more serious conditions like type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke. Obesity rates are disproportionately high among low-income and minority children.

In search of a solution, many routes invariably lead to transportation policy.

During the panel, several federal officials stressed the need for partnerships that cross departments and jurisdictions, with Roy Kienitz, undersecretary for policy at the Department of Transportation quipping, “transportation is too important to be left to transportation professionals.” Kienitz also emphasized the need for Americans to speak up and utilize the democratic process, noting that “the distance between the top [at DOT] and that sidewalk on your street is vast.”

Chip Johnson, mayor of Hernando, Mississippi, knows just how much of a difference one repair can make. As part of a broader push to repair his town’s streets, Johnson oversaw the pouring of concrete for a new sidewalk right outside his office window. On the old, cracked sidewalk, Johnson used to see a handful of pedestrians every morning, but he saw dozens more walking by once the improvements were completed.

“People want to exercise,” said Johnson, a Republican first elected mayor in 2005, adding that it’s up to officials like him to provide them the chance to do it.

keepkidsmoving2 Originally uploaded by Transportation for America

While people like Undersecretary Kienitz, Special Assistant to the President Martha Coven and others are moving the levers where they can in Washington, local officials like Johnson are stepping up and refusing to wait, behavior encouraged by the federal officials who were present.

Nashville Mayor Karl Dean didn’t wait for Washington. He made safe and accessible streets for all users a top priority and hired a director of healthy living initiatives — Adetonkunbo Omishakin, also a panel participant — to help make it happen in Nashville. Child wellness advocate Julia Lopez, herself a teenager, didn’t wait either. Along with being an instigator of change on the ground around her home of southern California, she has traveled the country to bring a youth perspective to the obesity challenge, calling on elected officials to step up and help make healthy transportation the norm, not the exception.

It’s clear that these advocates on the ground and policymakers at the top can meet in the middle to make real change, but it will take continued pressure on Congress from both ends to get the job done.

Dozens of bicyclists ride to USDOT Friday to tell Secretary LaHood “thanks”

Transportation for America was proud to co-author and circulate a letter thanking Secretary Ray LaHood for The U.S. Department of Transportation’s recent policy statement elevating walking and biking in national policy, “giving bicycles and pedestrians a seat at the transportation table,” as the Secretary put it on his blog this morning.

Last Friday, several of us at T4 took that appreciation a step further — or, several pedals further — by cycling with a handful of national partners, our local partners from the Washington Area Bicyclists Association, and about 50 local bicyclists to the DOT Headquarters across town to thank the Secretary in person.

The ride from Freedom Plaza at 14th and Pennsylvania in Northwest DC to the DOT building near the Southwest waterfront district took about 25 minutes. Most of the ride was taken on bike lanes, a number of which are relatively new, including new separated lanes right in the center of America’s main street, Pennsylvania Avenue.

Watch and share this video from Friday’s ride that we put together:

LaHood was on hand to receive our large bicycling posse, a group which collectively represented more than 200 organizations from every state in America. Lilly Shoup spoke on behalf of T4 America and was joined by Barbara McCann from the National Complete Streets Coalition, Margo Pedroso from the Safe Routes to School National Partnership and Randy Neufield of America Bikes, who joked to LaHood: “it’s not surprising that people who ride bikes like your new policy.”

The Washington Area Bicyclists Association, one of signatories on the letter and a local T4 partner, presented LaHood with a thank you poster signed by hundreds of DC-area bicyclists at Bike to Work Day.

Making our streets safer and more accessible for bicyclists and pedestrians of all ages and abilities is serious business to LaHood, a former Republican Congressman from Peoria, Illinois who cannot be accused of losing touch with mainstream Americans. LaHood goes home often and can be seen on weekends biking with his wife or grandchildren on converted rails-to-trails in both Illinois and Washington.

“You really do great honor to the people at DOT,” LaHood said, intentionally turning his back on the cameras for a few minutes to speak directly to the bicyclists gathered behind him. “What you have done is begin to change some attitudes on Capitol Hill.”

LaHood and to-be-named DC Bikeshare bike Originally uploaded by Transportation for America

The Secretary is right about that. Ohio Congressman Steve LaTourette, for instance, went from questioning whether LaHood’s policy statement on bicycle and pedestrian options was the product of drug use at USDOT to backpedaling with a pro-cycling message on his website actively endorsing the idea. LaTourette heard from his constituents, who liked the bike paths he bad been bringing back to the district over the years, and he listened.

Secretary LaHood was clear about that point: this change in policy is a reflection of what Americans are demanding, a theme which he returned to time and time again in his remarks.

The Secretary also knows, as do many of our partners, that we won’t make lasting progress on increasing walking and biking options without a comprehensive, forward-thinking reauthorization of our surface transportation law. In this crucial six-year bill, we can put real resources into projects that get kids walking to school safely, families biking together on the weekends, short trips being made by foot or bike, and everyone able to live a more active and healthy life.

LaHood was very gracious, saying this morning that our visit was a “great way to start the summer,” and we couldn’t agree more.

Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” report says walking and biking key to healthier kids

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

Earlier this month, we highlighted two reports on the integral link between health and transportation. First Lady Michelle Obama’s recent Let’s Move report on childhood obesity goes one step further — endorsing a new surface transportation bill that encourages more walking and biking.

Noting the pivotal impact transportation options and the built environment have on health and physical activity, Transportation for America encouraged First Lady Obama to include the built environment in the final product. We are gratified that the task force did just that.

The full White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity report contains five components: Early Childhood; Empowering Parents and Caregivers; Healthy Food in Schools; Access to Healthy, Affordable Food; and Increasing Physical Activity. Our interest is primarily in the last section, which has a section on the built environment. According to the report:

How communities are designed and function can promote—or inhibit—physical activity for children and adults. The built environment consists of all man-made structures, including transportation infrastructure, schools, office buildings, housing, and parks. Children’s ability to be physically active in their community depends on whether the community is safe and walkable, with good sidewalks and reasonable distances between destinations.

The report notes that several studies have already attributed obesity and health problems to aspects of our current built environment, such as sprawling subdivisions and lack of places to walk. It makes intuitive sense too. When we live further and further from where we work, where we go for recreation, where we go to school or where we shop, it makes us all the more reliant on automobiles, especially in the absence of viable alternatives. In urban areas, one-fifth of all automobile trips are one mile or less. These distances could easily be walked or biked with the proper infrastructure in place, as the report notes.

To that end, the task force lends an unequivocal endorsement to “active transportation.” Improving pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure is one place they suggest we start, as is the continuation and expansion of the Safe Routes to Schools program, currently funded through the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Active transport refers to approaches that encourage individuals to actively travel between their destinations throughout the day, such as by biking or walking. Children who walk or bike to school report being more physically active, including engaging in more moderate to vigorous physical activity, than those who travel by car, bus, or train.

The First Lady’s recommendations also embrace an exciting new way of linking health to the built environment in the form of Health Impact Assessments (HIAs). Many communities are already embracing this approach, which evaluates whether a new project helps or hinders public health.

The built environment section’s key benchmark: increase by 50 percent by 2015 the percentage of children between the ages of 5 and 18 who walk or bike to school. That’s a goal we can all get behind, and one Congress ought to remember as the new surface transportation bill progresses.

Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign a positive step, but must emphasize transportation voices

In February, First Lady Michelle Obama announced her exciting “Let’s Move” campaign and the goal of seriously confronting childhood obesity in the United States within a generation. Now, the campaign – more formally known as the Presidential Task Force on Childhood Obesity – is getting to work on an action plan to influence federal policy.

This is a great start, but there’s an omission: the task force has not emphasized the potential role for the U.S. Department of Transportation. The link between physical activity and the built environment is well established – transportation practices strongly influence physical activity and health outcomes for Americans of all ages.

An active living approach to physical activity incorporates walking and bicycling into everyday activities. Forty years ago, more than half of children walked and bicycled to school, contributing to exercise and good health. Today, less than 15 percent of children walk or bike school, with the rest ferried by school buses or car. Children who have access to safe, convenient and ample walking and bicycling opportunities in their community develop active transportation habits that can last a lifetime.

Michelle Obama has been a positive role model for children and a leader in promoting healthy habits. Let’s make sure the influence of transportation and the built environment are a part of the Let’s Move effort. More walking and biking = healthier kids.

You can see Transportation for America’s comments on the First Lady’s task force here.

U.S. Transportation Department makes good on promise to ensure our streets are made safer

Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood issued a exciting new directive yesterday that officially shows DOT’s support for improving safety for walking and bicycling and the importance of integrating them into transportation systems — treating them as equal modes of transportation.

Last fall we released a report chronicling the tragedy of 76,000 preventable pedestrian deaths over the last 15 years. “Dangerous by Design” took a hard look at our often unsafe streets that are engineered for speeding traffic with little or no provision for people on foot, in wheelchairs or on a bicycle.

DSC_0376 Originally uploaded by Transportation for America

When that report was released, we asked supporters like you across the country to sign a petition to Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood asking him to support Complete Streets at DOT, and more than 4,100 of you responded. We took that petition directly to Secretary Lahood back in November of 2008, and afterward, he told T4 America, “the right of way “belongs to pedestrians and bicyclists as well. The DOT Safety Council is going to look at this report and work with advocacy groups to ensure our streets are as safe as possible.”

Yesterday, Secretary Lahood and DOT responded by turning his words to us from November into official DOT policy with the release of a DOT “policy statement.”

The DOT policy is to incorporate safe and convenient walking and bicycling facilities into transportation projects. Every transportation agency, including DOT, has the responsibility to improve conditions and opportunities for walking and bicycling and to integrate walking and bicycling into their transportation systems. Because of the numerous individual and community benefits that walking and bicycling provide — including health, safety, environmental, transportation, and quality of life — transportation agencies are encouraged to go beyond minimum standards to provide safe and convenient facilities for these modes.

Or as he described it more simply on his Fastlane blog yesterday, “This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized.”

We applaud the Secretary’s work on this issue and are especially thankful for the thousands of you who wrote a letter to Congress or signed our petition to Sec. Lahood urging him to use all the powers at DOT’s disposal to make safe, complete streets the norm all across America. Your voices were heard, and policy has changed.

“This is an issue that has been ignored far too long, even as thousands have died or been injured unnecessarily just by doing something as simple as trying to cross the street,” said T4 America director James Corless.

“We thank Secretary Lahood for his leadership at DOT and for elevating this urgent issue to the level of prominence that it deserves. Americans deserve have a safe route for walking to the store, walking their kids to school, or walking to the bus stop at the end of their block to get to work. Taking these simple steps to consider the needs of everyone who uses a street — bicyclist, pedestrian, or wheelchair user — is exactly what we were hoping for when we took our message into Secretary Lahood’s office last November. It can help us stay healthier by giving us one more option for travel, and Secretary Lahood is spot-on when he says that it’s a key part of making livable neighborhoods.”

This certainly doesn’t mean that the issue is over. As Barbara McCann with the National Complete Streets Coalition reminds us, there is still no official federal requirement for complete streets on projects the feds spend money on. And only a fraction of states, cities, and towns have rules on the books requiring them to ensure the safety of all users when they build or retrofit a street or road.

DOT is saying all the right things in this statement, but they need the legislative authority and money from Congress to line up with their excellent intentions.

So we’ve taken a first step. A big, important leap into a safer world for everyone who uses our streets. But there is more left to do.

Help us send a message to Secretary LaHood and the USDOT

As our new Dangerous by Design report illustrates, pedestrian safety is a matter of life or death for thousands of Americans each year. With a loss of life equivalent to a jumbo jet going down roughly each month, it is a tragedy that simply does not get enough attention at any level of government. Tragic, because these are preventable deaths, largely on roads that are not safe for walking or biking.

As a follow-up on the release of the report, Transportation for America is working to arrange a meeting with U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, perhaps as soon as next week. At this meeting, we plan to deliver the message from our hundreds of partner organizations and thousands of supporters across the country that safer streets must be a priority!

Sign our petition today and help us send a strong message to the USDOT!

Secretary LaHood has already demonstrated a strong interest in safety with a distracted driving initiative and the creation of a new Safety Council, and we have praised his vocal commitment to livability in our towns and communities. Because the Department of Transportation holds the purse strings, if Secretary LaHood adds Complete Streets to his list of safety priorities, we can ensure that every road project facilitates safe travel for everyone — including vulnerable pedestrians.

So if you have not yet signed the petition, go and sign it now so we can take an enormous stack with names from across the country to Secretary LaHood soon. This is our chance to make a big impression and to let him and the DOT know how many of you care about making our streets safer for everyone.

If you have signed the petition already, be sure to post it to Twitter or Facebook with the links below, or tell a friend about it.

Post about this action on Twitter!

Post a link to your Facebook profile