pedestrians Archives - Transportation For America

Why we need to prioritize safety over speed

Principle #1: Safety over speed. Any serious effort to reduce deaths on our streets and roads requires slower speeds. Federal funding should require approaches and street designs that put safety first. Cartoon of the grim reaper tipping the scales towards pedestrian deaths while holding a speed limit: 55 sign.

Our roads have never been deadlier for people walking, biking, and rolling and the federal government and state DOTs are not doing enough. If we want to fix this, we have to acknowledge the fact that our roads are dangerous and finally make safety a real priority for road design, not just a sound bite.

Transportation in this country is fundamentally broken, creating a dangerous environment for everyone who uses it but especially for those outside of vehicles. The way we’ve built our roadways has transformed what should be easy trips into potentially deadly journeys. Though our cars have more safety features than ever—cameras, lane keep assist, automatic braking—those advancements have only served to protect people within vehicles. They didn’t save any of the 7,522 people killed while walking in 2022. In fact, as cars become safer for people inside the vehicle, they have gotten even larger and more deadly for people outside of them.

The fact of the matter is that fast-moving vehicles present a danger to people walking. We can’t address this danger if we are unwilling to commit to safer speeds.

We can’t do it all

The policies and practices that inform the design of our roadways often serve one primary goal: to move as many cars as possible, as quickly as possible. That negates the experience of everyone walking, biking, and rolling. Yet, if you asked the same people designing our roadways and dictating these policies whether safety is their top priority, they would absolutely say yes. Our approach to road design, reinforced by federal guidance and manuals, continually tries to juggle both speed and safety, when these two goals are fundamentally opposed.

When we try to prioritize both safety and speed, drivers end up receiving competing messages. Current roadway design requires people to drive perfectly while creating an environment that incentivizes risky behavior such as speeding. Safe roadways don’t ask people to slow down. They are designed so that safe speeds are the most intuitive option.

Less talk, more action

USDOT and other agencies have called for safer streets, but federal funding and policies haven’t led to results. This can be attributed to a variety of factors, including the relatively small amount of money set aside to specifically address safety compared to the much larger amount of money going to build even more dangerous roads.

State departments of transportation are allowed to set safety goals where more people die every year, knowing they will get more funding regardless. Meaningless “safety” targets allow governments to point their fingers and say they’re working on it while building even more deadly roads. The danger is often not addressed until multiple people get hurt. It’s no surprise that the majority of pedestrian deaths occur on federally funded, high-speed state roads.

There are not enough policies to support environments where safe mobility is available for all modes. The Surgeon General called to promote walking and walkable communities and to create a built environment that allows for human connection. The USDOT’s supposed top priority is safety and the Federal Highway Administration has a long-term goal of zero roadway deaths. But there’s no follow through on these statements. We want people to go on walks, and kids to play outside, and for there to be less deaths on the road, but our policies and tax dollars continue to primarily support projects that overlook non-vehicular traffic—at the expense of everyone else. Our transportation system is built on a series of hypocrisies.

If we want a system that moves people without killing them, we need to start putting our money where our mouths are. We need policies that put safety first, placing everyone’s well-being at the center of our roadway design.

It’s Safety Over Speed Week

Click below to access more content related to our first principle for infrastructure investment, Design for safety over speed. Find all three of our principles here.

Three ways quick builds can speed up safety

It will take years to unwind decades of dangerous street designs that have helped contribute to a 40-year high in pedestrian deaths, but quick-build demonstration projects can make a concrete difference overnight. Every state, county, and city that wants to prioritize safety first should be deploying them.
Why do most pedestrian deaths happen on state-owned roads?

Ask anyone at a state DOT, and they’ll tell you that safety is their top priority. Despite these good intentions, our streets keep getting more deadly. To reverse a decades-long trend of steadily increasing pedestrian deaths, state DOTs and federal leaders will need to fundamentally shift their approach away from speed.
Why we need to prioritize safety over speed

Our roads have never been deadlier for people walking, biking, and rolling and the federal government and state DOTs are not doing enough. If we want to fix this, we have to acknowledge the fact that our roads are dangerous and finally make safety a real priority for road design, not just a sound bite.

Greenville, SC: Out with the cars, in with the people

Leaders and residents in Greenville, South Carolina had been working for decades to transform their neglected, denuded downtown into a walkable, dynamic place. But the most significant catalyst was the removal of a highway bridge through downtown and the installation of a beautiful pedestrian bridge in 2004, creating a popular new attraction for people and restoring the city’s relationship to the river that birthed it.

History and context

Greenville, SC emerged from World War II as a thriving mill town. In the 1950s, this prosperity drove development into the suburbs, replacing the residential neighborhoods downtown with department stores and restaurants. While cars were becoming the primary mode of transportation, people continued to return to walkable Main Street, the hub of retail and social life. Many consider this decade to be the economic heyday of Greenville.

The 1960s brought changes to Greenville, similar to many cities across the United States. Increased sprawl, fueled by nearly free federal money for new highways, drove demand for highway access, and decision makers didn’t think twice about displacing residents and businesses to build infrastructure. Following the conventional wisdom of the day, and plenty of assistance from the South Carolina DOT, Greenville was transformed.

In 1960, the city built the Camperdown Way Bridge, a four-lane highway overpass, across the polluted Reedy River and Falls, the very spot where the earliest settlers gathered and eventually founded the city. Located in the West End section of the city (though technically positioned on the southern end of Main Street), the Camperdown Way Bridge turned this once-warehouse district into “a place you drove through…nothing but derelicts and dilapidated buildings.”¹

Camperdown Bridge over Reedy River, with car travel — *The Camperdown Bridge. (2000). Photo courtesy of Greenville Online.*

Saving Main Street

In 1968, the Greenville downtown development plan proposed a redesign of Main Street to create “a pedestrian friendly environment” in the name of economic revitalization. Max Heller, the mayor of Greenville from 1971-79, was determined to bring this plan to fruition. Fighting upstream against the prevailing wisdom of the day when it came to accommodating vehicles at all costs, Heller’s vision of Main Street included a lane reduction (four-lanes to two-lanes), angled parking, street trees, lighting, and widened sidewalks suitable for outdoor dining. His government formed public-private partnerships to maximize success implementing the 1968 plan, and downtown began to flourish. While Heller’s continued influence fostered the extension of Main Street into the West End (1981), the neighborhood lagged behind, continuing to struggle for two more decades.

*Main Street Greenville, circa early-1970s. Photo courtesy of The City of Greenville.*

*Main Street Greenville, circa 1980. Photo courtesy of The City of Greenville.*

Restoring the city’s relationship to the river that birthed it

Throughout Greenville’s infrastructure transitions, the Carolina Foothills Garden Club was working on a transition of its own: giving pedestrians, not cars, priority access to the Reedy River and Falls Park and in doing so, restoring the history of the city. But realizing the full fruit of their effort would take decades.

The Club, with support from the City and Furman University, reclaimed the land in 1967. Although still hidden under the unsightly Camperdown Way Bridge, the park began to re-emerge in the 1970s. The shutdown of the mills together with the Clean Water Act (1972) resulted in a much cleaner Reedy River. The following year, 1973, the park was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. This was just the beginning.

In the 1980s, a group of performing artists set their sights on replacing Greenville’s last industrial complex with a center for the arts. The Peace Center, opened in 1990 on the south end of Main Street, is seen as the link between Greenville’s natural resources and Main Street. Its success inspired the Duke Power Company to fund infrastructure upgrades, carrying the feel of Main Street to the West End. Today, a footpath connects Falls Park, the Peace Center, and the West End.

Efforts to tear down the Camperdown Way Bridge began in earnest during the 1990s. The Greenville Central Area Partnership (GCAP) funded a study of the bridge in 1989, with a clear finding that the bridge “needed to come down. It blocked views of the majestic falls…. It divided the area. It made any potential growth moot.”²

This was quickly followed by a city-funded feasibility study in 1990 with outcomes focused on the chaos that would certainly ensue if the bridge was removed, the exorbitant cost to drivers for fuel (due to rerouting)—not to mention the embarrassment of removing perfectly good bridge paid for by the state. In spite of the latter findings, an independent task force recommended removing the bridge in 1991. But there was still a long road ahead.

Replacing a highway bridge with a people bridge

In 1995, Knox White was elected mayor of Greenville (1995-present). A former city council member, White was a longtime advocate for removing the Camperdown Way Bridge. He immediately began using his new position to lobby for removal. Together with his ally in the arts, Virginia Ulderick, White gained support from the governor by showing him the falls on a site visit to the future home of the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities. The opening of the school (1999) clinched the turnaround for the West End, bringing foot traffic back to the area and strengthening the call to remove the unsightly obstacle standing in the way of resurgence. White next welcomed the head of the state Department of Transportation to visit the school and the park, in an effort to convince the state to give the bridge to the city. Then a state senator. Finally, he began to gain ground.

Even following another traffic study (1998) calling for removal of the bridge, there was still dissent. Naysayers were more interested in roads being fixed, traffic increasing, and any risk of stifling development in the West End just as it was getting going. White recognized the need for a “story,” something beyond tearing down a bridge, something that looked ahead, to the future of Greenville. He found exactly that in the decades-old vision of the Garden Club: a pedestrian bridge over the falls. In 2000, the Camperdown Way bridge became part of the Greenville road system. Greenville published the Reedy River Corridor Master Plan, funded through hospitality tax money, and set about the process of removing the Camperdown Bridge, restoring access to the river, and making the once-hidden falls a showpiece attraction once more.

Within five years, the Camperdown Bridge came down (2002) and the Liberty Bridge opened (2004), funded through the city council budget. Foot traffic replaced vehicle traffic. Liberty Bridge quickly became known as an architectural and engineering marvel, meant to emphasize the livable, walkable beauty of Greenville.

Falls Park, Greenville, SC (2023). Credit: City of Greenville, Parks, Recreation & Tourism.

Today Greenville, South Carolina is alive with pedestrians. What began with Max Heller’s vision for a walkable Main Street grew to include the beauty of Falls Park. The West End of Greenville is now a thriving mixed-use residential neighborhood, known for its artistic community and proximity to nature. A network of paved trails extends through multiple parks, over Liberty Bridge, around the city, and beyond. While the city is still ringed by plenty of other highways, including another highway viaduct through the heart of the city, downtown Greenville is now a thriving, walkable urban center.

Lessons for Community Connectors

Greenville demonstrates a few impactful lessons for future reconnecting communities projects.

First, leadership and advocacy from the local government can be the driving force of change. Max Heller and Knox White recognized and fought for the potential they saw in Greenville. They used the power of their positions to change the direction of the community, resulting in economic and cultural success.

Second, partnerships go a long way in achieving a vision. The buy-in of public companies helped initiate the redevelopment of Main Street. Their combined vision and advocacy uncovered the natural beauty for which Greenville is now known. Artists also took part in the collaborative work of connecting nature, downtown, and history.

Third, attractions accessible to both visitors and residents foster success. Paved walking paths connect Falls Park and the Peace Center to each other, to the West End, and to Main Street. In a single walk or bike ride you can be in nature, experience art, dine in a local restaurant, and return to your home or a hotel.

Finally, in the words of Knox White, “Find your waterfall!!!” Find what is distinct, what makes your city unique, what features create this “place.” That is the first challenge. Only then can you draw in residents and tourists—who will not just live, work, shop, and dine, but will love this beautiful, walkable, historical (yet innovative), locale.

Urban areas, including but not limited to city centers, grow stronger through investments in walkability (and transit). Urban walkability creates a livable, connected community. Foot Traffic Ahead outlines this concept, using the top 35 largest metropolitan areas as examples. From Greenville, as well as Foot Traffic Ahead, cities can determine which aspects of their predecessors’ paths apply to their own future connected communities.

Community Connectors: tools for advocates

You may be fighting against a freeway expansion. You may be trying to advance a Reconnecting Communities project to remove an old highway. You might be just trying to make wide, dangerous arterial roads a little safer for people to cross. This Community Connectors portal explains common terms, decodes the processes, clarifies the important actors, and inspires with helpful real-world stories.

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.

Update on Raquel Nelson: petition delivered to Cobb County

UPDATE below. More than 5,200 of you signed our petition to push for freedom for the Atlanta mother who was charged in her son’s death when he was killed by a hit-and-run driver while crossing a street in front of their apartment complex. Raquel Nelson is due back in court next week, but we wanted to let you know — especially those of you who signed that petition — that we were able to deliver that petition to the Cobb County Solicitor’s Office a few weeks ago.

With the help of a terrific partner group in Atlanta called PEDS, we had the petition delivered to the Solicitor’s office. Sally Flocks, the executive director, and Liz Coyle with PEDS were kind enough to take a trip out to Cobb County to deliver your names in person.

Unfortunately, Solicitor General Barry Morgan refused to take a few moments to meet with PEDS, a well-respected group in Atlanta, to accept the petition and hear a little more about the underlying problem of streets that aren’t safe for people on foot or bike.

Here is a few notable thoughts from Sally Flocks and PEDS about delivering the petition.

Solicitor General Barry Morgan’s refusal to meet with representatives of PEDS to accept the Transportation for America petition disappointed us. By meeting with us, Morgan could have learned why members of Transportation for America – as well as over 5,000 petitioners, believe Raquel Nelson should be pardoned of all charges. When we arrived in Marietta, the receptionist would not allow us to enter Morgan’s office to hand the petition to his assistant. Instead, she came to the receptionist’s desk to pick up the petition we had handed him.

On our way to the Solicitor General’s office, we drove by the Marietta [bus] Transfer Center (pictured below), where fences block access to the street for over ¼ mile. The closest signalized intersections are over a half mile apart. Victory Drive intersects South Marietta Parkway between the signalized intersections, which means it’s legal for pedestrians to cross anywhere they want. Yet “no pedestrian” signs have been installed to discourage pedestrians from crossing a high-speed five-lane street.

If I could wave a magic wand, the Solicitor General would have joined me for a bus ride to visit the location where Raquel Nelson and her family had attempted to cross the street. To catch a bus back to his office, we would have had to cross the street. Perhaps then the Solicitor General would understood why Cobb County needs to stop treating pedestrians as second class citizens.

Well said, Sally. We especially want to recognize all of you who added your names to this petition. Though we wish we could have gotten that meeting and bus ride with the Solicitor General and put your names directly in his hand, you can be sure that the calls and emails and petitions that have flooded into that office in the last few months have made a significant difference in this case, and helped to publicize the larger issues at hand nationally.

We can’t thank you enough for your support. We’ll continue to keep tabs on this story in the coming weeks.

UPDATED 10/24/11 2:30 p.m.: The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that her second trial is starting tomorrow. It also includes that apt nugget to describe her situation:

With interviews on ABC’s Good Morning America and news outlets CNN, Reuters and the BBC covering her initial trial and sentencing, Nelson became the face of public transit users and perpetual pedestrians whom a sprawling suburbia has left behind.

Governor Cuomo signs Complete Streets legislation as New York Times surveys pedestrian safety in Orlando

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s decision to sign Complete Streets legislation is a step forward for pedestrian safety, though a New York Times report out of Orlando yesterday illustrates how much further we have to go.

First, the New York measure — known as “Brittany’s Law” in honor of 14-year old girl struck by a car in a crosswalk on her way to school — sailed through the legislature with unanimous votes and broad-based support earlier this summer. The Tri-State Transportation Campaign, a T4 partner, played a pivotal role in passage of the bill, along with the New York chapter of AARP. Republican Senator Charles J. Fuschillo, chairman of the transportation committee in the upper house, was the original sponsor.

Complete streets policies aim to make new and reconstructed roadways safe and accessible for all users, including pedestrians, bicyclists, wheelchair users and transit riders, as well as motorists. Sadly, the status-quo for most users around the country is woefully unsafe and insufficient, perhaps nowhere more so than in Florida.

“As any pedestrian in Florida knows, walking in this car-obsessed state can be as tranquil as golfing in a lightning storm,” wrote the Times’ Lizette Alvarez yesterday, continuing:

Sidewalks are viewed as perks, not necessities. Crosswalks are disliked and dishonored. And many drivers maniacally speed up when they see someone crossing the street.

Then there are the long, ever widening arterial roads — those major thoroughfares lined with strip malls built to move cars in and out of sprawling suburbs.

New York Times photo from the story by Chip Litherland.Send us your photos of similar unsafe streets designed for speeding traffic

Alvarez, who spoke with T4 America for the piece, noted that four metropolitan areas in the state were ranked as the worst in the nation for pedestrians in our Dangerous by Design study, with Orlando at number one. And, as her reporting demonstrated, these statistics are borne out by real people everyday:

Just down the street, the same scene played out repeatedly, only pedestrians raced across the road (where there was no median) to a neighborhood supermarket. One group included a child in a stroller. The road, like so many others, was built for cars and not people.

Fortunately, Orlando officials are starting to see the situation with the urgency it demands. They are building miles of new sidewalks, putting in audible pedestrian signals and instituting measures to slow traffic. Frank Consoli, traffic operations engineer for the city of Orlando, told Alvarez the goal was “to change the culture and this thinking that is car-centric.”

But local efforts alone will not suffice. As the article points out, many roads fall under multiple jurisdictions with conflicting priorities. That’s why actions like those of Governor Cuomo and New York State legislators are crucial — to ensure the kind of uniformity and safety that pedestrians everywhere deserve.

As we pointed out in Dangerous by Design, two-thirds of the 47,700 pedestrian fatalities from 2000-2009 occurred on roads eligible for federal funds or with federal guidelines for design. Since federal transportation dollars have helped build these unsafe streets that treat pedestrians as an afterthought, the federal government must play a role in fixing the problem.

In the House, Democrat Doris Matsui of California and Republican Steve LaTourette of Ohio have introduced national complete streets legislation, and Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) is sponsoring a companion piece.

Portions of the Orlando metropolitan area, incidentally, are represented in Congress by John Mica, the powerful chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Will Mica respond to the needs of his constituents by making safe and complete streets a priority in the next transportation bill?

We’re gathering pictures of unsafe conditions for pedestrians to show online and in meetings with members of Congress here in D.C. Share the conditions near you by sending in photos. Details here.

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.

Blueprint America on complete streets in Atlanta

Do yourself a favor and check out this short video from PBS’ Blueprint America series that aired on the program “Need to Know” recently.

The overall package is about “disappearmarks” — earmarks totaling millions in the last federal transportation bill that have never been allocated or spent, according to the Sunlight Foundation. But this story from Atlanta focuses much more specifically on how unsafe, incomplete streets that don’t adequately meet the needs of all users in Atlanta results in pedestrians that have little choice but to take their lives into their own hands each and every day, just to get to work, school, or the closest bus stop.

They used the numbers from Dangerous by Design, our report on pedestrian safety nationally, to help give some broader national context to the situation in Atlanta.

Watch the full episode. See more Need To Know.