Last week was #SafetyOverSpeed week here at Transportation for America, where we took a deep dive on our second principle for transportation policy: design for safety over speed. We spent the week discussing how prioritizing speed makes it almost impossible for most Americans to reach destinations anyway other than driving. Now we need to do something about it. Heidi Simon, the Deputy Director of America Walks, discusses how you can make a difference in your community. 

LA’s ever-increasing walkability.

America Walks was disappointed—but not surprised—to learn that 6,283 friends, family members, and neighbors lost their lives while walking in 2018. As a national non-profit working to create safe, accessible, and enjoyable places to walk and move, we know all too well the immense challenge that this nation faces in addressing the devastating trend of growing fatalities among people walking and biking.

Our lack of surprise? Well, that’s because—despite a plethora of street design tactics proven to increase safety—we’re operating in a transportation system that prioritizes cars over people, and has for decades.

We know that many of the issues that plague people walking (and biking) are not new. Poor street design, improper speeds, and a culture that prioritizes cars over people have created a landscape that continues to unnecessarily endanger the most vulnerable users of the public rights of way.

Yet too often the conversation on making roads safer focuses on things that have little to no actual influence on improving safety. The distraction of the distracted walking narrative, the false notion that wearing reflective clothing will save lives, and the idea that these deaths are inevitable are all narratives that do a disservice to improving safety.

Perhaps the biggest issue is that the urgency to reduce the number of people killed while walking and biking occurs only periodically throughout the year, like when NHTSA released 2018 fatality numbers. By then, it’s too late to help those who have unnecessarily lost their lives while doing the most basic of human activities.

But it’s not too late to do something for those who are walking and biking on our streets right now. We can use data to target high crash corridors and improve spaces for our most vulnerable road users. We can make it clear that the only acceptable number of deaths on our streets is zero. And we can start today to do the work needed to make walking and biking safe for all users:

Use your voice: Tell decision-makers at all levels that funding for active transportation needs to be increased and that we need to take steps to improve safety through reduced speeds, improved road design, and policies that actually address safety concerns. This can be done at town halls, by visiting their offices, or inviting them to take a walk with you, your walking club, a walking school bus, or a main street business council. (One way you can help right now is by supporting a long-awaited federal Complete Streets bill.)

Use your head: Dive into the data related to pedestrian fatalities and use it to inform your advocacy. Learn more about the issue, stay vigilant to distractions like victim-blaming, and don’t let the issue disappear from the public debate.

Use your feet: Get out and do a walking audit with friends, neighbors, and your local elected officials to show them what’s being done well and not so well on the streets in your community. Never done one before? Check out our guide here with helpful quick tips like:

• Inviting people from a variety of background, professions, ages, and abilities.
• Don’t be afraid to knock on doors to get the word out about the event.
• Build relationships with decision-makers and local elected officials early so they’re more likely to be engaged during and after the audit.

Last week we hosted a tweet chat to discuss the importance of prioritizing #SafetyOverSpeed, in tandem with our week of blogs discussing our second principle for transportation policy. Here are our seven favorite tweets from the chat. 

Thanks to our tremendous co-hosts for making the Tweet Chat a success: Smart Growth America, the National Complete Streets Coalition, U.S. PIRG, America Walks, the League of American Bicyclists, the National Association of City Transportation Officials, and Strong Towns.

Now to our favorite questions!

Why are there more deaths on arterials—”stroads” in the words of Strong Towns—than on highways with speed limits as high as 70 mph?

Why are most local and arterial roads—particularly in sprawling suburbs and cities—still being designed for high speeds? 

Lowering speed limits alone does little to reduce speeds. How can we better slow vehicles on local and arterial roads? 

According to Dangerous By Design, older adults, people of color, and people walking in low-income communities are disproportionately represented in fatal pedestrian crashes. Why, and how can we fix this?

What are some economic benefits of slowing down streets? 

Transportation is the largest source of U.S. carbon emissions. How can lowering speeds help reduce those emissions?

Speed is often considered a local and state issue. Why should the feds get involved, and how can they support communities that make their streets safer?

Lowering speeds have more benefits besides saving lives: street designs that keep speeds low help reduce carbon emissions, too. In this blog post by our friends at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Ann Shikany and Carter Rubin discuss how safer roads increase rates of biking, walking, and transit ridership, and enable fewer and shorter car trips.

Slow neighborhood greenways help people get around without getting in their cars. Photo via City of Seattle.

In communities across the county, our transportation system provides key linkages for commuters to jobs, kids to school and all of us to our social, family and recreational opportunities.

But the flip-side is that after decades of prioritizing transportation investments in new highways with a focus on speed above all else, we’re stuck with a transportation system that produces more carbon emissions than any other sector in the United States. Spread-out development facilitated by wide fast roads make cars all but essential for daily travel in many U.S. communities.

When you dive deeper into those carbon emissions—you’ll find that 59 percent of them come from light-duty vehicles—that includes the cars we drive around in for most daily trips. While the majority of daily trips are less than three miles, most of them are made by car. 

Even worse, transportation emissions are rising because people are driving more and making longer trips. Even with cleaner fuels (not to mention electric cars) and more efficient vehicles, the uptick in driving more is obliterating any emissions benefits. 

Why are people driving more, and using cars for even short trips? Because, with an overarching focus on vehicle speed and avoiding delay, nearly everything we’ve built for 60 years has been  designed for high speed vehicle movement, which makes getting around by any other mode—biking, public transportation, or your own two feet—dangerous and unpleasant. Our transportation system—and the federal policy that built it—forces many Americans to drive to get just about anywhere.

The good news is over 40 cities in the United States have adopted Vision Zero policies that seek to eliminate traffic fatalities and major injuries on our roads through safety policies and investment in the kind of infrastructure that will help keep everyone safe—with a priority on those who are most vulnerable. 

Some of the key strategies that cities use to meet this goal include:

• Providing physical protection for people walking and biking, like bike lanes protected with planters, bollards and curbs.
• Reducing vehicle speeds on routes intended for people walking and biking, so that people of all ages and abilities feel safe. 

Projects that lower speeds and make it easier to bike, walk, and use transit also compliment land use changes that bring destinations closer together. Slower speeds allow our streets to become places where people want to be, not race through. (As our own Carter Rubin said sarcastically when asked about the economic benefits of lower speeds during yesterday’s #SafetyOverSpeed tweet chat: “Brb, going to go shopping on the side of a freeway.” ) 

Improving bike and pedestrian networks is also one of the top policy priorities included in the Bloomberg American Cities Climate Challenge, and is being supported in nine challenge cities. If you’d like more detailed information on these policies, check out the Climate Action Playbook sections on bike and pedestrian infrastructure. We’ll also give you a quick snapshot of what this policy looks like in action:  

Prioritizing bikeway, sidewalk and crossing improvements (Portland, OR): Portland leads large U.S. cities in the percentage of commuters who bike to work and ranked tenth in 2016 for the percentage of commuters who walk to work. The city has 350 miles of bikeways, with more than 50 miles funded to be installed in the next few years. Portland has developed this infrastructure not just by creating bike plans, but by backing these plans up with funding. Portland is currently updating its pedestrian plan to prioritize sidewalk and crossing improvements and other investments to make walking safer and more comfortable across the city. It will identify gaps and needs in Portland’s pedestrian network, prioritize funding to locations with the greatest need first, and identify performance measures to track progress. (Read more.)

Responding to the need for safety improvements (Cincinnati, OH): After facing a record breaking year of pedestrian-involved crashes—430 in 2018—Cincinnati Councilmember Greg Landsman led the charge for safer streets. The city is now pursuing a Vision Zero strategy that included appointing new leadership and dedicated staff resources within the city’s Department of Transportation, prioritized funding for pedestrian safety improvements, and increased enforcement. Through the American Cities Climate Challenge, Cincinnati’s transportation team will also receive Vision Zero design training from the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO).  (Read more.)

Every community deserves safe streets, clean air and action on climate. Thankfully, many cities are taking the first step by implementing Vision Zero policies locally. There is also work to be done at the federal level. On October 23, 2019, Representative Earl Blumenauer introduced the Vision Zero Act, which would make Vision Zero policies and investments eligible for federal funding. NRDC supports this legislation. Transportation for America’s push for safer streets as part of a comprehensive federal transportation investment strategy.