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Hold states accountable for repairing roads and bridges – send a letter to USDOT

The U.S. Department of Transportation is in the process of writing new rules to hold states accountable for the condition of their roads and bridges. USDOT’s strong first draft rule was a step in the right direction, and we want to thank them — and ensure they don’t bow to pressure to soften these requirements.

Can you take just one minute to sign this letter to USDOT? We’ll hand-deliver a copy straight to USDOT for you.

Did you already take action? Share this action with others:

The 2012 transportation law (MAP-21) requires transportation agencies to begin using a new system of performance measures to govern how federal dollars are spent. USDOT is working to establish these new metrics for safety, the state of repair, congestion (coming soon!), air emissions and other aspects of our transportation system through an iterative process of draft rules, feedback, refined drafts and final rules.

Look, we get it: this is a wonky and arcane affair. So why should you take action and provide a comment on this pavement and bridge proposed rule? Because USDOT is truly listening to comments and making changes as a result.

USDOT’s first rule on roadway safety wasn’t a good one, to put it bluntly, and it failed to ensure that safety would improve. Yet the thousands of comments we delivered played a part in improving it.

In that draft, states were allowed to fail half of the fatality and injury targets and still receive a passing grade. But after receiving more than 1,500 comments, USDOT incorporated that feedback into this improved draft for roads and bridges, requiring progress on all targets — not just 50 percent of them.

Now USDOT is going to hear from the other side, those that don’t want states to be held to such high standards. We need to let USDOT know that we support the changes they made and that requiring progress across the board is just as essential for evaluating the condition of our roads and bridges.

Between 2009 and 2011, all U.S. states collectively spent $20.4 billion annually to build new roadways and add lanes to existing roads, and just $16.5 billion annually repairing and preserving existing roads and bridges. But by 2011, after spending more than half of all highway dollars on expansion projects, just 37 percent of our nation’s roadways were in ‘good’ condition. And today, more than 260 million trips are taken each year on the country’s structurally deficient bridges.

That’s not good enough. We need to hold states accountable to meet measurable targets with our tax dollars. USDOT has drafted a better rule to make that happen, and we need your help to ensure it stays that way.

Read and sign this letter today, and we’ll deliver it to USDOT before the May 8 deadline.

Credit where it’s due: With repair rule, the feds listened to public comment

In developing new standards for ensuring our roads and bridges are kept in good condition, officials at the U.S. DOT did something skeptics would find surprising: They really listened to public comment, and reflected it in the newly released rule.

T4America’s Beth Osborne

As we have noted here often, the 2012 transportation law (MAP-21) requires transportation agencies to begin using performance measures to govern how federal dollars are spent. The U.S. DOT is working to establish those metrics for safety, the state of repair, congestion, air emissions and other aspects of our transportation system.

State DOTs and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) will then set their own targets for areas. They then must show how their investment plans will help them reach the targets and report on the results. If they fail to make enough progress on say, road and bridge conditions, they would be expected to spend more in those areas.

Creating this brand new system from scratch is a challenge. DOT officials have to figure out which sets of data are truly valid measures and where the data come from; how much time and wiggle room to give states and MPOs in setting and meeting targets; and what happens when they don’t.

We at T4America and many of our allies howled last year when USDOT’s first proposed performance measure, on safety, allowed states and MPOs to fail outright on half of the measures, making the targets for states virtually meaningless. T4A and the Complete Streets Coalition responded with 1500 public comments saying that this was not good enough.

We are still waiting for the full rule on safety, but with the release of this second proposed rule on system conditions (i.e. bridge and pavement maintenance) USDOT has shown that they heard us on the question of how agencies will be held to account. The new rule proposes that MPOs and states must hit all of the required targets — 50 percent success is no longer a passing grade. And states must either beat the trends or, if their target is not as good as the trend line, they must hit their target. This is a substantial improvement. Considering the current condition of the country’s infrastructure, holding states’ and metros’ feet to the fire on state of repair is critically important. As Smart Growth America’s 2014 Repair Priorities report made clear, most states are still spending billions on new roads or expanding existing ones — while neglecting their growing repair backlogs.

Between 2009 and 2011, the latest year with available data, states collectively spent $20.4 billion annually to build new roadways and add lanes to existing roads. America’s state-owned road network grew by 8,822 lane-miles of road during that time, accounting for less than 1 percent of the total in 2011.

During that same time, states spent just $16.5 billion annually repairing and preserving the other 99 percent of the system. … [In 2011], just 37 percent of roads were in good condition that year—down from 41 percent in 2008.

Under the new rule, that kind of investment decisions and resulting diminishing performance should fail to pass muster in the future.

As someone who has worked for USDOT and is accustomed to the dense documents we sometimes produced, I was struck by the clarity and tone of this (still long and technical) rule. The impact of the public comments — including those provided by T4America and our partners — was clear. USDOT explains each issue they had to grapple with, what they heard from stakeholders on each issue, the principles they used to evaluate options, how each option performed in that evaluation and then their final choice. Reading the rule felt like having a frank conversation with the experts at FHWA writing the rule.

This is especially encouraging because the third rule on congestion (and other measures) undoubtedly will be the hardest and, in many ways, the most impactful. It includes measures that are newer to the federal program and can be defined many different ways. For example, is the goal of highway performance to keep traffic moving at the speed limit no matter how many cars are on it? Or is it to know that your trip today will take the amount of time you budgeted for it? If it is the former, we will have to spend a lot of money paving over a lot of places at marginal benefit to ensure a safe and efficient commute or delivery. If it is the latter, we can address the issue with a mix of more affordable operational improvements, emergency response and new capacity. In congestion, are we only interested in the speed of cars or do we give communities credit for letting their residents opt out of congestion entirely by taking transit, walking or biking?

One thing we now know for sure: USDOT is listening to the public, so we need to engage. We thank USDOT for the improvements and for listening. It is a heavy responsibility, and one the folks at the U.S. Department of Transportation executed very nicely.

There are a couple more ways they can improve the rule further, like making more of the process available to the public. I encourage everyone to comment on the current draft.

Last-minute budget deal holds good news for the safety of all who use our roads

In a rare weekend session, the U.S. Senate finally passed the FY2015 Omnibus Appropriations Act, sending it to the President and avoiding a government shutdown. Buried deep within the legislation – far from the controversial provisions that kept the Senate working late – was a simple paragraph enacting a proposal that Transportation for America and many others have long advocated for: a directive to the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) to make the safety of people on foot or bicycle a criterion for measuring the performance of our transportation system.

By way of background, two years ago MAP-21 created a framework for measuring the performance of the transportation system, to begin to hold agencies accountable for results. The U.S. DOT this year proposed the first of three related rules to implement the program. That first proposed rule dealt with measuring safety (see our original post for more details). One of several major flaws in that proposal was that it lumped in people in vehicles with those using non-motorized modes.

By that measure, significant improvements in vehicle safety could obscure the opposite trend in the safety of people on foot or bicycle. In truth, some safety projects designed to protect those driving at higher speeds can be hazardous to those who are not in cars. Allowing states and metropolitan planning organizations to avoid accounting for the safety of non-motorized users would allow them to focus on motor vehicle traffic even at the expense of other users.

Advocates for roadway safety for all users have been carrying that message to Congress since June, and those efforts have now borne fruit. The transportation portion of the Omnibus, directs the Secretary of Transportation to establish separate safety performance measures for non-motorized travelers and publish a final rule by September 30, 2015.

Inclusion of this language is a positive move by the House and Senate negotiators on the Omnibus, and we commend them for understanding that roadway safety is about everyone who uses the roadways, not just people in cars.

Chalk that up as a victory, but there is more work to be done to fix the safety rule. Another flaw in the proposal was that states and MPOs are allowed to meet only two of four performance targets – a 50% pass rate – and still be deemed successful. Under the proposed rule, traffic fatalities or serious injuries could be going up and a state could still be found to be making significant progress on safety. In our comments to USDOT, Transportation for America proposed a simpler, more effective method for measuring progress – one that could be applied not just in the safety context, but across all of the performance measures MAP-21 requires.

As yet, we have heard nothing in response from USDOT. According to the schedule posted on the agency’s website, the next proposed rule in the series, having to do with infrastructure conditions, should have been released a month ago (nearly a year after the original deadline MAP-21 set for completion of all three performance measure rules). We are still waiting.

Will the next rule adopt our recommendations and those of hundreds of other commenters and establish a meaningful structure for measuring performance, one that ensures better outcomes for the traveling public? Or will the next rule also be too weak to be effective? Stay tuned.

“They’re gonna need to see this upstairs.”

“They’re gonna need to see this upstairs.” That’s what staff at the U.S. Department of Transportation told Smart Growth America president Geoff Anderson yesterday when he showed up with 1,500 letters from T4America and Smart Growth America supporters urging USDOT to improve their targets for reducing the number of deaths and serious injuries on our streets and to better hold states accountable for reaching those goals.

Smart Growth America President Geoff Anderson personally delivered the safety rule comments to USDOT.

It’s important that we get this first of 12 “performance measures” right, and that’s why we joined with SGA in asking our supporters to send a letter to USDOT urging them to improve this first one and take a positive step forward into this new system of accountability. More than 1,500 people responded with letters to USDOT that Geoff Anderson delivered DOT Secretary Anthohny Foxx the old fashioned way, via hard copy,

As a refresher, the 2012 federal transportation law, MAP-21, created a first-ever accountability framework for measuring the payoff from the billions given to states and MPOs each year. It was left to the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to put flesh on the bones by adopting rules for how to apply those performance measures.

But we were discouraged by DOT’s first attempt at proposing a set of requirements for judging progress on safety on our roads, deeming it “too weak to be effective.”

This rule for the first measure, if finalized as it was proposed, would allow the states that fail to meet the targets they set for themselves to avoid taking action to improve their outcomes. Further, the USDOT decision to require states to meet only two requirements gives short shrift to the idea of accountability. (Much more detail on the shortcomings in this first draft measure can be found in our original post.)

Getting this one right is critical not just for safety, but also in setting the tone for the 11 other performance standards to come.

After going to all the trouble two years ago to create this new system of accountability to ensure that taxpayer dollars are better spent — which helps build the support and confidence needed to raise new revenue, by the way — it makes no sense to do them halfway. They need teeth, they need to result in money better spent, and they need to help build the confidence of the taxpayers who are asked to pay for improving the country’s infrastructure.

It’s imperative that we put our best foot forward and show that this new system of measuring performance is a strong step toward a better, safer, more complete transportation network.

We thank those of you who took the time to send in a letter, and we’re honored to help deliver them.

As SGA said to their supporters this morning, “Rest assured: they’re going to see this upstairs.”

Too weak to be effective: U.S. DOT’s first proposed performance measure needs work

While the 2012 federal transportation law, MAP-21, was not the transformational milestone many of us hoped for, it did put in motion a first-ever framework for accountability and transparency, establishing 12 basic metrics by which to judge agencies’ performance. It was left to the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to put flesh on the bones by adopting rules for how to apply those performance measures. The first evidence of how the DOT is handling that job is now out in the form of a proposed set of requirements for judging progress on safety. Unfortunately, the draft out for comment does not bode well.

I-540 Head on collision

There are several reasons the proposed rule falls short – some technical, some less so – but the fundamental problem is that it is too weak to be useful as a standard for accountability.

The rule would require states to set their own targets for reducing, on public roadways, (1) the number of fatalities, (2) the number of serious injuries, (3) the rate of fatalities per vehicle mile traveled (VMT), and (4) the rate of serious injuries per vehicle mile traveled. These four measures were established in MAP-21; the state or MPO can develop additional measures if they choose.

Here are three key weaknesses in the DOT’s draft rule: (Read our full detailed analysis here – pdf)

States only need a 50 percent passing grade, meeting only half of the four measures required in law;
States can pass muster merely by showing little deviation from pre-existing trends; and,
States that miss their safety targets, however unlikely that is under this proposal, would be allowed an additional four years before they are required to implement any changes to improve their roadways’ safety.

There are many other issues around whether the rule adequately considers the safety of people on foot or bicycle – it doesn’t. Or differences among rural areas, small towns and large cities. (This post by the National Complete Streets Coalition examines these points and others in greater detail.)

This rule, if finalized as proposed, would allow the states that fail to meet the targets they set for themselves to avoid taking action to improve their outcomes. Further, the USDOT decision to require states to meet only two requirements gives short shrift to the idea of accountability.

As it stands, the federal incentives linked to performance measures, including achieving the nation’s goal of reducing the number of fatalities and serious injuries, are modest (though we hope they will grow as accountability becomes a more central feature of the federal program). States that cannot meet their own safety targets and cannot escape the exceedingly lenient evaluation would be required to submit an implementation plan that identifies how they will attempt to improve safety. They also will face constraints on their use of funding from the Highway Safety Improvement Program until the DOT secretary determines they have made significant progress.

Several factors in the way the DOT is implementing performance measures would seem to telegraph to states a lack of urgency or seriousness around accountability. States aren’t asked to begin working on setting targets until all the other measures are settled, expected no earlier than 2015. They are considered successful if they fall within 70 percent of predicted estimates, meaning fatalities and injuries could go up considerably and still be considered acceptable. A lag in data means they will be basing success or failure on a snapshot from four years past – enough time for a student to enter high school and graduate. Rather than push themselves and pertinent agencies to provide better data, faster, the DOT seems to consider the status quo acceptable.

There is still time to push for a better first effort at performance measures and show the DOT that the public demands a more serious and exacting approach to accountability. The public comment period ends on June 9, 2014. Final rules for all performance measures will be enacted at the same time, likely no sooner than spring 2015.

We’ll be back in touch right here soon with information on how to comment on this rule, along with our proposed recommendations and a mechanism for sending those in, but until then, you can submit comments directly to Regulations.Gov

Full rule text in the federal register.

Photos of dangerous streets have been streaming in

After putting out the call far and wide for pictures of streets designed for speeding traffic at the expense of safe travel by people on foot or bike, we’ve been getting some great — and by great, we mean frightening and terrible — photos of inconvenient, poorly-planned, dangerous and downright hostile conditions for pedestrians.

Here is a sampling of some of what we’ve received so far.

Bladensburg-22 Originally uploaded by wtrecat to Flickr.

MD 450 just west of junction with MD 202. Very busy road with no pedestrian crossing at this spot across from El Primo international market, 5403 Annapolis Rd.

Note that this photo from Maryland just outside D.C. is taken at a Metro bus stop. And there appears to be no safe crossing immediately nearby.

Incomplete Street Originally uploaded by Boenau to Flickr.

No sidewalks? No problem!

There’s no sidewalk at all along this road. And the overgrowth forces anyone trying to walk out into the roadway. If there is a crosswalk at the light up ahead, pedestrians have to cross at least 8 lanes of traffic and a median to make it across.

Incomplete Street Originally uploaded by Boenau to Flickr.

As if walking on the goat path isn’t bad enough, rainfall drains and collects on the grass, forcing pedestrians into the street.

Just because there aren’t any sidewalks doesn’t mean that people won’t or aren’t walking. It has to be terrifying to walk on this narrow strip of grass next to 3 straight lanes of high speed traffic. And once again, if there is a crosswalk 200-400 yards down behind this pedestrian, people on foot will have to cross at least 6 lanes of traffic and a median in one light cycle.

elkton_rd3 Originally uploaded by Transportation for America to Flickr.

Submitted photo by Frank Warnock of Bike Delaware. www.bikede.org/ (Please credit photographer, not T4 America.)

Smooth, graduated turning radii like this are especially dangerous to pedestrians. Turns are engineered like this so traffic can make a right turn while only having to barely slow their speed, making it extremely hazardous for people on foot to cross from the island back to the side of the road.

IMG_6603 Originally uploaded by Transportation for America to Flickr.

Bee Caves Rd/RM 2244 west of Walsh Tarlton Lane in Austin, Texas. Roadway under TxDOT jurisdiction. Submitted photo by Joan Hudson, P.E., of the Texas Transportation Institute. (Please credit photographer, not T4 America.)

The photos we got from this supporter in Texas were all taken on roads managed by the Texas DOT. Pedestrians here have to walk in a ditch with nowhere to escape to if a car veers slightly out of the lane.

Photos like these could be taken in almost any place in the country. These conditions are far too common and much too accepted by the people who plan and design our streets and roads. Two-thirds of all pedestrian fatalities in the last 10 years occurred on roads much like these — high-speed arterials designed first and foremost for moving speeding traffic as fast as possible with little consideration for the needs or safety of people on foot or bike. Federal dollars and design guidelines have helped create these dangerous situations across the country, and the federal government shouldn’t be able to walk away and pin the problem on the states.

Simple policy changes and priorities for spending at the federal level can help save lives immediately.

We’re not finished collecting these photos — we want to see yours! When you send them in (click here for instructions), feel free to include location information as well and we’ll plot and share the location. And bonus points for photos that show people in them.

Thank you so much to the dozens of people who sent us photos or submitted them to our Flickr group. Keep it up!

Blaming the pedestrian won’t solve the problem

Walking in the ditch Originally uploaded by Transportation for America to Flickr.

If this woman got hit by car, it’s probably her fault, right? Photograph by Stephen Lee Davis/Transportation for America.

We noted on Twitter this morning a story in the USA Today about pedestrian deaths increasing in 2010, halting a decline that had been going on for quite a few years. The USA Today story took the angle offered from the head of a state safety association (Governors Highway Safety Association) that pedestrians are at fault for the increase in deaths. The Washington Examiner, not to be outdone, took some comments from the head of the association to baselessly suggest that more pedestrians are being killed because of the First Lady’s “Let’s Move” campaign to get more people active and walking to stem the obesity epidemic.

That’s right, it has nothing to do with things like 4 -and 6- and 8- lane arterials with no sidewalks and crosswalks a mile apart running through our communities. Or streets built without sidewalks. Or 55 mile per hour speed limits on roads where people need to walk. Or curved right turn lanes that allow cars to make turns at intersections at 30 mph. It has nothing to do with roads that are dangerous by design, leading to thousands of avoidable fatalities every year.

Automatically blaming the pedestrian is shameful and the GHSA should take their time to study the issue more carefully. Pedestrians are dying by the thousands, and it’s not because they’re using an ipod while crossing the street or trying to get more exercise at the First Lady’s urging. It’s because our basic choices about road design have left far too many without a safe place to walk, putting too many pedestrians in harm’s way.

We’d laugh at the GHSA’s silly suggestion, but we’re talking about a crisis that’s resulted in 76,000 deaths in the last 15 years. It’s no laughing matter.

UPDATE: The GHSA told the Atlantic that they were misquoted by the Examiner. They don’t refute a possible link, but they do say they support Michelle Obama’s program, adding that if more people are walking, they need to be aware.

Harsha said her primary concern for pedestrians was the increased use of electronic devices like iPods that can block out sound and make walkers unaware of oncoming traffic. The organization has received anecdotal evidence of pedestrian injuries caused by people walking into traffic.

It’s good they clarified, but it still sounds like they don’t quite grasp the main cause of death for pedestrians: Roads that are dangerous by design and unsafe for pedestrians. “Distracted” pedestrians aren’t the real culprit here.

TBD, a local DC news site, shared the pitch that they got from the GHSA, which is likely where the “Let’s Move” connection originated:

“Why the increase? We don’t really know but speculate that it could be a couple factors. One is the possible increase in distracted pedestrians and distracted drivers. We’ve been focusing on the drivers, but perhaps we need to focus some attention on distracted walkers! Additionally, Mrs. Obama and others have been bringing attention to ‘get moving’ programs, so perhaps pedestrian exposure has increased.”

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.

20 years after the ADA, continuing the fight to improve access for all

Sonia at East Beasley Bus Stop 004 Originally uploaded by Transportation for America to Flickr. (Credit to Dr. Scott Crawford)

Still working toward accessible and complete streets for all users, 20 years later.

A couple of years ago, my colleague Stephen Lee Davis profiled Dr. Scott Crawford, a wheelchair user and resident of Jackson, Mississippi who has long fought for accessible buses with wheelchair lifts, curb ramps and better sidewalks.

As Dr. Crawford’s story reminds us, there is still a lot of work to do in making our communities accessible for all users. But he’s had a powerful legal tool in his fight to make Jackson’s streets and transit services equitable and accessible for all users: The Americans with Disabilities Act, which turned 20 years old just this week. President George H. W. Bush signed the ADA in 1990, and his son, George W. Bush, put his signature on the 2008 amendments to the Act, which broadened protections and addressed provisions that had been weakened by the Courts.

The ADA defines a disability as “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits a major life activity.”

The ADA made reasonable accommodation in workplaces and businesses for people with disabilities the law of the land, ensuring that a disability wouldn’t automatically marginalize anyone. Before it was signed, Americans who were blind, deaf, wheelchair-bound or with chronic injuries or limitations had no legal recourse against inaccessibility. Public and private sector institutions could ignore them as a silent minority — and they often did.

Reasonable accommodation does not mean that every corner of every building can be reached by everyone. It does mean that an employer or government agency must make a concerted effort — through ramps, elevators, doors wide enough for a wheelchair and other resources — to make the workplace accessible for people with disabilities.

Meeting ADA requirements has certainly been a challenge for many communities, especially those with older buildings and smaller economies. Jackson, Mississippi has had the same bus fleet for decades with broken chair lifts and has struggled to find the resources to upgrade. Many transportation departments are more interested in expanding existing roads and broadening access between towns and cities, forgetting what happens within them.

Difficulties aside, many of us are now realizing that the focus on “reasonable accommodations” has actually improved the quality of life for everyone. Older Americans, whether technically disabled or not, face similar challenges with access, have benefited from lifts on public buses. Mothers pushing strollers appreciate new sidewalk ramps.

Beyond mere ADA compliance, everyone is better off with a focus on “Complete Streets,” ensuring that roads accommodate all users regardless of how they get around. Two Mississippi cities, Tupelo and Hernando, recently adopted complete streets policies, and the Michigan State Senate is poised to do the same. Complete streets fit nicely into the universal design approach, which emphasizes the benefits to everyone rather than perpetuating “us” and “them” delineations. The ADA won’t be enough to make our streets truly safe and complete, as Jeff Peel of the League of American Bicyclists pointed out (h/t Streetsblog.net). “…don’t forget, the ADA [doesn’t] require sidewalks — it says that if they are present, they must be made accessible,” he says.

As we celebrate the ADA, it is worth reminding ourselves not to take progress for granted. Progress happens because we pursue the right policies —and the people force our elected officials to listen up. That’s a point worth remembering for everyone who envisions an America with greater transportation options for all.

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.

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.

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

Dangerous by Design

What would the national reaction be if a jumbo jet full of passengers went down with regularity every 31 days or so? How loud would the calls be for a fundamental change in airline safety? It’s easy to imagine the shock and outrage if such a thing happened. Yet that is essentially what happens every year with preventable pedestrian fatalities on our nation’s streets and roads.

Every year, nearly 5,000 Americans die preventable deaths on roads that fail to provide safe conditions for pedestrians. This decade alone, more than 43,000 Americans – including 3,906 children under 16 – have been killed while walking or crossing a street in our communities. With more than 76,000 Americans dying in the last 15 years, it’s the equivalent of a jumbo jet going down roughly every month, yet it receives nothing like that kind of attention.

A new report from Transportation for America and the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership, Dangerous by Design: Solving the Epidemic of Preventable Pedestrian Death (and Making Great Neighborhoods), ranks metropolitan areas based on the relative danger of walking.

Download the full report, see the comprehensive rankings and view all of the companion tables of data online right here: https://t4america.org/resources/dangerousbydesign. After you’ve taken a look, ask U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to make pedestrian safety a priority for the administration. Pedestrian deaths are preventable, and we demand safer streets!

Many of these preventable deaths are occurring along roadways that are dangerous by design, streets engineered for speeding cars with little or no provision for people on foot, in wheelchairs or on a bicycle.

YikesPedestrian Originally uploaded by Transportation for America

Look carefully in the turning lane above the center of the photograph. There’s a pedestrian trying to cross this 7-lane urban arterial road. See any crosswalks anywhere on the road? Photo courtesy of Dan Burden.

Over the last several decades, many of our cities and communities have seen the same shift of daily business from walkable, downtown Main Streets to wide, fast-moving state highways. These “arterial” roads are the new main streets in most communities, drawing shopping centers, drive-throughs, apartment complexes and office parks. Unlike the old walkable main streets, however, the pressure to move as many cars through these areas as quickly as possible has led transportation departments to squeeze in as many lanes as they can, while disregarding sidewalks, crosswalks and crossing signals, on-street parking, and even street trees in order to remove impediments to speeding traffic.

As a result, more than half of fatal vehicle crashes occurred on these wide, high capacity and high-speed thoroughfares. Though dangerous, these arterials are all but unavoidable because they are the trunk lines carrying most local traffic and supporting nearly all the commercial activity essential to daily life.

Before the top 10 most dangerous city rankings, here are just a few facts you might like to know:

Inadequate facilities. Of the 9,168 pedestrian fatalities in 2007-08 for which the location of the collision is known, more than 40 percent were killed where no crosswalk was available.

Spending disparity. Though pedestrian fatalities make up 11.8 percent of all traffic-related fatalities, states have allocated less than 1.5 percent of total authorized transportation funds to projects aimed at improving safety for pedestrians (for funds spent under current transportation bill.) No state spends more than 5 percent of federal transportation funds on safety features or programs for pedestrians or cyclists, despite a 30 percent increase in total federal transportation dollars beginning in 2005.

Complete streets save lives. Providing sidewalks, crosswalks and designing for lower traffic speeds saves lives. Only one in 10 pedestrians deaths occurred within crosswalks, while six in 10 occurred on arterial-type roads where speeds were 40 mph or higher.

The danger is not shared equally. Older adults, disabled and low-income Americans are being killed at disproportionate rates. African-Americans, who walk for 50 percent more trips than whites, and Hispanic residents, who walk 40 percent more, are subjected to the least safe conditions and die disproportionately.

Aging in place, yet unable to leave the house on foot. An AARP poll of adults 50 years and older found that 40 percent reported inadequate sidewalks in their neighborhoods and nearly half of respondents reported that they could not safely cross the main roads close to their home.

Rank	Metropolitan Area	2007-08 Pedestrian Danger Index
1	Orlando-Kissimmee, Fla.	221.5
2	Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Fla.	205.5
3	Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, Fla.	181.2
4	Jacksonville, Fla.	157.4
5	Memphis, Tenn.-Miss.-Ark.	137.7
6	Raleigh-Cary, N.C.	128.6
7	Louisville/Jefferson County, Ky.-Ind.	114.8
8	Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, Texas	112.4
8	Birmingham-Hoover, Ala.	110.0
10	Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, Ga.	108.3

	See the full rankings and download the report

Cellphones and texting pose great risks behind the wheel

Last week, the New York Times covered the news that the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration decided in 2003 not to release preliminary data showing that talking on cellphones while driving — whether using a hands-free device or not — posed a safety risk nearly equivalent to drunk driving. Researchers at the NHTSA were pushing for a more extensive research program to follow their preliminary research, but due to what the Times cited as “political considerations,” not only was the extra study and research not ordered, but the existing findings were essentially buried.

The memos, research and draft letter to Department of Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta were released to The Center for Auto Safety and Public Citizen via a Freedom of Information request, who sent them to the Times.

The NHTSA officials were encouraged to stick to their mission of information-gathering and to avoid lobbying states to pass laws restricting cellphones in any way. But what good is information gathering when the results don’t leave the agency, much less find their way into the hands of lawmakers or state legislators?

The news in the Times‘ Driven to Distraction series only got worse yesterday.

The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute is releasing a peer-reviewed report showing that truckers who text message while driving were 23 times more likely to crash. The study outfitted tractor-trailer drivers with cameras to study their behavior and found that “in the moments before a crash or near crash, drivers typically spent nearly five seconds looking at their devices — enough time at typical highway speeds to cover more than the length of a football field.”

Tom Dingus, director of the Virginia Tech institute, one of the world’s largest vehicle safety research organizations, said the study’s message was clear.

“You should never do this,” he said of texting while driving. “It should be illegal.”

Most shocking perhaps was the closing story. If you happen to live near Windham, Maine, you might want to keep an eye out, though this sort of behavior is more common than one might think. According to a survey of 2,501 drivers in the story, “21 percent of drivers said they had recently texted or e-mailed while driving,”

“It’s convenient,” said Robert Smith, 22, a recent college graduate in Windham, Me., who says he regularly texts and drives even though he recognizes that it is a serious risk. He would rather text, he said, than take time on a phone call.

“I put the phone on top of the steering wheel and text with both thumbs,” he said, adding that he often has exchanges of 10 messages or more. Sometimes, “I’ll look up and realize there’s a car sitting there and swerve around it.”

Mr. Smith, who was not part of the AAA survey, said he was surprised by the findings in the new research about texting.

“I’m pretty sure that someday it’s going to come back to bite me,” he said of his behavior.