Ames, Iowa made national headlines this fall for painting rainbow crosswalks and then ignoring a request from USDOT to remove them. The incident highlights one way outdated federal guidelines prevent communities from making their streets safer and more pleasant with art and culture. But there are other ways for communities to add some color to streets while improving safety without running afoul of the feds.
Join us for a webinar on March 13th about how two communities are addressing pedestrian safety in ways that suit their needs. This is the latest installment in our monthly webinar series Implementation & Equity 201: The Path Forward to Complete Streets.
Designing the commercial corridors where we live, work, and shop to move high volumes of cars as quickly as possible isn’t just dangerous. It also has severe consequences for health, economic viability, and equity along these corridors. We collaborated with the Urban Land Institute on a new research report that measures the impact of unsafe, unhealthy corridor conditions; examines how common these conditions are across the country; and digs into what can be done to change this trend.
Earlier this month the National Complete Streets Coalition walked through the finding of Dangerous by Design 2019 on a webinar and answered some top questions during the broadcast. While we weren’t able to get to all of the questions live, here are the answers to some popular questions we received.
Too many Americans are being struck and killed by the drivers of cars, trucks, and SUVs while walking. Dangerous by Design 2019, released today, chronicles the preventable epidemic of pedestrian fatalities, which have been steadily increasing in recent years, even as traffic fatalities overall have been decreasing.
Between 2008 and 2017, drivers struck and killed 49,340 people who were walking on streets all across the United States. That’s more than 13 people per day, or one person every hour and 46 minutes. It’s the equivalent of a jumbo jet full of people crashing—with no survivors—every single month. In the past decade, the … Continued
On January 23, 2019, the National Complete Streets Coalition will release Dangerous by Design 2018, the most up-to-date look at how dangerous each state and large metro areas are for people walking. Join us for a webinar to hear from experts about the report findings and how we can address this epidemic of pedestrian deaths.
The National Transportation Safety Board released recommendations focused on improving pedestrian safety in light of the alarming and continuing uptick in pedestrian deaths since 2009. The recommendations themselves are targeted at actions other federal agencies can take, but there are still some lessons to take away from the recommendations as a whole.
Yesterday, the Senate voted to confirm Elaine Chao as the next Secretary of Transportation.
To Secretary Chao we say congratulations. America’s transportation system is a key part of our economy and our communities, and in your new position you have a unique and valuable opportunity to improve this country.
Chao already has experience running a federal agency, and has made clear that safety will be a priority for her time as transportation secretary. We think that’s fantastic—especially if she means making streets safer for people walking and biking.
Between 2005 and 2014, a total of 46,149 people were struck and killed by cars while walking. In 2014, the most recent year for which data are available, 4,884 people were killed by a car while walking—105 people more than in 2013. On average, 13 people were struck and killed by a car while walking every day in 2014. And between 2005 and 2014, Americans were 7.2 times more likely to die as a pedestrian than from a natural disaster. Each one of those people was a child, parent, friend, classmate, or neighbor. And these tragedies are occurring across the country—in small towns and big cities, in communities on the coast and in the heartland.