Safe Routes to School Travel Data Report

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In its recently released report Safe Routes to School Travel Data: A Look at Baseline Results from Parent Surveys and Student Travel Tallies the National Center for Safe Routes to School summarizes two years of travel data from the national safe routes to school program. Some of the key findings:

• Most children travel to school by car or school bus, although walking does make up a fairly significant portion of school trips (11 percent in the morning and 15 percent in the afternoon)
• Walking peaks in fifth grade, when nearly a quarter of kids walk or bike to school, then drops when children enter middle school (possibly due to middle schools being further from home than elementary schools)
• Distance is the biggest factor in parents' decision to allow their kids to walk to school, and makes a dramatic difference in walking rates. Over 40 percent of children who live less than a quarter-mile from school walk to school. However, the percentage of walkers drops to nine percent for children living between 1/2 and one mile from school--and to two percent or less for children who live more than a mile away from school.
• Although distance was important, traffic speed, traffic volume, and intersection crossing safety were also major factors in whether or not parents allowed their children to walk to school. Weather also made a difference to parents, but not as much as has been shown in previous studies.

Based on this data, the National Center for Safe Routes to School suggests that in the short term safe routes to school programs focus efforts particularly on areas within a mile of schools, where many children already walk. Since safety concerns are a major reason that parents don't allow their children to walk to school, identifying strategies to lower traffic around schools, reduce traffic speeds, and provide children with safe crossings could have a strong influence on the number of kids who walk to school.

WalkSanDiego 2010 Gala

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San Diego pedestrian advocacy group WalkSanDiego has announced the date of its annual Gala and Golden Footprint Awards ceremony. The Gala, honoring Lemon Grove Mayor Mary Sessom and other award winners to be announced, is a great opportunity to mingle with other pedestrian advocates and learn about some of the important pedestrian work happening in California's most southern county. You can get more details on the website or from the event flyer.

Free FHWA Pedestrian Safety Webinar Tuesday

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Date: Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Time: approximately 1:00-3:00 pm Eastern Time (that's 10-12 am for those of us on the west coast)

The Details: This webconference will focus on tools for improving safety. There will be two presentations and discussions.

Dan Nabors (of VHB) will discuss Pedestrian Road Safety Audits (PRSAs). Case studies and programs such as Montgomery County, Maryland’s PRSA program will be highlighted. Montgomery County’s PRSA program includes an innovative funding mechanism, a before and after study, and has resulted in numerous engineering, enforcement, and education safety countermeasures.

Sarah Weissman (of the Transportation Safety Resource Center at Rutgers University) will discuss “Plan4Safety,” a multi-layered decision support tool and program created for the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT). Plan4Safety identifies crash hot spots, integrates statewide crash data, roadway characteristic data, calculates statistical analyses, incorporates network screening layers and models, and includes visual analytical tools (GIS).

You don’t need to register. Just follow below instructions:

LINK TO JOIN THE WEB CONFERENCE:
http://fhwa.na3.acrobat.com/psfsw/.
Select “enter as guest,” type your name in the space provided, then click on
“enter room”

TELECONFERENCE NUMBER TO ACCESS AUDIO PORTION

Phone: 800-988-0375, passcode *:* 8220909

Hollywood Walk Audits - Feb 25 and 27

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This week the Hollywood Community Studio is hosting two hour-long walks for people interested in making Hollywood a more walkable place to work and play.

For the uninitiated, a walk audit is a short walking survey of a neighborhood to evaluate the area's pedestrian friendly (or unfriendly) features. Walk audits focus on all aspects of the walking environment, including sidewalks, crosswalks, street furniture, landscaping, lighting, adjacent buildings and other elements that contribute to the pedestrian environment. Often hosted by local pedestrian advocacy groups, walk audits can the the first step in a process to improve community walkability. The great thing about walk audits, aside from the fact that they get people out walking in their neighborhood, is that they provide planners and community leaders with data on the pedestrian enviroment that might not otherwise get collected in a typical traffic study.

"Auditors" often use checklists to help evaluate the walkability of a neighborhood. Here are a couple of examples that you can use in your community:
Partnership for a Walkable America
City of Los Angeles
WalkSanDiego

This Week on Foot

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It seems like we've been hearing a lot lately about the dangers pedestrians face in inclement weather, and this week is no exception. First, in Maryland there was a Pedestrian killed on Branch Avenue while avoiding snowy sidewalks (proving why it's so important to clear the sidewalks and the roadways after a storm). Then, in Montreal Snow removal trucks kill 3 pedestrians.

Even though they rarely have to worry about snow, Seattle bicyclists and pedestrians were hoping for increased safety from proposed legislation that would have increased penalties for drivers who hurt or kill "vulnerable" road users. Unfortunately, the 'Vulnerable Users' bill dies in state Senate -- but supporters promise to bring it back again.

At least pedestrians in New York got some good news this week when they learned that Broadway pedestrian plazas made permanent, NYC might create more . The popular car-free spaces in central Manhattan have not been without controversy, but during their eight-month pilot period they were popular enough to convince Mayor Michael Bloomberg to keep the plazas in place.

Other cities around the world are considering implementing similar projects. Pedestrians to reclaim Queen Street in Brisbane, Australia, and a Bus terminus at Valletta to make way for pedestrians in Malta.

Abu Dhabi is also working to make its streets more pedestrian friendly, where a new street design manual explains Narrower lanes will cut speeding . Maybe they'll let us borrow it to use in LA?