Your Very Own Crosswalk: A Step-by-Step Manual

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So you're staring out your window, watching cars race by your local street corner, and suddenly it hits you: "We need a marked crosswalk there!" You grab your phone and as your fingers aim towards the dial pad something else hits you: "I have no idea who to call about this."

For a lot of would-be pedestrian advocates the journey to a crosswalk ends right there because, and I say this as someone who works in one, nobody in their right mind wants to wade into the swamps of a murky local government bureaucracy voluntarily. You might never get out.

Seriously.

I occasionally turn the corner at work and run across some lost soul who just wanted to renew their food handlers permit back in 1983 and has been at the civic center ever since.

But it doesn't have to be that hard--or at least, that confusing. To help you out in your endeavours, I've put together this handy guide to help you turn your favorite crossing from plain pavement to pedestrian paradise. (One caveat before we begin: I've tried to keep this as generic as possible, but since every city/state/country's government is organized a little differently, I can't guarantee I've covered all potential scenarios. Hopefully this will at least give you a starting point.)

Photo courtesy of Streetsblog 

Step 1: Why are we doing this again?

If you're serious about getting a crosswalk installed in your neighborhood, you need a convincing argument for installing it--and by convincing I don't mean generic or self-serving complaints like "people in my neighborhood drive too fast" or "I hate having to walk an extra block to cross the street." These may be legitimate problems, but remember that yours is only one of hundreds of similar requests your city receives. To make yours rise to the top you need to:

• Be polite - This can be a frustrating process, but rudeness gets you nowhere but the trash can. Letters to your city beginning "Dear pea-brains" does not further your cause (plus they get boring after a while). Along these same lines, ranting letters in ALL CAPS do not endear you to the folks whose help you need.
• Be sane - Now is not the time to bring up conspiracy theories, aliens, or explicit pictures. Ditto on the chicken/bloody corpse/traffic light costume
• Get data - Can you spend an hour counting how many people try to cross the road on a typical afternoon? Calculate how many schoolchildren use the crossing to get home? Find out the number of past crashes at your location? The more detailed information you have to demonstrate that there is a problem at your crossing, the stronger your argument becomes
• Gather support - From your neighbors, your PTA, your local pedestrian advocacy organization (more on this in Step 7)

This Week on Foot

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This week Five Pedestrians Awarded Compensation from Mobile Phone Companies for injuries they sustained at the hands (or should I say, vehicles?) of distracted drivers. The move encouraged legislators in New York and Texas to introduce bills that would impose Mandatory Loss of Cell Phone Privileges on drivers convicted of talking or texting while on the road.

In other good news, congress is moving forward with Changes to Federal Transportation Funding Regulations that favor pedestrian travel over highway improvements and high-speed rail projects. Perhaps inspired by their federal counterparts, Wisconsin's state assembly voted to Increase Gas Taxes to Pay for Sidewalks throughout the state.

Meanwhile, here in Los Angeles Caltrans has announced plans for a Temporary 405 Closure, a la cicLAvia, allowing locals to enjoy the iconic freeway on foot or pedal. The San Diego and Ventura district offices are considering similar plans for the 5 and the 101 within their jurisdictions.

Outside of the US, pedestrians in Mumbai, India have staged an Encroachment Sting Operation with the help of local officials, forcing businesses and vendors to clean up their sidewalks and remove barriers to pedestrian travel. The work has inspired similar efforts in other cities throughout the country.

Back home, one small town in Idaho is considering Ordinance Changes to Remove the Word Jaywalking from its traffic code, in recognition of the concept that streets belong to more than just vehicles. Similarly, in Canada, Vancouver and Victoria move to Eliminate Fines for Crossing Outside Crosswalks. These types of changing attitudes could explain why in Arizona, Police Blame Motorist for a nighttime crash involving two pedestrians. 

Finally, in a heartening story out of South Carolina, one city declares April 1 Pedestrian Appreciation Day. To celebrate, major streets around the city center will be closed to vehicle traffic, neighborhood groups will participate in various "street beautification" activities, and the mayor will lead a group of students on a Safe Routes to School walk audit of the local elementary school.

April Walking Events

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April 6
LISC Webinar
Complete The Streets: Making Roads and Streets an Integral Component of Sustainable Communities

While we know that streets are the vital link between homes, jobs, amenities, and retail corridors, the challenge is often to create road patterns and streetscapes that ensure safe, attractive, pedestrian-friendly environments for neighborhood residents. Join this webcast to learn more about how communities can incorporate streets into community planning processes and develop transportation options that enhance quality of life. National experts and local practitioners will look at how to complete the streets - integrate citiziens into decisions, advocate for place-based government policies, design efffective streetscapes, and implement effective strategies. Discussion will include both transit and transportation and provide opportunities for interative participation.

11:00 am - 1:30 pm
Register to attend here.

April 10
CicLAvia!

April 13
Caltrans Webinar
Rethinking Infrastructure: How Do We Make Urban Arterials Safer and More Comfortable for Pedestrians?

Elizabeth Macdonald — University of California Transportation Center
Details here.
 
April 16
South Park-Burlingame Community Walk, Sponsored by WalkSanDiego

8:30-9:00 am – Meet your fellow walkers; 9:00 am – 10:30am – Walk
Meet at the corner of 30th Street and Juniper Street. Let’s explore this beautiful old neighborhood famous for its pink-concrete sidewalks. We’ll stroll through several neighborhoods areas with well-known historic homes that showcase a number of San Diego architects/architectural styles. Three mile walk on flat terrain.

Suggested $5 donation for non-members. No reservations needed.
For further information, contact Dave Schumacher
 
April 20-22
OTS Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Training

California WALKS and UCB SafeTREC will facilitate community pedestrian safety Toward Zero Deaths engagement training at the California Office of Traffic Safety's April 20-22 statewide seminar in San Diego. Learn how-tos for pedestrian count and travel prediction, Health Assessments, crash data GIS-mapping, new MUTCD signals/signs, SRTS, pedestrian law enforcement, federal Liveability funding and more. Limited scholarships are available--contact Jill Cooper, Associate Director, SafeTREC

Click here for flyer and to register.

Upcoming Conferences

Registration is now open for two upcoming pedestrian-friendly conferences:

Safe Routes to School 2011 - Minneapolis, MN
August 16-18
More info and registration here.

Congress for New Urbanism 19 - Growing Local
June 1-4
More info and registration here.

Advocate for Safe Routes to School

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Our favorite local Safe Routes to School advocate Jessica Meaney needs support for the Los Angeles Citywide Safe Routes to School proposal, which will be heard before the full city council this Friday.

From Ms. Meaney:
"The proposed Strategic City-Wide Safe Routes to School Plan funded by the Measure R local return pedestrian set-aside for $1.2M. LADOT staff is recommending using collision data to prioritize the city’s efforts and develop a meaningful approach to making communities in the city more walkable and bikable for kids and parents on their way to school (see staff proposal here). Los Angeles Bicycle Coalition and the Safe Routes to National Partnership are recommending that the City also use socio-economic data in the prioritization as we know that children and their families in low-income communities suffer a disproportionate burden of disease and injury.

A citywide strategic Safe Routes to School plan will allow the City to prioritize and methodically address making it safer for students to walk and/or bike to school, as well as ensure Safe Routes to School funds succeed in Los Angeles, leverage additional resources, and address and improve transportation policies."

Attend the hearing yourself, or sign on to the letters of support using the links here.

Overcoming opposition to narrow streets

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Recently the Strong Towns Blog published an amazing post laying out the key arguments for narrower streets--and how to make them in a language public safety officials will understand. Here's an excerpt:

1. Public safety, including fire protection, is very important.


We acknowledge this is a critical issue. People want to and need to feel safe in their homes. We also acknowledge that we sometimes actually undervalue fire protection, at least until it is our house on fire. Providing a high-level of protection, including reducing response times, is a community priority.

2. As budgets are tightened, we are forced to make choices in how we provided local services.

Unfortunately, the state of our public budgets is forcing us to make some very difficult choices. And we can see, in communities across the country, that many are opting to reduce fire fighting capabilities, including force reductions and extending the life of equipment further than it should be. These are dangerous precedents to set in what are likely early rounds in a long, multi-year budget crisis.

3. If we stick with the current approach, we may have wide streets, but we won't be able to afford to maintain them, or even pay for the fire department to drive on them.

The amount we spend on our fire department is dwarfed by the amount we spend on maintaining our roads and streets -- or would be spending if we were actually maintaining them. This is the elephant in the room, the thing we never talk about. We have chosen to invest in a pattern of development that is prohibitively expensive to maintain, and it is crowding our the other parts of our budget.

Pretty great, huh? You can read the full post at the Strong Towns Blog here.