Red Light Cameras

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Perhaps you've been following the debate over the City of Los Angeles' abrupt move to consider eliminating its red light photo enforcement program in the LA Times or Streetsblog. For reasons I'll discuss in a moment, I believe this is dangerous and shortsighted on the part of the City, and I hope you'll join me in speaking out in support of red light cameras ASAP (the City Council will take this issue up in the next few days).

The Traffic Safety Coalition has already put together a petition for you to sign in support of the cameras, conveniently saving me the effort of having to create one myself. Please take a moment to sign here--I promise it won't take more than a minute, and it will help us send the right message to the City Council before it's too late. Do it now, I'll wait.

Finished? Okay, let's talk a little more about the issue of red light cameras in LA. As you're surely aware, red light cameras (aka RLCs) spark some serious, and often misinformed, vitriol. Setting aside the more ludicrous arguments against the cameras (sorry, nothing in the US constitution protects your "right" to run a red light), there are legitimate questions regarding their effectiveness. Here are a few of the latest studies on the subject:

• Safety Evaluation of Red-Light Cameras
• An evaluation of the effectiveness of red- light cameras at signalized intersections
• The effectiveness of red-light cameras: a meta-analysis of the evaluation studies

Each shows that there are indeed reductions in crashes at intersections where RLCs are installed, though the studies acknowledge that in some cases the total reduction is diminished due to increases in particular types of collisions.

This Week on Foot

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This week begins with some outrageous decisions from our legal system. First, there's No jail time for driver who killed pedestrian in a crosswalk because he was paying more attention to his text messages than the road in front of him. Then, the Kenosha DA won't charge driver in 2010 pedestrian death in Wisconsin, because the pedestrian was walking down the wrong side of the road at dusk in dark clothing--which apparently is a greater crime than drinking and getting behind the wheel, as the driver in this case did.

And as if a biased legal system wasn't enough, pedestrians still have to deal with the problem of poor pedestrian design, as pointed out to us this week by Raise the Hammer with thisWalkability Fail Near St. Joseph's Hospital and this Walkability Fail At Aberdeen and Dundurn.

Fortunately there are some lawmakers who'd like to make things easier for pedestrians--or at least to give local jurisdictions more control over speed limits (and thus, more ability to lower them). As Streetsblog reports this week the Newest Attempt to Give Cities Power Over Speed Limits Gains Ground in Sacramento . But at the same time local leaders are considering making things more dangerous for pedestrians by removing red light cameras here in LA. It's a shame that L.A. traffic cameras may get the red light, since they can discourage the kinds of bad driving (e.g. illegal right turns on red) that are particularly dangerous to pedestrians.

And it is dangerous out there for pedestrians. This week there was a Man hit by minivan crossing Oxnard street , while across the country In Lower Hudson Valley, elderly pedestrians more likely to be hit (and also more likely to die from their injuries). Perhaps the Hudson Valley is facing some of the same problems as Corpus Christi, where Downtown Crosswalks Prove Too Speedy For Pedestrians: 13 Seconds Just Isn't Enough
But it's not all bad news out there. In New York,  Yeshiva University proposes new pedestrian plaza (because Public plazas are good for the city). And across the ocean Street Delivery gives the city back to pedestrians for sixth time in Romania. For those of you interested in doing the same thing, this week the Atlantic teaches you How to Turn a Parking Lot Into an Ideal Green Community.

Finally, this week we have news that its not just pedestrians who are benefiting from the pedestrian detection technology that's being installed in new vehicle models: Volvo Using Pedestrian Detection System To Spot Animals, Too.

Improving Pedestrian Design

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A couple resources for planners and engineers hoping to improve roadway design to better accommodate pedestrians and bicyclists:

First, from the Journal of the American Planning Association, Designing for the Safety of Pedestrians, Cyclists, and Motorists in Urban Environments. In this article, the authors probe at one of the underlying premises that leads to today's emphasis on "vehicle-oriented" roadway design: wide roads are safe roads. Opening with this disturbing quote, "...every effort should be made to use as high a design speed as practical in the interests of safety," from the 2004 AASHTO "green book" (one of the primary guides for American roadway design), the article proceeds to debunk the theory that vehicle crashes are the result of random error and thus roads should be designed to be as forgiving (read: fast) as possible. Obviously such an attitude presents some concerns for vulnerable road users like pedestrians, who are much more likely to be killed or injured on high-speed roads than those where supposedly "dangerous" speed treatments are in place.

While the JAPA article explains why the old theories of roadway design should be thrown out, that doesn't solve the problem of what to do with all the high-speed, pedestrian-unfriendly roadways that have already been built. Enter Caltrans, and its newest complete streets resource, Complete Intersections: a Guide to Reconstructing Intersections and Interchanges for Bicycles and Pedestrians. In it, Caltrans walks through (sorry, the ped puns are hard to avoid) appropriate treatments for each type of intersection, including three- and four-leg intersections, as well as more unique situations like mid block crossings and roundabouts. I particularly appreciate the "Guiding Principles" that Caltrans lays out for intersection design. So often in the past these appear to have been missing from the engineering thought process. Hopefully the new guidance from Caltrans marks a change for the better:

• Observe (watch how the intersection is currently used)
• Pedestrians and bicyclists will be there (people will walk, regardless of whether or not an engineer thinks walking is unsafe at a particular location)
• Maintain and improve (instead of removing pedestrian facilities)
• Tee it up (to 90 degrees, which forces motorists to make slower turns at intersections)
• One decision at a time (don't force people to worry about too many things at once)
• Slow it down
• Shorten crossings
• Improve visibility
• Clarify the right-of-way (because not everyone has memorized the vehicle code like some of us have)
• Keep it direct (pedestrians won't walk out of their way to get somewhere)
• Light at night
• Access for all (including young and old pedestrians, and people with disabilities)

This Week on Foot

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Why Do The Designs Of Our Roads Consistently Ignore The Safety Needs Of Pedestrians? our friends in Hartford ask this week. Well, perhaps it's because of articles like this one that place the blame for crashes on those annoying walkers...since as everyone knows that Distracted Pedestrians Pose Hazard to Themselves, Drivers

Of course, the real question is what to do about the problem. Many believe that better roadway design is a good start, which is why Complete Streets Bill Introduced in Senate this week. But Watch your steps -- Without policy changes, expect more pedestrian fatalities . Hopefully things won't get as bad as they are in India, where there's a 40% rise in pedestrian deaths so far this year. Seems like India could use some New opportunities for New Urbanism? Or perhaps they could learn some lessons from Eugene, Oregon about Staying safe on dangerous streets .

Of course, it turns out that one safety improvement tested in Oregon isn't working so well, as we learn from TriMet: Audible pedestrian warning system is not effective. Maybe Oregon could follow London's lead, where Pedestrian Crossing For Parliament Square Could End Brian Haw Protest.

More pedestrian crossings might help out here in LA as well, where we can at least be happy (?) with news from the CHP: 1 person - not 3 - died on LA County roads it patrols during Memorial Day weekend . Still, I'm not sure this means we've really solved the The foot challenge for Sun Belt cities.
 As they're saying in Idaho, it's Time to take risk to Twin Falls pedestrians seriously...as well as the risks to pedestrians in other states.

Maybe part of the problem is inconsistency. For instance, this week Crime Voice noted that Penalties vary for fatal text-and-drive crashes. Then again, it could be poor urban design, as in Madison where one Pedestrian claims Dollar General failed to provide safe entrance. Of course, there's always this problem: 11-year-old motorist hits vehicles, pedestrian at Kansas mobile home park.

Not really sure what to do about that last one, unless you choose to go the escapist route and lose your worries in some good literature. If so, you might want to check out 'The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris' by John Baxter

Pedestrians of the Future

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This great find from the blog Paleo-Future provides a fascinating look at what people at the turn of the 20th century predicted (or maybe just hoped) would happen over the next 100 years in the fields of energy, education, linguistics, transportation, and many others. It's good for a laugh, although some of the guesses are remarkable prescient. A preview of the pedestrian-related predictions:

There will be no street cars in our large cities
Transit advocates might cringe at this one, but the point was to place noisy, high-speed vehicle traffic above- or below-ground, separating it from the pedestrian-oriented streets at ground-level. It's an idea that's been floated before, notably by Da Vinci in the late 1400s.

Automobiles will be cheaper than horses
True...until you factor in the external costs of cars and private vehicle travel, including the costs of all those pedestrian injuries and deaths.

And my personal favorite:

Everyone will walk ten miles
"A man or a woman unable to walk ten miles at a stretch will be regarded as a weakling." Health advocates, rejoice.