Upcoming Walking Events

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March 2
UCLA Complete Streets for California 2012 Conference

Featuring sessions on redfining street performance metrics, equity considerations, pollution control, a keynote speech by Gil Penalosa, and much more. More information and registration here.

March 6, 11:00 PST
Creating Healthy Communities Through Design: Improving Parks and Active Recreation Opportunities

Creating neighborhoods with great parks, open space, and active recreation opportunities encourages people to be active and fit, helping to prevent obesity and related chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease. Improving parks, trails, sports fields, and other recreation infrastructure also creates more sustainable, livable, and desirable places to live and work. 

 This webinar will focus on creative ways that cities across the country are creating new opportunities for park and recreation spaces, as well as how communities are encouraging more physical activity in - and improving access to - existing park and recreation facilities. Information about the health, economic, and sustainability benefits of parks and active recreation opportunities will also be presented.

Register here.

March 16, 2012
Walk San Diego Visioning San Diego Lunch Forum
Join WSD for a presentation by renowned transportation engineer (I can vouch for him, he used to be my boss) Rock Miller as he talks about the status of walking and biking in California. The talk will be held at the Downtown Information Center located at 193 Horton Plaza.

Tickets are $5 in advance and $7 at the door.
Make a reservation by e-mail here.

Cool Ped Stuff # 20: Awards Season

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Here in LA, it's hard to miss the fact that the Oscars are upon us (what, you mean your town hasn't been inundated with billboards pleading for Academy votes?). The stars might be celebrating by being driven around in shiny black limos, but Carbusters is shining the spotlight on movies that don't feature automobile travel. In its first ever No-Car Oscars, the site rates the nine Best Picture nominees for their portrayal of transportation modes. And the winner is...Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (hard to beat a  movie set in a city as walkable and rich in public transportation as New York).
Check out the Carbusters site for more info or click on the links below to see the scorecards for each movie.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (20.5)See Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, Max von Sydow and child actor Thomas Horn all use alternative
transportation.
War Horse (10.5)
When a motorized vehicle shows up, it’s usually bad news.
Tree of Life (8.5)
Recreates a neighborhood where kids play in the street without fear of being hit by a car.
The Descendants (8)
Includes the memorable scene of George Clooney leaving his Honda at home and running through his suburban neighborhood to get to his friends’ house.
Hugo (7.5)
Celebrates the social interactions and intersections at a train station.
Midnight in Paris (3.5)
A writer revels in walking the streets of Paris while his fiancée and her parents view walking as suspicious behavior.
The Artist (2.0)When you’re a star you’re chauffeured in a car. When you’ve given up all hope, you give away your car.
The Help (0.5)The white heroine drives a convertible; the black domestic help ride the bus.
Moneyball (- 10)
From watching this movie you’d never know the San Francisco area is rich with public transportation.

Driverless Cars, or Why I'm Moving to Nevada

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Maybe I've mentioned my ongoing bet with husband: he's convinced we won't see mainstream adoption of driverless cars in our lifetime, and I'm certain we will. This week I'm just a little closer to winning that bet, as Nevada finalizes rules allowing driving permits for robotic cars.

In a state known for gambling, this isn't as big of a risk as you might think. As one of folks involved in Google's driverless car experiment pointed out recently, “Our computers drive our cars better than you do when you’re drunk. That’s our starting point.”

They also don't text, or fall asleep at the wheel, or participate in many of the other behaviors that are so dangerous for pedestrians, cyclists, and other drivers. But these vehicles don't just drive better than a human on their best day--they driver better than a human. That's because they can "see" things that a person simply can't:

"We were driving behind an 18-wheeler and we saw the vehicles in front of the 18-wheeler — vehicles we could not see with our eye — because the signal bounced off the pavement ... at a glancing angle underneath the 18-wheeler. And so no human will ever have the amount of information that these cars have when they are driving."

Of course, we're still years away (note to husband: experts are talking about mainstream adoption in terms of "years," not "decades") from being able to purchase our own driving robot. In the meantime, there are other technologies out there that promise increased roadway safety while we wait. For example, Volvo is working on vehicles that can connect to "platoons" on highways led by professional drivers. While the "engine" of these road-trains would be driven by a human, once wirelessly connected to the train, the rest of the drivers would just site back and enjoy the ride. Volvo suggests that their trains may be on the road in Europe as soon as 2020.

Excuse me, while I go collect my $50.

This Week on Foot

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This week the top news continues to be that the proposed federal Transportation bill jeopardizes fate of bike, pedestrian programs. It's frustrating that our national government doesn't appear to understand the importance of pedestrian and bike funding, given that the public does: Survey says ... most Americans like smart growth! And also, Most Americans Want a Walkable Neighborhood, Not a Big House. But unless things change quickly on Capitol Hill, Pedestrians must step cautiously in Nebraska...and everywhere else in the country.

Like in Colorado, where they're not Treading safely: Pedestrian crashes more than double between 2007-2010, Kansas where Pedestrian, motorists struggle for right-of-way on local streets, or Chicago where Pedestrian dangers on trial 6 years after child's hit-and-run death.

And as if crashes aren't enough of a problem, U.S. Cities Are Losing 4 Million Trees a Year as our cities are developed with more and more impervious surfaces. Of course, sometimes trees are the problem, as in LA where this week we're shown Proof that ficus trees are bad for the sidewalks.

But it's snow on the sidewalks that's causing problems in Denver, where Homeowners And City Face Off Over Snowy Sidewalk. Meanwhile in Lawrence city sidewalk ordinance ruled unconstitutional, and across the world Jakarta’s sidewalks offer more than just pedestrians. You can see why sidewalks might become an area of interested for UCLA professor Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris: In Athens, Greece, the Traffic is Worse!, but the sidewalks get a lot more use than they do in LA.

Elsewhere in the country, Quincy starts new pedestrian safety program, a Woman who killed pedestrian sentenced to four years in prison, and Floridians are wondering Is an elevated roadway on Pensacola Beach worth $25M?

Finally, a few words on Active-adult living: Walkability in Manassas’ Gatherings is a key focus, but For Healthy Cities, Government and Business Need to Reverse Roles according to one blogger. What do you think? 

Feeling the HEAT

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For those of you who looking for a way to quantify the health benefits of walking or cycling (probably many of you, given the growing push for "measurable" results from new programs or projects), the WHO's online tool HEAT (the Health Economic Assessment Tool) can help you "conduct an economic assessment of the health benefits of walking or cycling by estimating the value of reduced mortality that results from specified amounts of walking or cycling."

HEAT is available here. To use it you'll need to provide:

• An estimate of how many people are walking or cycling. 
• An estimate of the average duration spent walking or cycling in the study population
• Mortality rate
• Value of a statistical life
• Time period over which you wish average benefits to be calculated
• A discount rate, if desired

While HEAT was primarily developed for European use, you can take a look at how some researchers in the US modified it for their use in this study.