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.

This Week on Foot

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This week has been all about sidewalks--funding them, that is. Or more exactly, NOT funding them. At the federal level, the Funding mandate for bike, pedestrian projects defeated in the House, and in LA everyone is buzzing about a Sidewalk study: How will L.A. pay for estimated $1.5B in improvements.

No matter how they do it, we Need to enhance facilities for pedestrians, say experts.Some cities are doing that, like Columbus, Dublin Working To Make Crosswalks Safer, and London where they're showing the rest of the world how to Walk this way. It's nice to see that folks in some places understand The importance of hitting the pavement.

Unfortunately, in Arizona it's the pedestrians getting hit--but at least they're getting restitution as

Prescott pays $45K to pedestrian hit by police car. It's not as easy in the Chicago area, where a  Joliet man fighting for rights of pedestrians amid local obstacles.

But they're removing obstacles to walkability in Silver Lake, where Pedestrians and bikes to rule the road on this Silver Lake street, and in Charlotte they're hoping to make things easier on pedestrians as the City brings bicycle/pedestrian coordinator onboard.

It's likely the new coordinator will want to work on street design like there are in Oklahoma, where 'Complete Streets' aims at creating a pedestrian-friendly Tulsa. They're thinking about the same thing in Washington, but wonder Will Spokane’s Streets Become More Vibrant? They could if the city follows Toronto's lead, where Kensington Market’s Pedestrian Sundays to be More Frequent.

Finally this week, check out this set of pedestrian eye candy in A gallery of walkability.

Ped/Bike funding, Safe Routes to School in Jeopardy

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It wasn't unexpected, but it's still discouraging to see the House version of the American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act squelch so many ped and bike programs. Of particular concern is the total elimination of the important Safe Routes to School program. Apparently the federal government's concern for k-12 education only extends to the perimeters of the school property; if kids never make it to school because they get hit by a bus on the way there, well that's a problem for someone else to solve.

Our friends at the Safe Routes to School Partnership have made it easy for you to contact your representative and complain. Please take a few minutes to urge Congress to restore pedestrian and bicycle funding to the bill. Thanks!

UCLA Complete Streets Conference

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Register here for the March 2 conference, featuring transpo gurus from across the country such as:

-          Reid Ewing, Professor, University of Utah
-          Regina Freer, Los Angeles City Planning Commission
-          Eran Ben-Joseph, author Rethinking a lot (forthcoming) Professor, MIT
-          Jackie Douglas, Executive Director, Livable Streets
-          Jose Luis Moscovich, Executive Director, San Francisco Transportation Authority

More about the conference from UCLA:

As the support behind the complete streets movement continues to evolve, exemplary on-the-ground projects are steadily growing in strength and in numbers.  What are recent accomplishments that have made appearances on the horizon of this movement, how have these efforts fared in their objectives to redefine and repurpose streets as public spaces?  What are promising new approaches and strategies for implementing complete and living streets in California and in the U.S.?  The second UCLA Complete Streets conference will present speakers from academia and practice to share observations and findings about recent accomplishments and explore new research and complete streets implementation examples.

This Week on Foot

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The end of January is turning out to be just as busy as the beginning. First, there's the ongoing controversy about Distracted pedestrians? Accidents on rise for headphone-wearers. Of course, some (ahem, Streetsblog) have a message to those who blame the pedestrians for this phenomenon: Dear Media Lemmings: Headphones Don’t Kill People, Drivers Do. And they're more likely to do it if they're distracted, which is why Streetsblog also suggests we Dislike? Mercedes-Benz Wants to Put Facebook in Your Dashboard.

With all this distraction, it's not surprise that Bike-Ped Traffic, Funding, and Fatalities All Inch Upward, or that one Mother of 3 kids hit in crosswalk wants tougher texting laws. Don't we all? Well, maybe not in Virginia, where a Bill to see drivers to exercise due care defeated in VA House subcommittee . And then, even the Santa Barbara City Council split over curb extensions at dangerous intersection, so I guess things that seem obvious to those of us in the pedestrian advocacy world (like how when you're talking about Traffic in LA.: Most Vulnerable Angelinos at Risk) aren't so straightforward elsewhere.

It's a little shaky outside the U.S. also, like in Chennai, India where Pedestrians find themselves on edge in or in Jakarta where Pedestrian safety yet to see improvement. At least in New Delhi they've figured out that Pedestrians prefer jaywalking to using bridges, PWD to investigate .

But lest you get too depressed about the state of the pedestrian world, remember that L.A. County takes step to promote exercise, reduce obesity while a Council Considers Warning Surfaces For Pedestrian Plazas in New York, Cranford police get $6,000 federal grant for pedestrian safety in New Jersey, and Students' Dream for Seven Springs Middle Sidewalks About to Materialize. At least in some places Pedestrian safety a city priority, Wisconsin Rapids officials say--though maybe not in upstate New York, where Syracuse lawmakers reject new way to enforce sidewalk shoveling. Well, you can't win them all.