Broken Sidewalk Archives
Posts Tagged Pedestrian Issues
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Tag Archives: Pedestrian Issues
What’s With This Second Street Sidewalk?
Impassable Sidewalk on Second Street (BS File Photo)
How in the world did this sidewalk get approved? Located on Second Street between Jefferson and Liberty Streets, this sidewalk is pretty much all open grate. It’s part of the Marriott Hotel and a block from the convention center. Besides being impassable by ladies in high heels and those nervous of walking over pits in the sidewalk, it’s probably pretty difficult for the disabled, too. And the hotel building does absolutely nothing to enhance the sidewalk, either. Quite an unfortunate example.
PrintVideo: The Little Walk Sign Man Breaks Loose
The little man in the walk sign box decides to go for a dance and you’ll never cross the street in quite the same way again. Video created by Jeremy Yuricek of Electrocinema. If the video doesn’t load, click here. Hat tip Beautiful Decay.
Crossing The Street In Crescent Hill
Frankfort Avenue in Crescent Hill
It’s strange when doing the right thing is going beyond the call of duty. After enjoying a pleasant although chilly walk through the Crescent Hill neighborhood in December, I was standing at the curb of the intersection between Frankfort and Birchwood Avenues. As a pedestrian, it’s always a little bit difficult to determine just what to do at an unregulated intersection on an arterial road.
Standing on railroad track side of Frankfort, it’s clear that pedestrian amenities are lacking. There is a crosswalk painted at the road but that’s no guarantee of safety. The nearest stoplight was over 300 feet in one direction and beyond sight in the other. There were no sidewalks.
I decided to wait for a break in traffic and cross at Birchwood in the crosswalk. After all, under Kentucky state law, drivers are theoretically supposed to yield to pedestrians at marked and unmarked crosswalks when there is no traffic light. Easier said than done.
After waiting about a minute, a motorist in the far lane stopped. Traffic near me continued to barrel through the crosswalk and I assumed the opposite driver was waiting to make a turn.
After another minute it became clear that this stopped motorist was actually yielding to me, a pedestrian in a crosswalk. I kept trying to find a break in traffic in the other lane as it was clear no driver was going to observe proper right of way. In the meantime, stopped drivers behind the one polite individual began laying on the horn and passing in the parking lane.
In the end, I made it across and was quite flattered by the generosity of the original motorist stopping and yielding. But isn’t this supposed to happen every time? That’s what the law says, doesn’t it? Just one driver doing the right thing, however, was enough to make me feel a little better on the cold and cloudy day.
But when it comes down to it, why don’t more drivers properly yield to pedestrians? I have talked about those fancy crosswalks with the flashy lights that get in drivers’ faces about yielding and they don’t even always work. Is it that drivers don’t care? Don’t know any better? Just plain don’t like people not inside a car?
I believe most violations are made without the driver even recognizing he or she did anything wrong, but with Louisville’s pedestrian safety record in the gutter, how do we raise awareness of these issues? Enforcement or education? What are your thoughts?
Blindly Following Codes Creates Poor Sidewalks
Sidewalk in Smoketown
We have codes and regulations describing everything from avoiding dangerous pitfalls to accommodating wheelchair accessibility. The intent of these rules is supposed to make a better environment for everyone, but sometimes mindlessly following them can create hazards of their own. One of my pet peeves is when a sidewalk forces the pedestrian to negotiate unnecessarily an uneven surface. Take for instance these examples where the rules were followed by the book resulting in poor sidewalk design.
The above example is at Jefferson County High School off Floyd Street and shows a sidewalk with wheelchair cuts at several handicapped parking spots. Would anyone really walk on a sidewalk that acts as a sort of fun-house obstacle course forcing you up and down little hills repeatedly? My guess is that pedestrians are more likely to avoid the sidewalk and walk in the driving lane instead.
A similar example is shown below on West Market Street where two curb cuts to a parking lot create a small island in the middle. The sidewalk again dips to allow wheelchairs access but really only creates a small hill to maneuver. While this case is less extreme as the above example, it’s far more common.
This isn’t making a mountain out of a small sidewalk hill, it’s pointing out one detail that makes walking slightly less enjoyable. In both cases, a better design could have opted to keep the sidewalk flat at the level of the parking lot, making it easier for both wheelchairs and walkers alike. Sidewalks are elevated slightly on curbs for many reasons, but it’s certainly not a a mandatory position for all cases.
According to the book, however, there’s nothing wrong with these sidewalks. Imagine, though, if we began to use some common sense when we create our public realm and realize the implications of what exactly we’re building.
Sidewalk on West Market Street
Considering Pedestrian Safety And Walkability In Louisville
Louisville ranks 7th most dangerous metro over 1M (via T4America)
The big news so far this week is that if you walk in the Louisville Metro area, you’re taking your life into your own hands. A new report called Dangerous by Design co-authored by Transportation for America and Tri-State Transportation Campaign analyst Michelle Ernst reveals that Louisville is the 7th most dangerous metropolitan area over one million people for pedestrians. That’s right, it’s more dangerous to be a pedestrian in Louisville than in notoriously bad pedestrian environments such as Houston or Las Vegas.
To level the playing field among cities with varying pedestrian counts, the rankings were determined using a Pedestrian Danger Index representing the ratio between the average pedestrian fatality rate per 100,000 residents in a two-year period and the percentage of residents who commute to work by foot. Results represent the entire urban region rather than just the core city.
Louisville’s poor ranking is the result of many factors identified in the report including a trend for more low-density, auto-centric land use in the southern U.S. (Nine of the top ten worst cities are in the South, including the four worst in Florida). The report also notes that wide, fast-moving arterial roads that facilitate such sprawling development are to blame for 56% of pedestrian deaths nationwide. These streets (think Shelbyville Road or Dixie Highway) often lack safe pedestrian infrastructure including sidewalks and crosswalks.
Total pedestrian fatalities in the Louisville area between 2007 and 2008 numbered 48 accounting for 14.2% of all traffic deaths. Only 1.7% of residents in Louisville walked to work. The Cincinnati area, for example, saw 33 pedestrian deaths in the same period accounting for 8.5% of traffic fatalities. Cincinnati counted 2.3% of residents walking to work. The winners in Kentucky are Elizabethtown with zero pedestrian deaths and 2.9% of workers walking and Lexington with the highest rate of walkers at 3.5%.
Suggested improvements include investing in better street infrastructure or “complete streets” that make the public realm more inviting to pedestrians. This can be achieved by simply adding sidewalks and crosswalk, or implementing road diets or traffic calming techniques. Emphasis on walkable communities is also cited as a key solution indicating that land use patterns in our sprawling suburbs must be adapted to allow a mix of uses at an appropriate density for walking.
Pedestrian spending in Louisville doesn’t seem to be the problem, however. The Dangerous by Design report indicates that Louisville is also in the top ten metros (number 8 ) for “Highest Federal Spending on Pedestrian Safety per Person” with $2.39 spent on bike and pedestrian infrastructure per person. Providence, RI ranks highest with $4.01 per person.
If Louisville is spending among the most per person for pedestrian improvements but still ranks among the worst metro areas for safety, then we’re either not putting our money in the right places or there’s a more fundamental problem that must be addressed.
I’m not going to try and diagnose these problems right now, but I would be willing to guess that addressing speed will be a key factor. Dangerous by Design points out the alarming truth about a pedestrian’s survival rate when struck at various speeds. When hit at 20MPH, your chances of recovery are good at 95%. As speed increases, survival rate drops rapidly. At 30MPH, the rate stands at 55% and at 40MPH your chances of survival are only 15%. Considering so many of Louisville’s arterials have a posted speed limit of 45 (or sometimes more) miles per hour, it’s no wonder that so many pedestrian deaths occur on arterial roads.
There’s also some good news for local pedestrians: Louisville’s core city (the old city limits) has been identified as the 15th most walkable city in the country by Walk Score based upon availability of amenities (such as businesses or parks) within walking distance that allow for the possibility of a car-free lifestyle. You can see the walkability “heat map” below indicating in green the most walkable parts of Louisville.
Louisville is the highest ranked city in our region and the top five walkable neighborhoods include the Central Business District, Limerick, Phoenix Hill, Cherokee Triangle, and Old Louisville. In all, Walk Score estimates that 25% of residents live in an area designated “Very Walkable.”
So to wrap up, it appears that Louisville has some work ahead of it to make streets safer for pedestrians. We as a city will need to determine how best to use our funds as we are among the top cities in the country for pedestrian spending (and we have millions more in stimulus funding still ahead of us). The core of Louisville is already showing signs of walkability which should be strengthened while we also promote principles of walkable development throughout our city and region.
[ Editor's note: We received word that the Dangerous by Design report was co-authored by Transportation for America and Tri-State Transportation Campaign Analyst Michelle Ernst, a change from what was originally reported. The article has been updated to reflect this. ]
- Dangerous by Design report (T4America)
- Transportation for America (Official Site)
- Surface Transportation Policy Partnership (Official Site)
- National Complete Streets Coalition (Official Site)
- Walk Score: Louisville (Official Site)
Walkability index in Louisville (via Walk Score)
Everyone’s Doing The Pedestrian Scramble
Up above is a video showing the changes that were recently implemented on a major intersection in London called the Oxford Circus. Besides the traffic calming measures of reconfiguring the lane widths and alignments, the major change here is the implementation of what’s referred to as the “pedestrian scramble” where all vehicular traffic is stopped and the intersection is turned over to pedestrians to cross at any angle.
While this device is most commonly used for intersections with very high pedestrian volumes, such as this London intersection or the famous scramble in Japan at Hachikō Square in Shibuya, Tokyo, it has been used in less major cities as well. Wikipedia reports (without citation) that the first such intersection was implemented in the 1940s in Kansas City and Vancouver and has since been found in many other cities around the world. Tom Vanderbilt at How We Drive notes that the first occurrence could have been in Denver.
Louisville has its own pedestrian scramble of sorts without knowing it. Next time you’re at the intersection of Fifth Street and Main Street, notice how for a time all traffic is stopped and pedestrians can cross at all crosswalks (and no turns are allowed on red), meaning it should technically be safe to cross diagonally. That’s very similar to the scramble without diagonal movements codified. Below is the same intersection drawn with scramble markings. I am not sure why the intersection behaves this way without being a true scramble or if it’s legal to cross diagonally, but it’s an interesting part of Downtown.
(movie via How We Drive)
Scrambling at Fifth and Main Streets
Finally, A Mid-Block Crosswalk That Works
Crosswalk on Floyd Street
While walking along Floyd Street at the University of Louisville, I was astonished to find a fancy new crosswalk installed to connect the Swain Student Activities Center with the Cardinal Park athletic fields. Louisville has plenty of mid-block crosswalks where a stop-light or stop sign isn’t feasible or even desirable, but, as I have noted before, our older mid-block crosswalks can fail miserably.
At other mid-block crosswalks around town, the pedestrian may have the right-of-way, but it’s up to the motorists to know how such a crosswalk works and then actually stop. Results are usually mixed and the pedestrian must be on high-guard at all times. Now, the University of Louisville’s new crosswalk makes crossing the street a little bit easier and a lot safer.
The Floyd Street crosswalk is similar to an example from Seattle (check the video in the last post) that responds to a pedestrian crossing the street. Two bollards detect a pedestrian ready to cross and activate flashing lights embedded into the street and several others lining the perimeter of adjacent signs. After watching several students cross the street and motorists immediately stop each time, it’s clear that there’s something to the design.
You may have seen mid-block crosswalks with perpetually blinking lights warning drivers to pay caution. These new lights only flash when there is a pedestrian present. Could it be that motorists have become numb to the older lights and tend to ignore them? The small lights in the pavement on each side of the crosswalk also help as well and are visible clearly during the day.
So does this work now because of its novelty or could this design prove valuable years down the road? Whatever the answer, it would be great to see this model adopted in other parts of the city.
- Crossing In Pedestrian Style In Seattle, Louisville, and England (Broken Sidewalk)
Ticketing Drivers For Blasting Through A Crosswalk
StreetsBlog points us to a police sting in Sacramento, this time targeting bad driving behaviors such as not yielding to pedestrians. When I first watched this clip, it seemed a little too good to be true, that dangerous drivers endangering pedestrians would be held accountable, but a plain-clothes officer spent the day walking back and forth across the street to show just how regular such a violation is. Here’s some info on the sting from StreetsBlog:
“Back in April, TV station KCRA filmed a plainclothes Sacramento officer busting motorists who couldn’t be bothered to yield the right of way. Notice how, though they cite the potential amount of the fine, neither the anchor nor the reporter ever intimate that the operation is a money-making scheme? Instead of sticking a mic in a driver’s face for a quick-and-dirty accusation of extortion — a near-must in most any mainstream media story about traffic enforcement — the reporter is completely sympathetic to the pedestrians in harm’s way, and rightly credits the officer for putting his life on the line.”
Earlier this year, I told you about the mid-block pedestrian crossings found throughout Louisville, complete with obnoxious and only semi-effective neon signs. Stepping into such a crosswalk in Louisville can be very dangerous, but could enforcing the pedestrian’s right-of-way help to improve crosswalks of all sorts?
And if you missed it in the news roundup a little while back, be sure to check out another StreetsBlog find on how Chicago is educating its officers and the public about bike safety.
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