Pedestrians taking steps to further their cause

BY JOAN LOWY
Scripps Howard News Service
mailto:[email protected]
February 21,  2001

A belief that the simple act of walking in most American cities and suburbs has become either inherently dangerous or fundamentally impractical has spawned a grass-roots movement to retake the nation's streets for pedestrians.

From Boston to Austin, Texas, to Portland, Ore., groups devoted exclusively to advocacy on behalf of pedestrians have sprung up largely independent of each other over the past decade and are now coalescing into a national movement.

In August, pedestrian advocates will hold their first national convention in Oakland, Calif.

Fueling the movement is the fact that children and adults don't walk nearly as much as people did only a generation ago, largely because cities and suburbs are increasingly being designed in ways that favor cars and make pedestrians feel unsafe or make walking unpleasant.

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation's Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey, the number of trips the average American adult takes on foot each year dropped 42 percent between 1975 and 1995. Among children, walking trips dropped 37 percent.

Americans lead the world in use of automobiles over walking or biking. One study cited by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found Americans use cars for 84 percent of their trips in urban areas compared to cars used to make 36 percent of trips in Sweden

Nationally, the number of pedestrian fatalities each year is actually declining. In 1999, the latest year for which figures are available, 4,906 pedestrians were killed in traffic accidents - an average of one pedestrian killed every 107 minutes, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. An estimated 85,000 pedestrians were injured.

That is a 25 percent decline from the 6,556 pedestrians killed in 1989. But pedestrian advocates say the decline in deaths is not a reflection of safer streets, but of a dramatic drop in walking.

"There is absolutely no reason to believe that things are safer,'' said Bill Wilkinson, executive director of the National Center for Bicycling and Walking, based in Washington, D.C. "It's more hostile out there: The traffic is faster, the roads are wider, the enforcement is down, and the courts are a joke.

"The majority of motor vehicle operators who hit and kill pedestrians are never cited for anything more than a misdemeanor at the most.''

Cars are also getting bigger. Drivers are talking on cell phones or eating and working while they drive. Traffic is more congested, making drivers more tense and distracted.

The Surface Transportation Policy Project, an anti-sprawl group, has calculated that walking is 36 times more deadly per mile than driving.

"I think there are individuals and informal networks of people in a lot of communities that are starting to pay attention to this,'' Wilkinson said.

In San Francisco, a city ad campaign launched last fall features a poster that depicts a frightened, elderly woman grasping a walker and glancing over her shoulder at an approaching car. "I'm sorry I ran over your grandma, but I didn't want to spill my latte," it says.

The city has more than two dozen pedestrian deaths each year. A survey by San Francisco's comptroller found that one in three residents felt unsafe crossing the street.

In one notorious stretch of Queens Boulevard in New York City, 73 pedestrians have been struck and killed since 1993 and dozens more injured. In response to public outrage, city officials recently launched a ticketing blitz of speeders and jaywalkers and increased pedestrian crossing times and posted signs marking sites of fatal accidents to warn pedestrians that crossing the street could be fatal.

In Santa Rosa, Calif., a teen-ager's death two years ago sparked an uproar over improving pedestrian safety. The student was killed while walking alongside traffic on his way home from a new high school - there was no sidewalk on his only route home.

The city has since dedicated $5 million to new sidewalks and now requires all new schools to have safe, walkable routes for students before they open.

Last year, pedestrian advocates picketed outside a Galyan's sporting goods store in Buckhead, an upscale neighborhood in Atlanta, protesting the store's practice of keeping its street-level door locked so that customers could only enter through the parking garage. The presumption, the protesters said, was

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