Tag Archives: Walking in Cities

City rediscovers walking, Enhancing Safety for Pedestrians, Society, Walking As Wayfinding, Walking for Health

The Case for Density Transit and Walking

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Five years ago an extraordinary team of people from the two universities, the two health authorities, the metro Vancouver municipalities and regional government and TransLink got together to run a conference with an innovative idea-that creating communities around walkability was the intersection between health, happy places, liveliness and aging in place.You can view some of the proceedings from the Walk21 Metro Vancouver conference here.

Now Co.exist and others accept as doctrine the innovative concept that the conference was trying to impart-that a walkable city  is a sustainable, sociable well designed city that puts the health and well-being of residents first. In fact while the relationship between walkability and health status has already been established, this study “published in the Lancet, looked at 14 cities in 10 countries, all of which had a similar design, in order to determine whether or not the cities’ layouts themselves were the reason for increased health, as opposed to different lifestyles in different countries. The physical activity of the 14,222 adult participants was measured over four to seven days using Fitbit-style accelerometers. The principal data point was the average number of minutes walked per day.”

Looking at cities in Australia, South America, Europe and three cities in the United States there were some surprising findings, specifically that  urban factors that meant people walked more included “residential density, park and public transport density, and intersection density. Parks are obvious in their effect—people take walks in parks. Residential density is important because if you live in a compact neighborhood, you can easily walk to do your errands. And public transit density is important because not only does it obviate car use, but people have to walk to their nearest station instead of their driveway”

Mixed use development, density, and convenient transit go hand in hand in making walkable places. We’ve now got the evidence to convince policy makers of the important interconnectedness of these three things to design for walkable sustainable communities that support happier, healthier residents of any age.

 

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City rediscovers walking

Motorists Fume as the Right Bank Turns Left

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As reported by the CBC and others the City of Paris is doing a remarkable thing in permanently closing the Right Bank to car traffic, turning it into a pedestrian and cycling paradise. The road along the Right Bank has been in Paris’ downtown since the 1960’s and worked perfectly for what it was designed to do-move commuting traffic. But Paris has an air pollution problem-living in Paris means your life expectancy is reduced by 2 years,  and  air pollution claims 6,500 people.

While the Right Bank has been closed since the early 2000’s into a beach experience each summer, it reverted to its car dominated use in the Fall. Now Mayor Hidalgo, who also is the head and chair of the C40 Cities addressing climate change, has spearheaded a movement which has passed to permanently close the Right Bank road.

Since vehicles regularly commuted on this route prior to the closure, there is a bit  of pushback from those motorists. Before making way for the beach this summer, an estimated 43,000 cars drove the quay highway daily. Suburban commuters, taxi drivers and Uber are bitterly against the closure.

But Eric Britton, a sustainable development consultant looks to Copenhagen and the remarkable work that has been done to make that city into a biking and walking haven. He states”You see, congestion is also a policy. It’s a very valuable policy. Traffic is people, and people are smart, and they figure out other ways to get around.”

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Enhancing Safety for Pedestrians, Society

Get Rid of Speed Bumps, Fix Pollution. In Theory.

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As reported in the British Telegraph, Motordom’s last gasp is alive and well with a science reporter letting us know that removing speed bumps (called speed humps in Britain)  on the road will lessen pollution and save lives. I am not making this stuff up.

“In a report looking at how to make air cleaner, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), said that measures which help motorists stay at a constant speed, rather than accelerating and decelerating, were preferable to humps. It follows a study earlier this year by Imperial College which found that forcing drivers to slow down and speed up again produces significant harmful emissions”

But that is not really what the NICE link says when you click on it. It says if you slow down and drive smoothly, you will reduce pollution. The Imperial College report goes on more of a tangent, stating “road humps should be removed from streets close to schools and playgrounds because they increase the amount of pollution from cars, experts have said. Scientists have found that by forcing drivers to slow down before speeding up again, road humps cause vehicles to produce a greater amount of harmful emissions” And yes, they have made the link that speed humps impact air quality where “large numbers of children gather, such as outside schools or play areas”. There is no discussion that the speed humps are placed outside schools and play areas to slow vehicles and protect children.

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What of the lives saved and reduced injuries from speed hump slower speeds? We know that a child or adult being hit by a vehicle at 50 km/h has a 10 per cent of survival. That increases to a 90 per cent survival rate if the vehicular speed is reduced to 30 km/h. Speed humps or bumps reduce vehicular speeds and increase the likelihood of pedestrian survival in crashes. At the C40 Cities Summit in Mexico City incoming chair Mayor of Paris Anne Hildalgo has just announced that  the use of diesel vehicles will be prohibited  in four major C40 cities by 2025. Emissions can be reduced by the use of electric vehicles.

It is hard to believe in the 21st century that this vitriol for motordom supremacy is still being published by newspapers. There is a national movement started in Toronto to start calling crippling and deadly vehicular/pedestrian crashes “road violence”, a term that was first used in the early 20th century. Slower speeds save lives. Speed humps or bumps slow cars. Until we have better driver behaviour and streets designed for slower speeds, we need humps.

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Enhancing Safety for Pedestrians, Walking for Health

Pedestrians, Vehicles and Every Four Hours In Toronto

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In the Fall of 2016  the City of Toronto went through a day where 22 reported crashes between vehicles and pedestrians were reported. The Toronto Star has written an editorial on what  it called  “a quiet epidemic of violence against pedestrians” noting  “it’s time for political leaders to take it much more seriously”.

How bad is it? By December 1st 42 people were killed on Toronto streets. Even though senior citizens are only 14 per cent of the Toronto population, they make up 60 per cent of the fatalities. And there are hundreds of pedestrians that are being seriously injured in crashes-in Toronto, the average is that one pedestrian is hit every four hours.

Now that sounds like something quite serious. Toronto responded by a public campaign about the crashes, which basically informed citizens to wear bright colours and be careful. Prominent politicians, planners and others extolled the idea of “Vision Zero”, which in Toronto’s case was “Vision 20 Per Cent”-having a reduction of fatalities and accidents of 20 per cent in ten years, which still meant that 400 pedestrians were expendable as well as another 3,000 subject to serious injury to meet the target. Somehow the right of cars to travel quickly and efficiently outweighs the right of pedestrians and cyclists to safe use of the Toronto streets.

The Mayor of Toronto supported the city’s first-ever road safety program with a plan to lower speed limits from 50 km/h to 40 km/h on twenty “high risk” streets. (Hardly a reduction, when you contemplate that  a 30 km/h speed can result in a 90 per cent survival rate for a pedestrian in a crash. Why not go for 30 km/h?). But Toronto Star reporter Ben Spurr and William Davis examined the pedestrian fatalities and found that “just six of the 42 pedestrians killed between Jan. 1 and Dec. 1 of this year were struck on streets where the speed limit will be reduced as part of the city’s safety plan. Six more were in areas scheduled for “safety audits.” But the great majority happened in other parts of the city”.

The Toronto Star also published a  heartbreaking list of  some of the people who died on Toronto Streets-who they were, what they were doing when they died.

Reducing speeds is only one facet of the work that needs to be done to create a safer walkable city. Driver behaviour, road design, and enhancing visibility is also key. The Premier of Ontario has enabled legislation for municipalities to lower speed limits in their communities. Hopefully that will be the first step in changing  Toronto’s dynamic that it is just not vehicles that have a right to the road.

Enhancing Safety for Pedestrians, Society

Vulnerable Road Users and Where the Rubber Meets the Road

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The Toronto Star and its reporters are to be commended for talking about what others have ignored for so long-the tremendous grief, carnage and cost to families, friends, the insurance corporation and the health system caused by  pedestrians and cyclists being maimed and killed by vehicles-it was called road violence at the start of the twentieth century, and that term is returning to use now.

I have been writing about the awful year that the City of Toronto has had with over 40 deaths and hundreds of severe injuries. We like to think that in Vancouver we have this under control, with our well thought out transportation hierarchy that gives pedestrians the first priority. Those triangle graphs are lovely,but as a Price Tags commenter noted yesterday, there’s a real gap between what we say and what we do in Vancouver. While I am concentrating on the road violence in Toronto because there is a true will to do something about it, it should be noted that Vancouver’s pedestrian deaths, at over one person being killed  a month is per capita  twice the rate of Toronto’s. Where is the reaction?

Road safety or the lack of it is being recognized as a major public health problem. Our own Provincial Medical Health Officer Dr. Perry Kendall identified road violence as a major cause of fatalities and serious injuries in his report Where the Rubber Meets the Road released this spring. Dr. Kendall notes that 280 people die and another 79,000 people are injured on roads in British Columbia every year. Vulnerable road users (those people without the protection of an enclosed vehicle) make up 45.7 per cent of serious injuries in 2011. Vulnerable road users were also 31.7 per cent of fatalities in 2009 and that increased to 34.9 per cent in 2013.

In Toronto, City staff are now perceiving road safety as a major public health problem, where 1500 pedestrian and 950 cyclist collisions with vehicles have been reported to October 30. There is a 20.7 per cent hike in pedestrian injuries being treated at Toronto’s main trauma centre. That is not acceptable.

“Ward Vanlaar, chief operating officer of the Traffic Injury Research Foundation in Ottawa, said until the last decade or so, road safety was thought of as a transportation issue. “The take on it was that we have a price to pay for mobility, and the price is that certain people will die and that was considered to be acceptable,” he said. Vanlaar said that in recent years he’s seen a shift in thinking about traffic safety, both globally and across Canada. “People working in this field, and also in other health-related fields have had this epiphany almost, like ‘Hey, there are really a lot of people dying,’” he said.

There is a major change in seeing safety being more important than mobility, and having that applied to vulnerable road users too. If humans make mistakes that can cost human lives, then a transportation system needs to be designed to” mitigate those risks and basically eliminate those instances where, because of human error, people will die.”

Monica Campbell, a spokesperson for Toronto Public Health, said traffic safety falls within the realm of her department.“If you invest in safer roads, safer streets, better infrastructure for cyclists and pedestrians – does that reduce the burden on the healthcare system? Absolutely it does,” she said.

So there you have it-traffic safety and the safety of vulnerable road users is a public health priority at the municipal level in Toronto and in British Columbia at the Provincial level. Now we just need to start designing our streets as if every users’ life truly does matter. It is the difference between injury, life and death.

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Enhancing Safety for Pedestrians, Walking for Wellbeing, Well-Being

That City Walk Can Kill You in the Pedestrian Death Capital of Canada

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The statistics have just been released that there were 11 murders in the City of Vancouver in 2016.  The 11 murders did not include the 11 pedestrians who died by being crashed into by vehicles on city streets. And some sobering statistics for  Metro Vancouver-“the coroners’ research found that 40 per cent of pedestrians killed in Greater Vancouver were struck at intersections and in crosswalks. Of those killed in crosswalks, two-thirds were crossing while the light was green”.

Concerned citizens nationally note that somehow we view the death of walkers  by cars as an inevitable side effect of motordom, an unavoidable collateral to the convenience of the car. Indeed one of the rationales for driverless vehicle technology is that less pedestrians will be maimed and die.

Torontonians call this carnage “road violence”, a term first used when the car started to take over public streets in the early part of the 20th century. Earlier in that century cars in Paris were even regulated to only go the speed of a walker, to ensure that pedestrians had a chance. Vancouver pedestrians are dying by vehicle crashes at twice the rate per capita of Toronto, where one person is injured every four hours, and over 44 pedestrians were killed in 2016. But in Vancouver there is not the outrage, not the insistence that we look clearly at the four items that can ameliorate this awful paradigm-visibility, driver behaviour, speed and road design. We don’t have a  city councillor or mayor  that is taking this task on, and many people deride the obvious statement that reflectivity is very important for pedestrians in our low light winters. Wearing reflective items markedly decreased pedestrian deaths in Scandinavia.

We need political will to change driver behaviour, speed,and road design in Vancouver. Visibility? Pedestrians can assist with this piece. Noted journalist Daphne Bramham has written in the Vancouver Sun that  “At least half a dozen times since the rains have come, I’ve been startled by pedestrians — dressed all in black — darting across the street in the middle of the block or against a red light…Sure, it’s fashionable and comfortable to wear black. But it’s also bloody risky, especially on dark, rainy Vancouver nights.

“There is data showing that Vancouver (closely followed by Surrey) is the pedestrian death capital of Canada. During this past, bleak, rainy October, twice as many B.C. pedestrians died as were killed in the six previous years. Ten pedestrians died in five Lower Mainland communities, which brought the provincial death toll for 2016 to 47. Usually, January is usually the worst month. Data for 2010 to 2015 collected by the B.C. Coroners Service shows that, on average, 7.4 pedestrians die every January. In November, the average is 7.2, and in December, 6.3.”  And in Tsawwassen, one of those lower mainland communities, two seniors were mowed down and killed on 56th Street in two separate incidents. They were  in a marked crosswalked intersection killed  by cars making left turns.And in the Lower Mainland a disproportionate number of those killed by vehicle crashes are seniors.

Daphne also noted that “A good and caring friend gave me some reflective bands to wear. Yet even though I knew I was safer, I felt foolish wearing them”. That is the work that the Walk and Be Seen Project at Kitsilano Neighbourhood House is undertaking with seniors to change how pedestrians feel about using reflective items in our rainy winters.

Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) makes a universal reflective sash that can be used by anyone, and there are textiles, sprays and even reflective wool that can be knitted. We need to insist that winter clothes have reflectivity and are not all black as is the current style. Until we can change the paradigm with the car, being visible at night  is one thing that pedestrians can do, as well as contacting their Metro Vancouver Mayors and City Councillors and demanding that pedestrian safety be made a priority. It is a matter of life or death.

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Enhancing Safety for Pedestrians, Walking for Wellbeing

That City Walk Can Kill You

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In January noted journalist Daphne Bramham wrote in the Vancouver Sun a very cogent article offering a  simple solution to pedestrians trying to navigate across streets in our low light and rainy winters-don’t wear black.  A lot of responders to her article bristled at the fact that Daphne was brave enough to state the obvious-vehicle operators often  cannot see pedestrians.

We live in a province where 280 people are killed annually and 79,000 people maimed in car crashes. This is a big number and serious enough that the Provincial Medical Officer wrote his yearly report on car crashes. What causes them? Dr. Perry Kendall surmised that speed (36%), distraction (29%) and impairment (20%) were largely responsible. Rates of crashes resulting in serious injuries have risen from 38 per cent in 2007 to 46 per cent in 2009.  Road design, distraction and speed are major contributors. I’d add visibility as well.

In October 2016, twice as many pedestrians died as were killed in the last six years. The Coroners Service of B.C. lists that from 2010 to  October 2016, 396 pedestrians were killed by vehicles in British Columbia. In B.C., Vancouver is the pedestrian death capital of Canada-it has more pedestrian deaths than any other city, and twice those of Toronto per capita. Sixteen per cent or 64 of those deaths were in Vancouver. Thirteen per cent or 50 deaths were in Surrey. Abbotsford, Richmond and Burnaby also had high percentages of pedestrians killed. Of those dying, 57 per cent were male. One third of those dying were 70 years or older. Forty per cent of pedestrian deaths happened at intersections in Metro Vancouver, with two-thirds crossing while the light was green.

But here is the statistic I found remarkable-61 per cent of all the pedestrians killed in British Columbia were over 50 years of age. That is a huge number and a worrying one. While we have focused our attention on road safety to school children, this suggests we also need to address the older part of the population who may not be as nimble or cognitively attune to the fact they are vulnerable. Of course there needs to be a sea change in driver behaviour and education, slower speeds, and municipalities that will redesign intersections to stop the carnage of their citizens. We as citizens also must get angry and insist that politicians pay attention to this  road violence needlessly yanking out lives.

In Finland every child going to school must wear three pieces of reflective items on their clothes and backpack. The safety reflector was developed in Finland in the 1960’s and it is the law that walkers wear reflective items in the dark. Wearing reflectors and reflective clothing is completely accepted as daily wear in Scandinavia which also has the lowest incidence of pedestrian accidents. A similar program in Great Britain reduced children’s pedestrian deaths by 51 per cent.
Studies show that reflectors increase the visibility of pedestrians from 25 meters to 140 meters, increasing the reaction time from 2 seconds to 10 seconds for a car being driven at 50 kilometers per hour. That’s eight seconds more for a driver to react, and a pedestrian to survive. We can’t pretend that this is not the wild west for road violence-it is, and in Metro Vancouver we are in the leaders of carnage in  Canada. Wearing reflective wear is quite simply the right thing to do, along with lobbying for slower speeds, more campaigns on driver behaviour, and redesigning street intersections as if walkers really mattered.

 

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Enhancing Safety for Pedestrians

New Zealand, Older Pedestrians and Road Safety

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An article in the New Zealand Herald  notes how diminished the pedestrian is for road space in that country.  Lynley Hood is a researcher in Dunedin who is losing her sight and has started a petition asking the government to reduce the number of pedestrians killed on New Zealand roads. In New Zealand pedestrians do not have priority over motor vehicles when crossing side roads and intersections.

Between 2006 and 2015 384 pedestrians were killed on New Zealand roads. Ninety cyclists were killed during the same time. Dr. Hood notes that the government “has more than $350 million invested in a Cycling Safety Action Plan. There is no pedestrian safety plan.” Thirty per cent of the pedestrians killed on the roads were 65 years and older. Ms. Hood notes that the 104 seniors in that 30 per cent of  pedestrians were more than the total of cyclists killed, but that no special funding was available to ameliorate the cause of this carnage.

Ms. Hood had little interest in her work except from New Zealand’s chief coroner. Since the senior population in New Zealand will double in the next two decades that means the pedestrian death rate could also double.

“Older people need to walk for exercise, Dr Hood said, and they have to cross roads. They are more unstable, move more slowly and are likely to have sight and hearing problems.When crossing a road they have no protection, and they are generally poorer judges of speed and distance. What’s needed is some commitment by Government to pedestrian safety. There are a lot of young traffic designers who would leap at the chance of tackling the challenge if Government put some money into it. We’re not all petrolheads.”

In New Zealand anything that is not a motorized vehicle uses the sidewalk including scooters, skateboards, mobility scooters and Segways as well as walkers. There is no set standard for width, design, surface or grade. In a country with a population size similar to British Columbia’s it is time for motordom to accept the right of all users, and to give pedestrians the priority for safe access across roads.mot_blames_victims

Enhancing Safety for Pedestrians, Walking for Wellbeing

Smart Growth USA and Dangerous By Design

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Smart Growth America has just released their 2016 edition of Dangerous By Design which examines the epidemic of pedestrians that are killed by cars. Imagine-in the United States between 2005 and 2014 over 46,000 people were killed by being struck by cars. That is the population of Cornwall Ontario or Brandon Manitoba.

Unlike the Canadian Automobile Association that has just released a study breathlessly listing the worst traffic bottlenecks inconveniencing drivers in Canada, Smart Growth USA gets it right-this is not about the inconvenience of vehicular traffic being throttled down by road capacity and so-called “waiting time lost” but about the fact that we are killing off innocent people, whose only crime was to be walking on a sidewalk or a street when their life was snuffed out. But no one is talking about the eleven Vancouver pedestrians that were killed on city streets, or the hundreds maimed, many legally walking  with the right of way when crossing in a marked intersection. We had 11 murders in the City of  Vancouver in 2016. Please double that number and recognize the people who were also snuffed out by road violence. Where’s the concerned commentary of the Mayor and Council? Per capita, pedestrians are dying at TWICE the rate of pedestrians in Toronto. And no one in authority is addressing this epidemic.

As Smart Growth America states:  “In 2014, the most recent year for which data are available, 4,884 people were killed by a car while walking—105 people more than in 2013. On average, 13 people were struck and killed by a car while walking every day in 2014. And between 2005 and 2014, Americans were 7.2 times more likely to die as a pedestrian than from a natural disaster. Each one of those people was a child, parent, friend, classmate, or neighbor. And these tragedies are occurring across the country—in small towns and big cities, in communities on the coast and in the heartland.”

Smart Growth America has a webinar yesterday to report their findings. They have partnered with the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) as seniors are fifty per cent more likely than younger people to be hit and killed by a car while walking. People in lower income neighbourhoods and different ethnic backgrounds where also disproportionately at higher risk to be killed walking even after controlling for the relative higher walking rates associated in these communities.

Street design, speeding vehicles and poor pedestrian infrastructure also need to be addressed. British Columbia’s Medical Health Officer Dr. Perry Kendall  notes that vulnerable road users-those without the enclosure of a steel vehicle-were 31.7 per cent of vehicle fatalities in 2009 and are now 34.9 per cent in 2013, the last year there are statistics.In total 280 people are killed annually in collisions in this province, with 79,000 people seriously injured. In a place where the government covers health care, you’d think our politicians would be advocating changes in driver education and behaviour, slower speeds, and road design that makes vehicles slow down. What is it going to take?

 

City rediscovers walking, Society

Montreal’s Innovative Neighbourhood Inspired Pedestrian Projects

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Sometimes its easier just to get out of the box, build something, call it a demonstration project-and if it is successful, make it permanent. As CBC reports that is exactly what the City of Montreal is doing on Atwater, Roy and  Wellington Streets.

The City of Montreal will spend $1.7 million dollars over three years to transform one block lengths of Roy Street East and Wellington Street, and several parts of St. Ambroise and Atwater Street. Grants will be given  to neighbourhoods to create and animate pedestrian oriented pilot projects. Depending on the effectiveness of the closures, the streets will remain fully pedestrianized year round or for part of the year.

This is the third year this program has been operating, with approval ratings as high as 90 per cent from participating neighbourhoods.

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Championing Micro Mobility & Walkable Places