NYMTC Regional Pedestrian Safety Study - New York Metropolitan ...

♦ Educate seniors in good walking habits:
o Establish educational programs and pedestrian safety workshops for senior
centers. NYCDOT has developed a DVD for seniors; develop similar material
modified to fit the specific community.
o Offer program at senior centers, local religious institutions, etc.
♦ Educate the general walking public. This is a more difficult group to reach. Explore
different media (radio spots, TV spots, CDs, videos) and ways of getting their attention.
♦ Educate the driver. One way to do this is to use signs at local cross walks to alert
motorists to the change in the state crosswalk law.
♦ Implement a targeted enforcement program to raise public (pedestrian and driver)
awareness of the laws.
♦ Explore the inclusion of an educational component in grants for improvements to roads
and pedestrian facilities where it would enhance the public acceptance and safe
pedestrian behavior. The educational component would inform the public about what is
being done and how it will improve safety.
♦ Provide education and outreach to public and to decision makers. For example, the local
zoning and planning boards need to be made aware of pedestrian safety. These meetings
should be scheduled at times and places that will ensure participation of decision-makers
and stakeholders. Educate merchants and other local groups about the purpose and
impact of various projects; they can effectively block projects if they think that they will
adversely affect them.
7.5 Develop a Data Program
A concern indicated by many agencies was the lack of reliable, detailed, timely data. Several
things need to be done to correct this situation.
♦ All police departments in the NYMTC region should be encouraged to implement TraCS
(Traffic and Criminal Software) as quickly as possible. This would have three major
advantages: it would eliminate repetitive data entry, in that the data would be entered
into an electronic system at the crash site, it would it would make the information
available sooner, and it would ensure that the crashes were consistently located using
GIS.
♦ Improve the correctness and completeness of data.
♦ Explore how information beyond the crash report can be incorporated in the database. For
many accidents, the local transportation departments have observed the site, but this data
is not included with the record. To the extent that Safety Impact Teams are initiated,
their findings should also be incorporated in the database.
♦ Find a means to coordinate the police reported data with data from the hospitals or
departments of health.
♦ Develop an inventory of pedestrian facilities, including characteristics such as sidewalk
width, street crossings, and pedestrian-related traffic operational characteristics such as
signalization and phasing.
♦ Develop a measure (or measures) of exposure. Comparing crash statistics between areas
is misleading unless a common measure of effectiveness is used. The most common and
NYMTC Pedestrian Safety Study 104