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

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discussion of opportunities and obstacles, and identification of local issues and proposed solutions. Following each workshop, a "pedestrian audit" or walking field trip is conducted to show how the solutions can be applied. The participants make up a cross-section of their communities and typically include local government representatives, local businesses, nonprofit organizations with interests in the pedestrian and bicycling communities, and local residents. Safe Routes to School workshops are typically half a day long and focus on improving children’s commute to school. Safe Routes to School programs motivate children to walk or bike to school, encouraging an active and healthy lifestyle. At the same time, Safe Routes to School programs facilitate the planning, development, and implementation of measures to increase the safety of child walkers or bikers. The impact of these programs stretches far beyond the one-day kickoff as communities operate their own Safe Routes to School programs and develop their own initiatives for making their communities healthier and more pleasant places to live. Designing Streets for Pedestrian Safety is one option of FHWA’s Pedestrian Safety Action Plan Project which produced a “How-to-Guide” that explains the steps that an agency needs to take to reduce pedestrian crashes. This training can help the agency develop a safety action plan that will change the way the agency approaches pedestrian safety, or train their engineers and designers to provide pedestrian safety in their roadway design, or both. Instructors spend two days teaching attendees roadway designs that affect pedestrian safety, and cover effective countermeasures in great detail. The second day also includes a site visit to a problematic location where the participants suggest candidate countermeasures. Relevant crash data, traffic data and other relevant information on the pre-selected locations, as well as condition and collision diagrams, are utilized for the field exercise. A policy change exercise is also conducted as part of the workshop. The Designing Streets for Pedestrian Safety workshop has led to changes in the way pedestrian facilities are designed and are included in projects already, as the following comment from a workshop participant indicates. The pedestrian safety workshop was very useful for our county road improvement projects. Pedestrian activity is increasing, and the need for sidewalks is being considered along several of our projects that are now in the design stage. On one project, we needed to evaluate whether occasional pedestrians could be accommodated with a shoulder or provide a sidewalk. The decision was made to provide a sidewalk instead of a 5' shoulder. The sidewalk will terminate at a proposed roundabout at the north end of the project, and the training material will be helpful in designing the sidewalk. The Road Safety Audit workshop is similar to the two-day workshop described in the previous paragraph except it does not focus exclusively on pedestrians. The workshop starts with one-day in-house instruction followed by a second-day site visit that uses the relevant data and supplemental information to analyze a pre-selected problematic location. This course stresses the value of building a multi-disciplinary team to conduct the audit, including traffic engineers, planners, local community groups, and law enforcement officials. The inclusion of different disciplines ensures that solutions will be drawn from a wider range of approaches and will reflect community values and context sensitivity beyond traffic engineering. Also the audit emphasizes NYMTC Pedestrian Safety Study 20
getting input from people who have daily experience at the location, for example, police officers who direct traffic there. The end product is a report that identifies safety issues and may include suggested improvements. County Level Each of the five NYMTC counties outside New York City handles pedestrian safety a little differently. Although the agencies interviewed in several of the counties indicated that they do not have a formal pedestrian safety program, all of the counties have Traffic Safety Boards that actively deal with pedestrian safety issues. Nassau County: The Traffic Safety Board acts as a safety forum, and pedestrian safety is one of their primary issues. The Nassau County Police also are particularly active in the area of pedestrian safety. Among other activities, they operate Safety Town, which is a model educational program. See Section 3.4 for a description of Safety Town. Putnam County: The Traffic Safety Board deals with pedestrian safety; however, few people walk, and pedestrian crashes are very low (there were two pedestrian fatalities and 13 injuries in 2004, the lowest of any of the NYMTC counties), so pedestrian safety has a lower priority compared to other traffic safety issues. Rockland County: The County Departments of Transportation and Planning do not have a formal pedestrian safety program, but they are working to improve pedestrian safety through activities of the Departments of Health, Highway, and Planning. The Highway Department’s mission includes safety. Although Rockland County also has relatively few pedestrian crashes, they anticipate an increase in the future with new developments and the rapid increase in the older population (Rockland has the fastest growing older population in the state). Suffolk County: The Department of Public Works does not have a pedestrian safety program, but their awareness of the issue is increasing. Westchester County: There is no formal pedestrian safety program among the agencies interviewed, but several of the Westchester agencies have been actively implementing pedestrian safety projects. The Westchester County Department of Public Works Traffic Safety Office has identified pedestrian safety as a priority area and is providing safety outreach and educational programs to the community as a component of their GTSC grant entitled Promoting Roadway Safety. See Section 3.4 (Education) for more detail. Additionally, the City of White Plains recently won a commendation for pedestrian safety from the Automobile Club of New York. New York City New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT): NYCDOT has multiple units with responsibility for pedestrian safety. Because pedestrian safety is so important in New York City, it is included as an integral part of all NYCDOT programs. However, some programs have a NYMTC Pedestrian Safety Study 21
Page 1 and 2: New York Metropolitan Transportatio
Page 3 and 4: 1. Report No. 2. Government Accessi
Page 5 and 6: Table of Contents 1 Introduction 1
Page 7 and 8: Table of Figures 2.1 Ten Year Trend
Page 9 and 10: I. INTRODUCTION 1.1 Study Origin an
Page 11 and 12: in the United States; the 2004 data
Page 13 and 14: Table 1.1 Organizations That Were I
Page 15 and 16: II. BACKGROUND ON PEDESTRIAN SAFETY
Page 17 and 18: Figure 2.1 Ten Year Trend in Pedest
Page 19 and 20: Figure 2.3 Historic Trend in Annual
Page 21 and 22: than fatality rates.) The most noti
Page 23 and 24: III. ORGANIZATIONS FOR PEDESTRIAN S
Page 25 and 26: • Updating and creating new stand
Page 27: The New York State Metropolitan Pla
Page 31 and 32: i. 20% of priority crash locations
Page 33 and 34: located by reference marker (the sm
Page 35 and 36: that the proper signage and other t
Page 37 and 38: and funding has been secured to adv
Page 39 and 40: Westchester County and NYSDOT have
Page 41 and 42: programs in each borough. The NYCDO
Page 43 and 44: IV. PEDESTRIAN SAFETY ISSUES IN THE
Page 45 and 46: Drivers: Typical statements about d
Page 47 and 48: • Ability to lift foot high decre
Page 49 and 50: The national data indicates that th
Page 51 and 52: Vendors Vendors set up their carts
Page 53 and 54: Table 4.1 Continued Staten Island H
Page 55 and 56: 4.4 Existing Infrastructure and Lan
Page 57 and 58: Some sidewalks are poorly designed
Page 59 and 60: pedestrian design. At least one per
Page 61 and 62: Crosswalks need to be more visible.
Page 63 and 64: V COUNTERMEASURES AND STRATEGIES Th
Page 65 and 66: timing and street lighting. New Jer
Page 67 and 68: Providing Sidewalks: Walking-along-
Page 69 and 70: the pedestrian crash rate was signi
Page 71 and 72: Speed management through engineerin
Page 73 and 74: nearby streets. Whereas Bus-pedestr
Page 75 and 76: and have geometric curvature that e
Page 77 and 78: Roadway narrowings are used to prov
Page 79 and 80:
have experienced a maintenance prob
Page 81 and 82:
measures with specific geographic a
Page 83 and 84:
and 3.0 feet per second more approp
Page 85 and 86:
Figure 5.17 Split Phase Cycle Sourc
Page 87 and 88:
Combined Automatic and Actuated Sig
Page 89 and 90:
5.2.5 Visibility To insure safety,
Page 91 and 92:
Pedestrian Crosswalk Signs: There a
Page 93 and 94:
also be placed next to the stop lin
Page 95 and 96:
Table 5.5 Crash Reduction Factors f
Page 97 and 98:
ask them to act as role models for
Page 99 and 100:
5.3.3 Educating Local Officials and
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• Good planning and organization.
Page 103 and 104:
VI. FUNDING Funding for pedestrian
Page 105 and 106:
York, Projects are chosen by the NY
Page 107 and 108:
NHTSA distributes the Section 402 f
Page 109 and 110:
VII. RECOMMENDATIONS As noted in Ch
Page 111 and 112:
o Safe Routes to School • NYMTC s
Page 113 and 114:
easy to use is residential populati
Page 115 and 116:
REFERENCES American Council of the
Page 117 and 118:
ITE (1998) Design and Safety of Ped
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Parsons Brincherhoff Quade & Dougla
Page 121 and 122:
Intentionally left blank. NYMTC Ped
Page 123 and 124:
Intentionally left blank. NYMTC Ped
Page 125 and 126:
NYMTC Pedestrian Safety Interview f
Page 127 and 128:
12. Do you have any strategies or t
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Appendix B: PEDESTRIAN SAFETY CONTA
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New York City Department of Transpo
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Suffolk County Department of Public
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Appendix C: TRAFFIC SAFETY BOARD CO
Page 137 and 138:
Appendix D: ON LINE PEDESTRIAN SAFE
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FARS Query System is an interactive
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Education and Enforcement Counterme
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Appendix E: NEW YORK CITY FATATLIES
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Appendix F: Prompt Lists for Pedest
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Pedestrian Safety Prompt List Gener
Page 149 and 150:
pathway provide direct access to wa
Page 151 and 152:
If so, is there a sign that explain
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