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

cars. Another result is that delivery trucks, the police, and occasionally other people park on
the sidewalks.
Another issue specific to New York City is the elevated structure. Pedestrians sometimes walk
underneath the structures rather than on the sidewalks or stand behind columns waiting for a gap
in traffic; however the columns obstruct sight lines and the shadows make it difficult for drivers
to see the pedestrians. (The New York City Departments of City Planning and of Transportation
recently studied this issue; see Subway/Sidewalk Interface Study, discussed in Section 3.3.)
NYCDOT has installed raised medians at subway stations under elevated structures to provide
pedestrian refuges and to improve the safety of passengers transferring between subways and
buses.
Continuously accessible paths, particularly from subways to parks, are often lacking due to lack
of curb cuts, inadequate provision of pedestrian crossing of high-volume and high-speed
arterials, or obstructions.
Low density areas
The auto-dominated society discourages people from walking. In some areas, pedestrians are
rare enough to be considered out of the ordinary or eccentric. Children are driven everywhere,
with the result that they do not develop good pedestrian habits. Pedestrian facilities are seen as
unnecessary and therefore omitted.
There are many multi-lane arterials with high traffic volumes and speeds, and long distances
between pedestrian cross walks. Often the cycle lengths of the signals are long (on Long Island,
up to three minutes) making pedestrians and drivers impatient. The crossing distance is wide and
seldom has refuges for the pedestrians. Often the arterials do not have sidewalks, causing the
pedestrians to walk along the shoulder, with no separation between them and the traffic. If the
shoulder is widened to provide additional space for pedestrians, the effect on traffic is to increase
speed. When there are sidewalks, they are in the highway clear zone, again with little or no
separation. An issue with differing opinions is the use of a barrier to separate motorized and
non-motorized users of the highway on high-speed facilities; it was pointed out that the barrier
may give the pedestrian a false sense of security and they can deflect when hit becoming a
hazard to the pedestrian.
Many communities do not have sidewalks or the sidewalks are poorly placed or not continuous.
Many destinations that attract pedestrians, such as parks, do not have sidewalk access. When
there are sidewalks, lack of access management has resulted in closely spaced driveways and
curb cuts, making it inconvenient and less safe to use the sidewalks, particularly for pedestrians
with disabilities.
Lack of space to put sidewalks can be a problem in rural areas also, for example on old farm
roads in areas with recent population growth. A related problem is where there is a sidewalk but
the right of way is narrow or the road has been widened, with the result that the sidewalk is close
to the moving traffic, making it less safe as well as unpleasant to use.
NYMTC Pedestrian Safety Study 48