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

Other challenges
Some public advocacy groups are perceived to be obstructionists, demanding more or a different
type of accommodation for bicycles and pedestrians with no room for compromise, and thus
blocking a proposed improvement. The people who support projects seldom come to meetings.
Also some segments of the public have misconceptions about pedestrian safety measures that
cause them to try to block the implementation of the measures. Merchants in communities have
blocked proposals to use traffic calming in the downtown areas, believing that it will reduce
customers coming to their stores. Homeowners whose properties back up to a proposed trailway,
objected to it, saying they did not want people walking behind their houses; after the trailway
was built they were among the major users of it.
Some communities do not want sidewalks. They think that sidewalks would detract from a rural
or “exclusive” character of the area or would lower property values or attract “undesirables.”
Some authority figures (for example, police or transportation agency employees), who should act
as role models and set an example of safe pedestrian behavior, instead follow poor walking
habits, jaywalking or ignoring pedestrian signals. This is a similar situation to parents and other
adults who set a poor example of safe behavior for children.
Evaluation of implemented safety measures is often left undone due to limited staff resources; as
a result, we do not know how effective many of the measures are or in what situations they work
best. It is also hard to measure long-term effectiveness.
Another challenge is the new MS4 regulation (from implementation of the Federal Clean Water
Act) concerning drainage and the impacts of adding impervious surfaces. Sidewalks are
impervious surfaces that can require mitigation in the form of special drainage facilities. This
issue has come up on pedestrian facilities within the New York City watershed in Putnam and
Westchester Counties and will come up in other areas as MS4 implementation continues.
4.6 Other Issues
This section reports the issues that were brought up that do not fit in the categories above.
The design of large trucks is a problem for pedestrians for two reasons. Trucks have wider and
off-track turning radii, which many pedestrians, particularly children, do not realize (or perhaps
think about); a pedestrian may, through ignorance or inattention, stand in an area that is the path
of a turning truck. The second problem is that the driver’s sight lines are frequently blocked
directly in front of or near the sides and rear of the truck. Again, this problem is more severe for
children, both from their lack of knowledge and their shorter height. Trucks may leave the
designated truck routes, either because of street blockages causing them to seek a less congested
route or due to getting lost. In these cases they end up on narrow residential streets where they
are even more dangerous because of higher volumes of pedestrians or children on residential
streets.
NYMTC Pedestrian Safety Study 52