POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

California Governor Gray Davis has an opportunity to begin to address the state’s pedestrian safety problem by signing into law the Safe Routes to School bill. The legislation has the support of more than 80 organizations statewide and will provide as much as $20 million a year to local governments to provide better infrastructure—bike paths, crosswalks, overpasses, and neighborhood "traffic calming" measures—to make it safer for children to walk and bike to school.

The state department of transportation, Caltrans, should match pedestrian safety spending to pedestrian deaths and injuries: since roughly 20 percent of the state’s traffic fatalities and serious injuries are pedestrians, Caltrans should spend at least 20 percent of its safety funding addressing this problem.

Just as important is the commitment of California’s regional transportation planning agencies. These agencies should be far more proactive in their promotion of pedestrian and bicycle projects. They have been given much more flexibility in how to use their funding under recent changes in federal and state transportation law, and they should use it to fund these projects in the Statewide Transportation Improvement Program (STIP) and with Regional Surface Transportation Program (RSTP) monies.

(a) Caltrans and the state’s cities and counties should ensure that all new and improved streets and highways include accommodations for pedestrians. At a minimum, all local streets and roadways should include sidewalks and crosswalks that are accessible to people with disabilities and in accordance with the new Recommended Practice issued by the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE: Design and Safety of Pedestrian Facilities, 1998).

(b) Cities and counties should be strongly encouraged to use "traffic calming" techniques to slow traffic speeds in residential neighborhoods and reclaim the public right of way for all users. Studies have shown that traffic calming can reduce pedestrian-vehicle collisions by up to 70 percent. Traffic calming projects are now specifically eligible for federal safety funding under new federal transportation law.

Cities and counties should adopt zoning codes and design standards that allow developers to build mixed-use and other pedestrian-friendly development without the car-oriented setback and parking requirements that make them difficult to negotiate on foot.

(a) Caltrans should hire pedestrian and bicycle coordinators in their headquarters as well as in each of the district offices to help ensure that these recommendations are implemented. These bike and pedestrian experts should assist California’s regional transportation agencies and state planners in developing the required bicycle and pedestrian elements of their long range transportation plans.

(b) California’s regional transportation agencies should develop pedestrian safety and transportation master plans as part of their regional planning processes required under federal transportation law. In addition, these agencies should make available a portion of their federal transportation planning funds (which were increased dramatically under recent law) to fund efforts by cities and counties to develop local pedestrian master plans.

(a) State and regional agencies must collect and make public more accurate data on all pedestrian fatalities and injuries—particularly those of children and older adults—as well as the overall levels of walking in cities, counties and suburbs statewide.

(b) Targets for reductions in pedestrian fatalities and injuries should be established in conjunction with targets for increased levels of walking, and walking trips as a share of all trips taken.

There should be better enforcement of existing laws to reduce red light running and speeding as well as comprehensive education efforts aimed at both drivers and pedestrians. These are critical programs that must be pursued at the state and local level in order to complement any engineering changes.