We know we can make California’s streets safer for pedestrians because many communities across the country are already making it happen. In fact, pedestrian safety projects are gaining attention because officials and residents are discovering that more pedestrian-friendly streets not only offer more mobility and independence for children, seniors and the disabled, but can also improve local economies through increased foot traffic, reduce crime due to more "eyes on the street," contribute to improving quality of life and make the surrounding communities a better place to live.

Growing numbers of communities are working to make their streets safer with "traffic calming" techniques. Traffic calming is the practice of redesigning streets to reduce vehicle speeds. There are several dozen techniques including narrowing the roadway, diverting through traffic away from local streets, adding medians or street trees that either narrow the street or make it appear narrower, changing pavement surfaces, adding on-street parking as a buffer between pedestrians and busy street traffic, building traffic circles (or roundabouts), and extending the corners of sidewalks at intersections to reduce the speed of traffic and shorten the distance a pedestrian must cross. Traffic calming programs in California that have shown promise include Sacramento, San Diego, Berkeley, Oakland, San Leandro, and Santa Cruz.

One of the more popular strategies is the installation of small traffic circles, usually at neighborhood intersections formerly marked by stop signs. The circles are often planted with attractive flowers and trees. The City of Seattle reported a 77 to 91 percent reduction in traffic collisions in some communities after it installed 700 traffic circles. Portland, Oregon, experienced a 58 percent reduction in the number of reported crashes.

Cities around the country are experimenting with different approaches to pedestrian safety, recognizing that the best solution is a locally designed solution. The City of Santa Monica, for example, has mounted an aggressive pedestrian safety campaign of "education, enforcement and engineering." After an extensive outreach effort to identify problem streets and preferred solutions, engineers are redesigning at least a dozen major streets, in some instances eliminating traffic lanes in favor of bike lanes, wider sidewalks and medians. They’re using traffic calming and installing street trees, pedestrian lighting, and embedding flashing yellow lights in the pavement to illuminate some crosswalks. Police have issued more than 700 citations to drivers for failing to yield to pedestrians in nine months of sting operations, and the city is getting the word out about pedestrian safety via billboards and trailers shown in movie theaters.

The City of Oakland has also undertaken a pedestrian safety "sting" operation aimed at ticketing motorists who refuse to yield for pedestrians in crosswalks. Oakland also holds an annual "Walk a Child to School Day" each October to highlight the importance of safe walking and bicycling routes to school. With the help of the California Department of Health Services, the Partnership for a Walkable America and U.C. San Francisco, the event is now being replicated across the state and throughout the country.

The City of Portland, Oregon, has adopted a comprehensive Pedestrian Master Plan that addresses all areas of pedestrian safety and improvements, and sets measurable goals to increase pedestrian travel. The plan also identifies walking corridors, sets out pedestrian design guidelines, and includes a list of 159 capital projects totaling about $120 million and recommendations on how to fund them. The project list includes improving crosswalks, building sidewalks where none exist, targeting heavily used pedestrian areas that need safety improvements, providing pedestrian access to transit projects, and developing pedestrian connections in neighborhoods.

A first step for many towns and cities is identifying the places that present the greatest danger to pedestrians. This survey can be as simple as having local officials take a walking tour to survey the pedestrian environment, or as complex as a full-fledged study. The Land of Sky Metropolitan Planning Organization of Asheville, North Carolina, is developing a computerized map of the streets to identify pedestrian problem areas and include a list of pedestrian projects in the county transportation plan. City planners will use the data to prioritize pedestrian projects. The agency is mapping every street, marking hazardous areas and critical pedestrian passages.

In Austin, Texas, the Trans Texas Alliance is using a three-year "Safe Communities" grant from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to address motor vehicle injuries, including pedestrian crashes. The group spent the first year analyzing data obtained from the Texas Department of Public Safety and Texas Department of Health to identify pedestrian injuries by street, injury, and by population group and age. They’ve also gathered statistics about who is most at risk of injury, what time of day the injuries occurred by road type, and what pedestrians were doing when they were injured or killed.

The best way to make communities more walkable may be to build them the way we used to build them—with houses located closer to stores and schools and jobs rather than strictly segregating retail and other commercial development away from housing. Zoning codes and design standards should be changed to do away with building setbacks and parking requirements that turn communities into vast concrete landscapes inhospitable to pedestrians. Cul de sacs should be discouraged in favor of streets that connect so people don’t have to travel long distances to get to their destinations.

These programs work because they solve the problem at its source: communities and transportation systems are designed to balance the needs of all users. Not only are these communities inherently safer for everyone—young and old—but they are more pleasant places in which to live. California has a long way to go before conditions improve for pedestrians. Transportation officials must first rethink their priorities and recognize the need to come up with alternatives to sprawl. There are many specific steps that political leaders and agency officials should begin to take in order to tackle California’s pedestrian safety problem: