Mean Streets: Pedestrians at Peril

(Neal Peirce is a syndicated columnist who writes about local government issues. His columns do not reflect the opinions of County News or NACo.)

Imagine the public uproar if the United States experienced a full-scale air disaster every two weeks or so - some 200 to 250 lives snuffed out in each conflagration. The toll would exceed 6,000 victims a year.

Yet, in fact, more than 6,000 Americans are struck by and killed by trucks and autos on the roadways each year. Another 110,000 of us are injured.

Pedestrians account for 14 percent of all motor vehicle-related deaths, yet a scant 1 percent of federal safety funds are spent on projects to enhance their safety, according to a report - "Mean Streets" - issued by two independent public policy groups, Surface Transportation Policy Project and the Environmental Working Group.

While attention gets focused on such issues as air bags harming small numbers of children, almost zero media play goes to the fact that more than 1,000 children on foot are killed yearly by autos.

Indeed, the streets are so mean that a pedestrian in America is nearly twice as likely to be killed by a stranger with a car as a stranger with a gun.

And it can happen in any neighborhood. More than half - 55 percent - of all pedestrian deaths by autos occur in neighborhood streets. And why? All too often so-called roadway "improvements" turn neighborhoods into speedways. The blocks around homes are invaded by hurried commuters, pizza delivery demons, or unsafe drivers looking for a shortcut.

Speed is a lead killer. At 20 miles per hour the chance of a pedestrian dying as a result of a collision is 5 percent; at 40 miles per hour it is 85 percent.

Why are the roads so dangerous? A big factor is the way we've built our roads and communities since World War II. The "Mean Streets" study shows the most dangerous metropolitan areas to walk in are in the more spread out South and West.

A pedestrian is 11 times more likely to be killed by a vehicle in Fort Lauderdale than Pittsburgh. The metro areas of Miami, Atlanta, Tampa-St. Petersburg, Dallas and Houston are all high on the danger list. Regions of more traditional form, among them Milwaukee, New York, Boston, Rochester and Minneapolis-St. Paul rank among the safest.

"Mean streets are spawned by sprawl," says Hank Dittmar of the Surface Transportation group. "It's a real villain."

Yet preoccupation with ever bigger, better and less impeded highways runs deep in today's American psyche. The Highway Capacity Manual - a bible of the highway engineers' trade - defines a pedestrian as a traffic "flow interruption."

The authors of the "Mean Streets" report urge "a re-engineering and reinvestment strategy that makes the well-being of Homo Sapiens central to the roads we build, expand and maintain with our own tax dollars."

Congress could help by reauthorizing ISTEA, the pioneering 1991 Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act. The bill, which expires later this year, had enabled communities to divert some transportation dollars to public transit and such enhancements as bike paths and pedestrian safety.

The highway lobby would like to strip all such authority, going back to the days when virtually all the money (and it's our money, remember) could only be used for highway construction. Safety advocates, by contrast, want to strengthen ISTEA to expand safety funding and ensure that road building projects don't increase pedestrian hazards.

All of us are pedestrians once we step out of our cars. Given the billions that flow to highways, diverting effort and money to pedestrians isn't just fair. It could also make a more safe and livable America.

"Mean Streets" is on the Environmental Working Group's Web site .
(Neil Peirce's e-mail address is: <npeirce@citistates.com>.)

(c) 1997, Washington Post Writers Group