PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION

For the past ten years, the New York Bicycling Coalition (NYBC), a not-for-profit, non-partisan organization representing bicycling and pedestrian interests throughout New York State, has worked to prevent bicycle and pedestrian crashes. The number of injuries and fatalities that these incidents cause is greater than generally recognized; they involve all age groups and occur in urban, suburban, and rural locations.

In 2000, there were 335 pedestrian deaths and 17,320 pedestrian injuries that accounted for one quarter of all fatal crashes and 8.85 percent of all injury crashes. Additionally, there were 38 bicyclists killed and 7,061 injured – accounting for 2.8 percent of all fatal crashes and 3.7 percent of injury crashes. Most of these bicycle and pedestrian crashes are preventable. Better engineering, more innovative and widespread education strategies, and aggressive enforcement of existing laws can make the difference.

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

The goal of the NYBC is to reduce the number of bicycle and pedestrian injuries and fatalities, particularly at identified “hot spots”. The Coalition’s specific objectives were to:

• Develop a common sense, user-friendly manual designed to streamline the process of identifying problems and implementing safety improvements

• Promote understanding between engineers and safety advocates

STRATEGIES AND ACTIVITIES

NYBC has developed this manual with assistance from work groups assembled in four pilot counties across the state. To select the sites, NYBC used “An Analysis of Available Bicycle and Pedestrian Accident Data”, which analyzes the frequency and rate of cyclist and pedestrian injuries for all 62 counties. After further review, a pool of 10 counties spread across the area types (urban, suburban and rural) were solicited to participate in the grant process.

The county executive, borough president, or county commissioner in each candidate county was invited to submit a grant application. From the pool of applicants, the counties of Albany, Suffolk, and Monroe were selected for the first year and the borough of Brooklyn was added in the second year.

Each site established work groups comprised of cycling and pedestrian advocates, law enforcement officials, public health officials, transportation planners, engineers, and other constituent groups. Groups were tasked with gathering data on sites or corridors where high frequencies of bicycle and pedestrian related crashes or injuries were either documented or anecdotally known. Engineers from Greenman-Pedersen Inc., in conjunction with members of each local work group, then strategized to develop engineering and education solutions for the defined traffic problems.

Under the direction of the NYBC, the problem solving manual describing how to improve bicycle and pedestrian safety in your community was produced using information from the work groups to demonstrate key maintenance and retrofit measures. The manual entitled “How to Fix Dangerous Situations,” emphasizes the need for cooperation between engineers and advocates and was carefully designed to help each group understand the needs and perspectives of the other. One of the key features is a citizen data collection sheet developed jointly by an advocate and an engineer. This form can be used by advocates to compile information on problem intersections and present it in a format that can be used by traffic safety professionals.

RESULTS

Each New York state county will now have a resource that will help bridge the communication gaps between community advocates and traffic engineers. Advocates will use the manual to become better informed about the technical aspects of road maintenance and retrofits, and other aspects of managing the state’s roadway system. Transportation professionals will use the manual to improve their understanding of advocates’ perspectives.

The number of bicycle/pedestrian crashes and injuries will be measured within the regions of distribution as a gauge of this manual’s effectiveness.

   FALL 2001