Tag: Walking

Name the Most Pedestrian-Friendly City in America

Posted on by robbie

Pedestrian life is picking up speed across the country, with an estimated five percent more Americans walking to work now compared to 2000, Bloomberg reports. But with more than 4,700 pedestrian deaths in 2012, city planners are recognizing the importance of improving pathways and policies to protect citizens on their feet.
In a study of the safest cities for pedestrians by insurer Liberty Mutual Holding Co., Seattle topped the list. The Pacific Northwest city had fewer than 10 annual pedestrian deaths in 2012 and was noted for its investment in infrastructure to improve the walking safety of more than 108,000 commuters each day. That same year, the city ordered more than 500 crosswalks and also improved walking routes for students.
Boston and Washington, D.C. came in second and third, respectively. San Francisco notched fourth and New York City grabbed the fifth spot on the list of of 25 cities analyzed for pedestrians. The most dangerous for walkers? Detroit. The report ranks cities by traffic data, infrastructure and local attitude on public safety among 2,500 residents across the observed cities.
Dave Melton, Liberty Mutual’s managing director of global safety, attributes well-planned pedestrian safety to countdown lights and flashers at crosswalks that help drivers focus on the road and direct attention from pedestrians. But pesky cellphone usage still remains an issue. 

“The human brain doesn’t multitask,” Melton says. “It switches back and forth.”

It’s tricky to try to control phone distraction, but ensuring every other component of protecting pedestrians is a step in the right direction.

MORE: These Kids Are Powering Their School Just By Walking

No Wheels, Just Feet, on This School Bus

Posted on by robbie

What cuts down on costs, helps the environment, and most importantly, keeps kids in shape?
Walking to school.
With childhood obesity rates at historic highs, there is significant demand to fix this harmful epidemic, and this solution is as simple as they come.
A unique program, called the Walking School Bus, collects kids along a route and together, they make their way to school as a group – not totally dissimilar to the bus experience, but with the added benefit of exercise and fresh air. With no bus driver needed, transportation money instead goes towards a chaperoning adult who not only leads the children and ensures their safety, but also can act as a mentor and role model for them.
Although walking programs can be found running independently of each other throughout the country, many of them are funded by the National Center for Safe Routes to School, a program established to help find alternative routes for children to get to school.
Walking School Bus programs vary in size – in Providence, Rhode Island, only 14 kids participated last academic year, whereas in Columbia, Missouri, 450 children from 13 different school districts took part.
Sadly, Columbia’s program has lost funding, but the Walking School Bus program still exists and can be set up in your community. Here’s how.

These Navy Veterans Are Making an Epic Pilgrimage to Raise Money for Wounded Soldiers

Posted on by robbie

When Austin Shirley of Plano, Texas completed his service with the Navy, he felt at loose ends, unsure about his plan for future and how to reintegrate into civilian life. So he decided to take a year to dedicate himself to helping fellow veterans. He sold all of his possessions, stocked up on gear at REI, and began to walk across the country with his dog Archer to raise money for Wounded Wear, a nonprofit that increases awareness about injured veterans and provides them with clothing adapted to their physical needs, or shirts that just lets passersby know that the wearer was injured while serving the country.
(NationSwell profiled the nonprofit’s founder, Jason Redman, earlier this year.)
Shirley began his journey, which he calls the Chasing the Sun campaign, last October in Jacksonville, Florida. Along the way, he called his friend and fellow Navy vet, Bryan Cochran. Redman told Ryan Van Velzer of AZCentral that Cochran told his friend, “Times are tough. I lost my job and I’m in a veteran’s shelter right now.” So Shirley invited him to join his mission, and they’ve been walking together since Shreveport, Louisiana. The vets’ goal? To raise $50,000 for Wounded Wear. By the time they arrived in Phoenix on April 25, they’d raised about $30,000.
Redman told Van Velzer that the two walkers have been sleeping in a tent along their journey. “Ninety percent of the time they find a spot off the road and they sleep in the tent and they’ll stop at small stores along the way and gather food. Also along the way they meet a lot of amazing, interesting people who offer to buy them food and say, ‘Hey, you can sleep here tonight.’ The generosity of the American people is a pretty amazing thing.”
You can follow the vets’ progress on Facebook, and show some of your own American generosity by donating to their campaign through Crowdrise.
MORE: How Does Running Coast-to-Coast Help Veterans?
 

Can a New Kind of Sidewalk Save Lives?

Posted on by robbie

In San Francisco, up to 50% of all traffic fatalities are pedestrians, nearly four times the national average. In fact, three pedestrians are hit each day, accounting to a yearly average of 20 deaths. With statistics like these, it’s obvious that something has to change. So why not the streets?
An architecture firm from the Bay Area has come up with an idea that will not only help make pedestrians more visible to drivers, but also turn street corners and medians into useable public space. The design, which was dreamt up as part of a project by pedestrian advocacy group Walk San Francisco, creates “bulb-outs” — curb extensions that make sidewalks bulge into the street, increasingly the visibility of pedestrians who are waiting on the corner. These extensions have high ridges that not only protect pedestrians from drivers, but can also be turned into planters for community gardens.
MORE: What’s the Country’s Best Smart Growth Project? You’ll Be Surprised
“We didn’t want a strict dichotomy between street and sidewalk,” says Zoe Prillinger of Ogrydziak Prillinger Architects, the firm that created the plan. “We’re interested in ambiguity, the idea of sharing and negotiation — between park and city, street and sidewalk, and cars and pedestrians.”
The firm’s design is part of a larger project called WalkFirst, a collaboration between San Francisco agencies — including the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, the Planning Department, the Public Health Department, and the City Controller’s Office — that will prioritize capital improvements over the next five years to make the city a safer place to walk. The hope is that projects like this one will decrease pedestrian injuries and fatalities by 50% over the next seven years.
MORE: You Won’t Believe How Much These Smart Streetlights Could Save Us

OneC1TY Transforms Nashville With an ‘Education-Civic-Business Ecosystem’

Posted on by robbie

Nashville’s 28th Avenue Connector may look like a simple urban development built to improve traffic. And while it is a major improvement, this innovation is building so much more for the community. The full site, called OneC1TY, over Centennial Park is bike-friendly and promotes walking too. It’s living up to its role as a “Connector” in more ways than one. For example, it’s joining educational institutions and the city’s medical district, promoting a sense of collaboration and the city’s “education-civic-business ecosystem.” The streetscape features bioswales to handle runoff, energy-efficient solar lighting, and locally-inspired art. As supporters have pointed out, it’s a “transformative example of the kind of development that a well-thought-out public infrastructure project” can create.

 

What Are America’s Most Walkable Cities?

Posted on by robbie

It always sounds so simple. An activity as basic as walking can help with so many health issues, from losing weight to lowering one’s risk of heart problems. If the nation gets moving, even just 20 minutes a day, we’d find ourselves feeling stronger, more energized, and less prone to disease. So why doesn’t everyone do it? For some major cities, it might be because the neighborhoods just aren’t “walkable” enough. Josh Herst founded Walk Score to put some data behind the idea of walkability, so now cities can evaluate how much they’re doing to help encourage citizens to get into a walking routine. Now, top cities like New York, San Francisco, and Boston can show off their walking cultures, and car-dependent cities–like Nashville, Jacksonville, and Charlotte–have the opportunity to review in-depth analysis of the walking cities’ success stories.