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Redesigning our streets for people – not cars – saves lives

Dec 20, 2016 | by Active Trans

It’s been proven in Chicago and cities across the country that the fastest way to make streets safer is to redesign them and prioritize the movement of people – not cars.When the city established a Complete Streets policy in 2006, it committed to accommodating the safety and convenience of all road users in transportation and development projects. Then in 2013 the city’s Complete Streets Guidelines established a modal hierarchy that placed people walking at the top, follow by people riding transit, biking and driving cars.In recent years, we’ve seen the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) follow through on these commitments with many exciting projects that include rightsizing vehicle travel lanes, adding protected bike lanes, and enhancing crossings with refuge islands and signal...

Tags: Advocacy, Bicycling, transit, Walking, zero vision

Diverse crowds flock to San Bernardino’s BRT line

Dec 13, 2016 | by Active Trans

More cities across the United States are using bus rapid transit to help solve some of the challenges of conventional bus service.Bus rapid transit, or BRT, is an innovative approach that combines off-board payment, dedicated bus lanes, signal clearance priority and improvements to station infrastructure to make riding the bus a more fast, comfortable and reliable option. In Chicago, despite record-setting levels of public transit ridership, use of the city’s bus system continues to decline. Improving bus service along high-use bus corridors would help reverse the trend and give Chicagoans more choices as they decide how to get around. Many cities are already seeing the benefits of high-quality BRT systems. San Bernardino launched their sbX BRT line in 2014 along...

Tags: Advocacy, Bicycling, Planning, Walking

Boosting safety with education campaigns

Dec 1, 2016 | by Active Trans

Education is always one of the most talked about topics in traffic safety, and Vision Zero is no different.There’s a perception that if we could just better educate users about how to share the road and travel responsibly, we’d see fewer traffic crashes, serious injuries and fatalities.The reality is public education alone will not solve the problem. The hallmark of a Vision Zero approach to traffic safety is pursuing policy changes in several areas, such as infrastructure, enforcement and commercial vehicle regulation.When done right, cities around the world have shown education can be a powerful tool in traffic safety. Massive public awareness campaigns are exorbitantly expensive and it can be difficult to evaluate their impact. Targeted campaigns that focus on...

Tags: Advocacy, Bicycling, Education, Planning, transit, Walking, zero vision

Kansas City builds on BRT’s legacy of success

Nov 22, 2016 | by Active Trans

While most cities in the Midwest are dominated by the automobile, Kansas City is using Bus Rapid Transit to make its downtown more dense, walkable and accessible.Traditional bus routes provide a critical service but can present challenges to the people who use them. If a bus line has long wait times, restrictive hours, uncomfortable bus stops, and frustratingly slow commutes, taking the bus becomes less appealing. Bus rapid transit, or BRT, tackles each of these problems with innovative and cost-effective solutions such as creating bus-only transit lanes, giving busses signal priority at intersections and constructing more substantial bus stations with seating, protection from the elements, and arrival time boards that take the guesswork out of waiting for the bus. The...

Tags: Advocacy, Bicycling, Planning, Walking

Limiting turns could save lives

Nov 8, 2016 | by Active Trans

It’s no secret that the majority of crashes that result in people walking and biking being killed involve turning vehicles. The question is what can be done about it.Recent Chicago crash analysis found 52 percent of pedestrian crashes at signalized intersections involved turning vehicles; 36 percent were left turns and 16 percent were right turns.People biking are more likely to be involved in “right hook” crashes where a person driving passes to the left of a person biking and then makes a right turn. Fifty-five percent of bicycle crashes occur at intersections.Sign our Vision Zero Call to Action to show your support for limiting turns.Twenty-three year-old Anastasia Kondrasheva was killed by the driver of a flatbed truck in a right-hook...

Tags: Advocacy, Bicycling, Planning, transit, Walking

Slow down, Chicago!

Oct 26, 2016 | by Active Trans

In traffic safety, the fastest way to save lives, prevent serious injuries and achieve progress on Vision Zero is to get people driving to slow down.Speeding and reckless driving are rampant in Chicago, and excessive speed is the most common factor in serious and fatal crashes. Sign our Vision Zero Call to Action to tell city leaders we need to do more to reduce vehicle speeds.Too many Chicago streets are supersized and thereby encourage drivers to speed. Enforcement is lacking, which results in people frequently driving 10 miles per hour or more above the speed limit, endangering the lives of people inside and outside their vehicles.About 80 percent of the traffic fatalities and injuries in Metro Chicago are people in...

Tags: Advocacy, Bicycling, Planning, transit, Walking, zero vision

Hit and run crashes should be a focus of Vision Zero

Oct 13, 2016 | by Active Trans

As Chicago develops an action plan to eliminate traffic crashes resulting in fatalities and serious injuries, one of the questions we need to tackle is why so many people involved in crashes flee the scene.Relative to peer cities, hit and run crashes occur more frequently in Chicago and they’re more likely to involve people walking and people biking. Sign our Vision Zero Call to Action to tell city leaders we need to do more to prevent hit and run crashes.The city’s 2011 pedestrian crash analysis report showed that over five years hit and run crashes accounted for 40 percent of fatal crashes in Chicago versus 20 percent nationally. A similar analysis of bicycle crashes in 2012 found 25 percent of...

Tags: Advocacy, Bicycling, Planning, transit, Walking

LA’s great BRT success story

Oct 10, 2016 | by Active Trans

As overall Chicago transit ridership continues to increase, CTA buses are experiencing a decline in use. The number of people using Chicago’s bus system fell by 1.8 million rides last year, while the L added over 3.5 million trips. So what’s causing the decline in bus travel? Slow moving busses, long wait times, inadequate station infrastructure and frustrating “bus bunching” all have an effect. These are problems that all bus systems face, but several cities around the world are taking an innovative approach to solving them by implementing bus rapid transit, or BRT. BRT is a low-cost approach to making busses more efficient by creating bus-only lanes on city streets, giving busses signal priority at intersections and offering off-board fare collection. The...

Tags: Advocacy, Planning, Walking

Protect people walking and biking from trucks

Sep 30, 2016 | by Active Trans

Since June, six people have been killed while riding bikes in Chicago. Every single crash involved a commercial vehicle.This troubling trend points to an urgent need to address the disproportionate threat these large vehicles pose to people biking and walking.We are asking the mayor, Chicago City Council and relevant city agencies to immediately put into place proven strategies that can prevent more fatalities due to crashes involving large vehicles. Please stand with us by signing on to our Vision Zero Call to Action.Other U.S. cities have already led the way on commercial vehicle safety, taking concrete steps to address this public safety issue, including:Voluntary and required installation of side-guards on city trucks and private commercial vehiclesStrengthening commercial driver licensing programs...

Tags: Advocacy, Bicycling, Chicago Central, Chicago North Side, Chicago South Side, Chicago West & Southwest Side, Chicago West Side, Planning, transit, Walking

Chicago developing Vision Zero Action Plan

Sep 9, 2016 | by Active Trans

This week, Chicago took another step in affirming its commitment to eliminate traffic fatalities and serious injuries on our streets.Mayor Emanuel announced the city will release a three-year Vision Zero Action Plan in fall 2016 that will reduce crashes for everyone who uses the streets. The plan will set forth the goal of eliminating traffic fatalities and serious injuries by 2026.Vision Zero is an international traffic safety movement guided by the principle that no loss of life on our streets is acceptable. Traffic crashes are not mere “accidents,” but preventable incidents that can be reduced and eliminated with systemic changes.One of the advantages of the Vision Zero approach to traffic safety is that it requires the collaboration of all city agencies...

Tags: Advocacy, Bicycling, Planning, transit, Walking, zero vision

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