Group thinks walking isn't
a pedestrian issue
By
John Hilkevitch
Tribune Transportation Writer
The City that Works might become known in the next century as the City that Walks.
A diverse group that includes public- and private-sector experts in transportation,
safety, urban planning and law enforcement -- even a weight-loss franchise is compiling a
"walking checklist" for die-hard pedestrians and would-be walkers in Chicago and
other major cities. The effort is aimed at determining what it will take to persuade more
people around the country to spend less time in their cars and to get back on their feet
and into their communities
Members of the fledgling but potentially influential coalition, the Partnership for a
Walkable America, convened in Chicago this month in a step toward launching a national
campaign in the fall. Making urban areas safer and more accessible to pedestrians, and
promoting good health, are among the top goals of the program, which includes among its
members the Federal Highway Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, and many other federal and local agencies that wield the type of funds it
would take to begin to change the cultural bias against pedestrians.
"We are trying to look at walking as a tool not only to get from Point A to Point
B, but as a fitness tool, and as a vehicle that allows us to inspect and become more
involved in our communities," said Thomas Brahms, a partnership member and the
executive director of the Institute of Transportation Engineers in Washington, D.C.
"God knows, some of us who are insular may not ever get to know their own
neighborhoods. We could begin to address a host of urban problems if only people would
just take a walk -- not a hike, a walk," Brahms said.
The campaign to return the status of pedestrianism to a legitimate transportation mode
has already attracted the attention of the U.S. Department of Transportation, which
recently sent a focus group to Chicago to study the challenge of walkability in cities.
Officials said changes in the planning of capital projects will strengthen the focus on
pedestrian access, a factor that critics say has been ignored by federal planners for too
long
And Chicago Transportation Commissioner Thomas Walker said a key component of a
soon-to-be-unveiled l0-year transportation master plan will include proposals to make the
city, already blessed with attractive promenades as well as plagued by automobile-clogged
neighborhoods, more friendly to pedestrians, the disabled and bicyclists
Proposed changes include less of a reliance on signs, which people tend to ignore;
tougher enforcement of traffic laws, and an emphasis on improved engineering to force
motorists to respect the rights of pedestrians and neighborhoods.
Examples are construction of more traffic circles to discourage drivers from using
residential streets as shortcuts to major arterial pedestrian safety islands, cul-de-sacs
and pedestrian pathways that separate walkers from bike and skater traffic, such as along
the lakefront.
In Edgewater, use of some of these "traffic-calming" techniques has prompted
tractor-trailer drivers to stop using the neighborhood as a favorite delivery route to
nearby supermarkets
The members of the partnership decided to study Chicago because the city ranks high in
walkability, although there is room for improvement. Severe congestion on the expressways
has fueled an enduring relationship between the mass transit apparatus and customers
willing to incorporate a walk of perhaps several blocks into their daily commute.
But there are myriad unfavorable factors that give pause to the huge ranks of potential
pedestrians. Construction projects force walkers off sidewalks and into busy streets, and
narrow sidewalks put pedestrians in competition for space with bicyclists and in-line
skaters. Then there are intersections from hell, like Hollywood Avenue and Sheridan Road,
where a highway (Lake Shore Drive) and a neighborhood (Edgewater) meet abruptly.
"I'm meant to walk and meant to enjoy myself, but how do I get through to the
drivers who run stop signs and the kids on bicycles and Roller Blades who feel that I'm an
interloper?" said Sylvia Royt, an active senior citizen who is a longtime resident of
Hyde Park. "When I retired, I got rid of my car. I didn't anticipate there would be
no place to walk."
Commissioner Walker acknowledged that pedestrian safety and related livability issues,
such as mass transit-oriented development, are important to keeping families in the city.
Walking is simply how Europeans and many other foreigners get around in their own
cities. The American family, meanwhile, makes an average of a dozen car trips each
weekday, studies show.
The ability to simply walk safely through one's community is a comfort factor that
people use to decide whether to stay put or move the family to the suburbs.
A study released this month by the Chicagoland Transportation and Air Quality
Commission called for a series of innovations to reduce the approximately 245 pedestrian
deaths and 4,900 injuries each year in Illinois. The group says that federal
transportation dollars have gone to protect motorists, but not to benefit people who walk.
Nationwide, more than 5,000 pedestrians are killed and some 90,000 injured in accidents
each year, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Gerard Scannell, president of the National Safety Council and the partnership's
chairman, said changing government bias toward funding pork-barrel road construction
projects while paying little attention to pedestrian issues must be addressed by targeting
the appropriation committees of Congress.One of the most recent local pedestrian
casualties occurred earlier this month when two 13-year-old boys from Western Springs were
struck by a car while walking on a stretch of Wolf Road with no sidewalks in
unincorporated Lyons Township. One of the youths died later, and the other remains
hospitalized.
Major reforms to facilitate the co-existence of vehicles and pedestrians have already
been achieved in a few U.S. cities, including Seattle and Portland, Ore., which have
integrated pedestrian traffic concerns into efforts to revitalize their downtown districts
and supporting infrastructure.
Seattle's engineering department has compiled a "cookbook" of
"traffic-calming remedies" that officials consult when contemplating
neighborhood renovations, said Peter Lagerwey, the city's coordinator of the pedestrian
and bicycle program. They range from speed humps (effective as speed bumps, but less
annoying to drivers) and drive-around planters, to painted formations of lines on pavement
that slow motorists by giving the appearance that a street is narrowing.
In Chicago's 48th Ward on the North Side, which attracts high volumes of traffic en
route to Lake Shore Drive, buildings at Pierce School, Goudy School, Senn High School and
Sacred Heart School have all been hit by vehicles in recent years. Two Senn students were
struck recently while walking to school.
"We'd put up wooden horses, and drivers would just go around or right through
them. It didn't make any difference to these clowns, said Patrick Durkin, the principal of
Goudy, 5120 N. Winthrop Ave. Then last September, a simple cul-de-sac was constructed on
Winthrop at Foster Avenue and the problem disappeared, Durkin said.
The ward's alderman, Mary Ann Smith has waged a campaign to bring back wider sidewalks
and other pedestrian-friendly infrastructure that existed early in the century. The
alderman recalled that just before Chicago hosted soccer's World Cup in 1994, the city
reminded cab drivers to greet the crush of foreign visitors with good cheer and a
compass-like sense of direction. Then the unexpected happened: People walked to Soldier
Field.
Cabbies grumbled about lost fares, and sedentary city residents watched from their
air-conditioned cars. To this day, Smith lamented, the lesson hasn't fully rubbed off on
Chicagoans.
- from Chicago Tribune, April 28, 1997
U.S. Department of Transportation