Hispanic Pedestrian & Bicycle Safety

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INTRODUCTION

In the spring of 2001, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) issued a Request for Applications (RFA). The intent of the RFA was to select one or more local jurisdictions to demonstrate and evaluate the effectiveness of a comprehensive pedestrian safety countermeasures program for reducing pedestrian fatalities, injuries, and conflicts. By spring of 2002, FHWA awarded three cooperative agreements to the following locations: Las Vegas, Nevada; Miami-Dade County, Florida; and San Francisco, California.

Through this program, the FHWA sought to demonstrate and evaluate the effectiveness of a combined pedestrian safety engineering and intelligent transportation systems (ITS)-based area-wide countermeasures program for reducing pedestrian fatalities, injuries, conflicts, and other surrogate measures of safety. The countermeasures included traditional safety engineering design-based countermeasures, as well as ITS-based countermeasures. Traditional pedestrian safety engineering countermeasures included: signs and markings, eliminating permissive left-turns, leading pedestrian intervals, medians, roadway lighting, overall safety improvements at intersections, and other efforts to slow travel speeds in pedestrian-traveled areas. Examples of ITS technologies included: pedestrian countdown signals, ITS push buttons that confirm the press, automatic detection of pedestrians, and dynamic signs restricting right-turn-on-red.

The pedestrian countermeasure studies conducted at each of the three locations noted above were conducted in two phases. Phase I involved the following elements:

• Provide a detailed analysis of the pedestrian problem.
• Identify areas that have a particularly high number of pedestrian crashes.
• Perform an analysis of potential countermeasures for reducing pedestrian crashes.
• Develop a detailed implementation and evaluation plan.
• Collect and analyze baseline data at the evaluation sites.

Phase II involved the implementation and evaluation of the countermeasures identified in Phase I. The project included self-evaluations conducted by each of the field teams, as well as an independent national evaluation and cross-cutting study conducted by an independent contractor. The self-evaluations focused on the impacts of the individual countermeasures, while the national evaluation focused on the zone-wide and area-wide impacts of the countermeasures program. The results of the national zone-/area-wide evaluation were summarized in a technical memorandum to FHWA. This report brings together the findings from the self-evaluations and contains cross-cutting analyses, where possible, of those countermeasures that were deployed by more than one of the three field teams.

PEDESTRIAN SAFETY COUNTERMEASURES UNDER INVESTIGATION

As noted above, each of the field teams employed a systematic process to pedestrian problem identification and countermeasure selection. As a result of these safety analyses, each team selected a number of pedestrian safety countermeasures for deployment. Throughout the project, some of the selected countermeasures changed due to issues with vendors, procurement, or approval from location jurisdictions to install the countermeasures. Nevertheless, in the end, a wide range of traditional and ITS-based countermeasures were deployed at a large number of sites in the three locations. This system impact and cross-cutting study report focuses on the findings for 18 countermeasures, which have been grouped into the following 6 categories:

• Static signs
• Active signs
• Pavement markings
• Signals and signal timing
• Physical separation
• Lighting

The countermeasures are listed in Table 1, where the shaded [italicised] areas illustrate the countermeasures identified as "cross-cutting," meaning they were deployed by more than one of the field teams. The last column indicates the page number within the report where the results for each countermeasure can be found.

Table 1. Pedestrian Safety Countermeasures Selected for Deployment

Countermeasures	Miami	LV	SF	Page #
Static Signs
TURNING TRAFFIC YIELD TO PEDESTRIANS signs	X	X	X	5
In-street pedestrian signs	X	X	X	13
Pedestrian zone signs	X			18
Active Signs
NO TURN ON RED (NTOR) signs	X			19
Portable radar speed trailers	X	X	X	23
Pavement Markings
High visibility crosswalk treatment		X		27
Advance stop lines			X	32
LOOK pavement stencils			X	34
Signals and Signal Timing
Pedestrian countdown signals	X	X		37
Call buttons that confirm the press	X	X		41
Automated pedestrian detection	X		X	46
Activated flashing beacons		X	X	48
Rectangular rapid flashing beacon1	X			57
Leading pedestrian interval (Pedestrian head start)	X		X	61
Prohibition of permissive left turns	X			66
Physical Separation
Median refuge island		X	X	69
Danish offset (with high visibility crosswalk, advance yield markings and YIELD HERE TO PEDESTRIANS signs)		X		72
Lighting
Dynamic lighting	X	X		78
1This countermeasure was installed in Las Vegas, but results were not available at the time of this report.

EVALUATION OF COUNTERMEASURES

The impacts of the countermeasures were assessed through self evaluations by the individual field teams. Full documentation of the self evaluations can be found in each team's Phase II Final Report(s) (1,2,3,4). The deployment strategies and experimental designs developed by each team took into account the need to assess the site-specific impacts of the countermeasures, albeit somewhat differently. While the San Francisco and Miami field teams deployed many of the countermeasures at multiple sites, these teams selected one or more "study" or evaluation sites for each countermeasure. It was at these sites where they collected data for the evaluation of the countermeasures. At these sites, the countermeasure under study was always the first and only countermeasure deployed so as to allow a before and after comparison of the data. The Miami team also conducted a few studies where they varied the "treatments" at the study sites. For example, while testing the impacts of the electronic NO TURN ON RED (NTOR) sign, they also tested and compared the impacts of the static NTOR and conditional NTOR signs.

By contrast, the Las Vegas team used a staged approach to countermeasure deployment and evaluation at a more limited number of study sties. At each study site, a variety of countermeasures were deployed in a series of stages. As such, each stage allowed for a before and after analysis of the impacts of the countermeasure(s) installed in that stage; however, only in the first stage were the impacts of the countermeasure(s) compared to the true baseline. In each subsequent stage, only the incremental impacts could be measured.

PRESENTATION OF FINDINGS

The primary purpose of this System Impact Report is to bring together, summarize, and discuss the findings of the evaluations of the individual countermeasures conducted by the three field teams. In cases where a countermeasure was deployed by more than one of the three field teams, as much as possible, the results are presented in a cross-cutting manner. Where a countermeasure was deployed by only one of the three field teams, the results are summarized from the corresponding findings report from that deployment team.

Regarding the cross-cutting analyses, there were a number of challenges encountered that limited the comparability of some of the findings across the field deployment locations. One challenge was that there were variations in the countermeasures or the manner in which they were deployed by the field teams. In some cases, the field teams deployed variations of the same countermeasure. For example, the San Francisco and Las Vegas teams deployed a text sign reading "Turning Traffic Yield to Pedestrians" while the Miami team deployed a mixed text-symbol sign with the same message. In other cases, the countermeasure was the same, but was applied differently in the different cities. For example, the San Francisco team deployed median refuge islands at signalized intersections, while the Las Vegas team deployed median refuge islands at mid-block crosswalk locations.

Another challenge was that there were variations in the MOEs that were used to test the impacts of the countermeasures. In some cases, the same MOE was used, but the data were collected somewhat differently. For example, for the MOE, "frequency of pedestrian violations," the Miami team observed and recorded those pedestrians that crossed outside of the WALK phase, while the Las Vegas team observed and recorded those pedestrians that crossed only during the DON'T WALK phase. For the MOE, "pedestrians trapped in the roadway," the Miami team measured the percentage of cycles in which a pedestrian was trapped, while the Las Vegas team measure the percentage of pedestrians trapped. In other cases the field teams did not collect the same MOEs with which to compare in a cross-cutting analysis.

Based on these issues, the cross-cutting analyses presented in this report are somewhat limited, and these issues should be considered when interpreting the results and conclusions.

 

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