The number of pedestrians killed in the US each year has increased 78% since 2009:
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The number of pedestrians killed in the US each year has increased 78% since 2009:
The number of pedestrians killed in the US each year has increased 78% since 2009:
This comes after decades of steady decline, causing many to wonder: What the hell is going on?
Brian Potter of Construction Physics recently tried to answer this question, here. Perhaps the two most common theories are that (1) bigger cars have become more popular (and bigger cars are more deadly to pedestrians), and (2) people are increasingly distracted by smartphones.
In his view, the SUV theory is maybe supportable, but the evidence is mixed. Pedestrian deaths involving smaller cars like Honda Civics are also up substantially. So it doesn’t seem to be just that.
As for the smartphone theory, Potter cites data showing that traffic accidents rarely report “distracted” driving. I call bullshit. I suspect it's because drivers don’t want to admit they were scrolling through TikTok; but even then, it doesn’t appear to be the clear cause. Smartphones are global, and yet this surge in pedestrian deaths is a uniquely American problem (based on other data from Potter).
So what is it?
My view — and this isn’t mentioned in the article — is that built form must be a factor. Much of it comes down to how we design our cities. Intuitively, this makes sense to me. But there’s also data to support it. First, if we look at pedestrian deaths per capita, there’s a clear bias toward the South and West, both of which tend to have more car-oriented urban patterns compared to the older cities in the North.
Second, if you drill down into specific urban environments — including those adopting strong Vision Zero policies — you’ll see that local trends don’t always match what we’re seeing nationally or even at the state level. For example, in recent years, cities like New York have become much safer for pedestrians:
New York City continues to defy national trends around pedestrian deaths, which are currently at a four-decade high nationwide. Traffic fatalities were down in four of the five major travel modes the DOT tracks. Compared to 2013—the last year before implementation of Vision Zero—New York City traffic deaths have dropped by 14.7%, from 299 that year. Pedestrian deaths have decreased by 35.9% compared to 2013 figures. Cyclist fatalities were also down for the third straight year (17 in 2022, down from a 20-year high of 28 in 2019), declining even as bicycle ridership has soared in recent years.
So my simple theory is this: Human-scaled spaces that are designed around pedestrians, rather than cars, are less likely to kill pedestrians.
At the same time, I do think we’ll see pedestrian deaths naturally come down in the US as autonomous vehicles become more widespread. AVs are already better — or at least safer — drivers than humans, and that will help. None of us should be driving cars anymore if you're just looking at the safety data. But I don’t see that as a good reason not to create more human-scaled spaces. They offer us much more than just safety.
Diagrams: Construction Physics
There are parts of Toronto that are pedestrian only. There's the Distillery District, some small laneways in Yorkville, the Toronto Islands (though this is a bit of a unique situation), and various other pockets around the city.
There are also streets that we temporarily open up to only pedestrians, such as Market Street and King Street, and areas, such as Kensington Market, that we have been rigorously considering pedestrianizing for as long as I can remember.
What is clear is that pedestrian-only streets are controversial. Motorists fear that it will make driving in the city even more inconvenient. And businesses fear that it will limit their customer base.
While it is true that not all streets can and should be pedestrianized, there are countless examples of streets and areas that appear to be thriving because of it.
Take, for example, Montréal.
Since 2021, the city has been pedestrianizing a stretch of 30 blocks along Mont-Royal Avenue during the summer months. And according to Mayor Valérie Plante, the commercial vacancy rate for the street has dropped from 14.5% in 2018 to 5.6% in 2023:
https://twitter.com/Val_Plante/status/1677358816235515904
Maybe you don't want to infer causality here, but at the very least, it seems to suggest that the street isn't dying and bereft of human activity. This year, pedestrianization is also planned to be extended further into the fall.
This won't necessarily be the outcome for all streets, but I do agree with this recent Globe and Mail article that, oftentimes, the reasons for not pedestrianizing are "a question of philosophy, not geography." Because there's lots of research and data to support doing this.
If any of you are business owners along Mont-Royal, I'd love to hear about your experiences and how you think, for better or for worse, it has changed the area. Leave a comment below or drop me a line.
Last night I was in CityPlace, West Palm Beach. Completed in 2000, CityPlace is a quintessential example of New Urbanism. (For those of you from Toronto, this is a different kind of a CityPlace.)
In case you’re unfamiliar with this movement, here’s a snippet from The Charter of New Urbanism (via Wikipedia):
“We advocate the restructuring of public policy and development practices to support the following principles: neighborhoods should be diverse in use and population; communities should be designed for the pedestrian and transit as well as the car; cities and towns should be shaped by physically defined and universally accessible public spaces and community institutions; urban places should be framed by architecture and landscape design that celebrate local history, climate, ecology, and building practice.”
At a high level, New Urbanism makes a lot of sense. American cities were sprawling uncontrollably and so advocates had decided that something had to change. The Congress for New Urbanism was founded in 1993.
But the New Urbanism movement has had its share of critics. Here’s how Witold Rybczynski – professor at the University of Pennsylvania – talked about it on his blog:
“What are the important ideas that have affected American cities in the last 20 years? The development of waterfronts. The renaissance in constructing urban parks. The move of genXers and retirees into downtowns. High-rise urban living and Vancouverism. The popularity of urban bicycling and bike-rental programs. Ditto for Zipcars. Urban farmers markets and community gardens. Urban charter schools. The dramatic expansion in attendance of urban cultural institutions, especially art museums. Urban tourism. Downtown trophy buildings. The emergence of influential big-city mayors. Have any of these been the result of the new urbanism movement?”
Frankly, I have never been a big follower of New Urbanism. It has always felt artificial to me. But I recognize the immense challenge in transforming car-oriented cities and communities into walkable ones. It’s one of the greatest challenges in city building. You’re asking people to change their habits.
If any of you are experts on New Urbanism (because I am certainly not), I would love to hear from you in the comment section below.
This comes after decades of steady decline, causing many to wonder: What the hell is going on?
Brian Potter of Construction Physics recently tried to answer this question, here. Perhaps the two most common theories are that (1) bigger cars have become more popular (and bigger cars are more deadly to pedestrians), and (2) people are increasingly distracted by smartphones.
In his view, the SUV theory is maybe supportable, but the evidence is mixed. Pedestrian deaths involving smaller cars like Honda Civics are also up substantially. So it doesn’t seem to be just that.
As for the smartphone theory, Potter cites data showing that traffic accidents rarely report “distracted” driving. I call bullshit. I suspect it's because drivers don’t want to admit they were scrolling through TikTok; but even then, it doesn’t appear to be the clear cause. Smartphones are global, and yet this surge in pedestrian deaths is a uniquely American problem (based on other data from Potter).
So what is it?
My view — and this isn’t mentioned in the article — is that built form must be a factor. Much of it comes down to how we design our cities. Intuitively, this makes sense to me. But there’s also data to support it. First, if we look at pedestrian deaths per capita, there’s a clear bias toward the South and West, both of which tend to have more car-oriented urban patterns compared to the older cities in the North.
Second, if you drill down into specific urban environments — including those adopting strong Vision Zero policies — you’ll see that local trends don’t always match what we’re seeing nationally or even at the state level. For example, in recent years, cities like New York have become much safer for pedestrians:
New York City continues to defy national trends around pedestrian deaths, which are currently at a four-decade high nationwide. Traffic fatalities were down in four of the five major travel modes the DOT tracks. Compared to 2013—the last year before implementation of Vision Zero—New York City traffic deaths have dropped by 14.7%, from 299 that year. Pedestrian deaths have decreased by 35.9% compared to 2013 figures. Cyclist fatalities were also down for the third straight year (17 in 2022, down from a 20-year high of 28 in 2019), declining even as bicycle ridership has soared in recent years.
So my simple theory is this: Human-scaled spaces that are designed around pedestrians, rather than cars, are less likely to kill pedestrians.
At the same time, I do think we’ll see pedestrian deaths naturally come down in the US as autonomous vehicles become more widespread. AVs are already better — or at least safer — drivers than humans, and that will help. None of us should be driving cars anymore if you're just looking at the safety data. But I don’t see that as a good reason not to create more human-scaled spaces. They offer us much more than just safety.
Diagrams: Construction Physics
There are parts of Toronto that are pedestrian only. There's the Distillery District, some small laneways in Yorkville, the Toronto Islands (though this is a bit of a unique situation), and various other pockets around the city.
There are also streets that we temporarily open up to only pedestrians, such as Market Street and King Street, and areas, such as Kensington Market, that we have been rigorously considering pedestrianizing for as long as I can remember.
What is clear is that pedestrian-only streets are controversial. Motorists fear that it will make driving in the city even more inconvenient. And businesses fear that it will limit their customer base.
While it is true that not all streets can and should be pedestrianized, there are countless examples of streets and areas that appear to be thriving because of it.
Take, for example, Montréal.
Since 2021, the city has been pedestrianizing a stretch of 30 blocks along Mont-Royal Avenue during the summer months. And according to Mayor Valérie Plante, the commercial vacancy rate for the street has dropped from 14.5% in 2018 to 5.6% in 2023:
https://twitter.com/Val_Plante/status/1677358816235515904
Maybe you don't want to infer causality here, but at the very least, it seems to suggest that the street isn't dying and bereft of human activity. This year, pedestrianization is also planned to be extended further into the fall.
This won't necessarily be the outcome for all streets, but I do agree with this recent Globe and Mail article that, oftentimes, the reasons for not pedestrianizing are "a question of philosophy, not geography." Because there's lots of research and data to support doing this.
If any of you are business owners along Mont-Royal, I'd love to hear about your experiences and how you think, for better or for worse, it has changed the area. Leave a comment below or drop me a line.
Last night I was in CityPlace, West Palm Beach. Completed in 2000, CityPlace is a quintessential example of New Urbanism. (For those of you from Toronto, this is a different kind of a CityPlace.)
In case you’re unfamiliar with this movement, here’s a snippet from The Charter of New Urbanism (via Wikipedia):
“We advocate the restructuring of public policy and development practices to support the following principles: neighborhoods should be diverse in use and population; communities should be designed for the pedestrian and transit as well as the car; cities and towns should be shaped by physically defined and universally accessible public spaces and community institutions; urban places should be framed by architecture and landscape design that celebrate local history, climate, ecology, and building practice.”
At a high level, New Urbanism makes a lot of sense. American cities were sprawling uncontrollably and so advocates had decided that something had to change. The Congress for New Urbanism was founded in 1993.
But the New Urbanism movement has had its share of critics. Here’s how Witold Rybczynski – professor at the University of Pennsylvania – talked about it on his blog:
“What are the important ideas that have affected American cities in the last 20 years? The development of waterfronts. The renaissance in constructing urban parks. The move of genXers and retirees into downtowns. High-rise urban living and Vancouverism. The popularity of urban bicycling and bike-rental programs. Ditto for Zipcars. Urban farmers markets and community gardens. Urban charter schools. The dramatic expansion in attendance of urban cultural institutions, especially art museums. Urban tourism. Downtown trophy buildings. The emergence of influential big-city mayors. Have any of these been the result of the new urbanism movement?”
Frankly, I have never been a big follower of New Urbanism. It has always felt artificial to me. But I recognize the immense challenge in transforming car-oriented cities and communities into walkable ones. It’s one of the greatest challenges in city building. You’re asking people to change their habits.
If any of you are experts on New Urbanism (because I am certainly not), I would love to hear from you in the comment section below.
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