 Multiple lanes of fast-moving cars, destinations that draw foot traffic from surrounding areas, and scarce crosswalks or other pedestrian accommodations: The ingredients which make a deadly road for walkers are all present on Long Island's Hempstead Turnpike. For the third year in a row, Hempstead Turnpike in Nassau County is the region’s most dangerous road for walking, according to Tri-State Transportation Campaign’s just-released Most Dangerous Roads for Walking report. Between 2007 and 2009, twelve pedestrians were killed on that 16-mile stretch of suburban highway cutting through Nassau County’s most densely populated towns. The victims included three seniors, and a pair of adult brothers.
At four to six lanes across along most of its length, and lined with strip malls, fast food restaurants, and shopping centers, the Hempstead Turnpike serves as a perfect example of a wide suburban “arterial” road. In the tri-state region, nearly two-thirds (63%) of pedestrian fatalities occur on these types of roads.
Manhattan’s Broadway ranked second in the Campaign’s report, with 11 fatalities over the three-year period. With the exception of one fatality near City Hall, all of the Broadway pedestrian deaths occurred in northern Manhattan, where the road handles two-way traffic. There were no fatalities along the stretches of Broadway that have been transformed through NYC Department of Transportation’s Green Light for Midtown program.
 TSTC's Most Dangerous Roads for Walking report includes a ranking of roads in the region by number of pedestrian fatalities, fact sheets and Google Maps which break out the analysis by county, and recommendations for how to make roads safer. Click to read. The Campaign’s analysis found that the Burlington Pike (US-130) in Burlington County was the most dangerous road in New Jersey. Over three years, ten pedestrians were killed on the road. Like the Hempstead Turnpike, Burlington Pike is four to six lanes across most of the route’s 23 miles, with shops and retail destinations along both sides of the road, but few crosswalks.
The Campaign’s findings confirm previous reports which concluded that road design — and in particular, the design of conventional arterials — is a primary contributor to pedestrian risk. With multiple lanes, long sightlines, and fewer interruptions from cross traffic or pedestrians, arterials encourage traffic to speed. Prevailing travel speeds on arterials tend to be upwards of 40 mph. A pedestrian struck by a vehicle traveling at this speeds has a dismal 15 percent chance of survival.
Communities across the tri-state region are beginning to recognize the hazards of typical suburban-style road design. Connecticut has implemented a “Complete Streets” law requiring that new construction seek to accommodate the needs of all roads users. And late last year, outgoing governor Jodi Rell announced significant changes to ConnDOT’s bicycle and pedestrian policies aimed at improving the delivery and increasing the funding available for bicycle and pedestrian projects. New Jersey’s Department of Transportation has increased funding for bicycle and pedestrian projects and recently signed a Complete Streets policy. New York State has implemented a SafeSeniors program seeking to address pedestrian safety for older New Yorkers, and NYCDOT has emerged as a national leader in carving out safe public spaces for pedestrians and bicyclists. Elsewhere in downstate New York, at least six communities have adopted Complete Streets policies or resolutions.
But with approximately 415 pedestrian killed on the region’s roadways every year, there’s still a long way to go. A good place to start would be for the New York State legislature to pass the critically-needed Complete Streets bill that has languished in Albany for nearly a year. Beyond that, the Campaign recommends that all three states in the region:
- Make pedestrian safety a policy and investment priority;
- Protect the most vulnerable pedestrians through increased spending on Safe Routes to School, Safe Routes to Transit, and Safe Routes for Seniors programs;
- Designate a fair share of federal funding to improving bicycling and walking; and,
- Ask our congressional delegation to fight to protect and expand federal programs that provide significant funding for bicycle and pedestrian projects.
After the jump, the full ranking of the region’s most dangerous roads.
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2010 proved to be a disastrous year for New Jersey transportation, with the state’s most pressing transportation challenge going unaddressed and with great leaps backward in policy. New Governor Chris Christie entered the year well aware that the state’s transportation system needed a long-term funding solution. The Transportation Trust Fund (which gets most of its revenue from the state gas tax and represents the state’s contribution to the NJDOT and NJ Transit capital programs) had been borrowed against for too long and would go bankrupt by July 2011.
 NJ Transit riders packed a public hearing on planned fare hikes and service cuts in Newark in March. Gov. Christie didn’t address the issue during 2010. But the tough budget environment hit transit riders in other ways, leading to major fare hikes and service cuts and the cancellation of the Access to the Region’s Core project, a rail tunnel between NYC and New Jersey that was necessary to increase service on the state rail system.
A Tough Year for Transit Riders
To say it was a tough year for transit riders in New Jersey would be an understatement. The new governor opened the year by cutting state support for NJ Transit by 11%. A proposal for a 25% fare increase and huge service cuts soon followed. Thousands of riders protested at public hearings and sent messages to state politicians, and NJ Transit eventually lowered the fare hike for local bus and light rail riders to 10% while keeping the 25% hike for commuter trains and buses. But the increase was still the largest in a generation.
In May, NJDOT Commissioner Jim Simpson revealed that the Christie administration had backed away from a financial commitment to a planned bus rapid transit and PATCO rail extension project in South Jersey.
But this was just a sneak preview of one of the largest stories of the year — the cancellation of the ARC Tunnel. As recently as April, the governor was calling the ARC Tunnel “critical for the transit riders of New Jersey” and standing squarely behind the project, which represented the culmination of 20 years of planning and was the largest transit project in the nation. But in September he suspended new work on the project for 30 days, supposedly to review project costs.
Many observers, however, had an alternate theory: that killing the tunnel could be a means to shore up the Transportation Trust Fund. NJ Transit Executive Director Jim Weinstein admitted as such, telling state legislators that cancelling the project could be a way to do so. The governor was urged to reconsider this short-sighted decision by broad swathes of the state’s civic, labor, business, and environmental communities, and Christie delayed making a decision as thousands of New Jerseyans came out to support the project. USDOT Secretary Ray LaHood flew down and set up last-minute federal-state discussions to try and salvage the project. But after delaying a decision again, Gov. Christie rejected several offered financing options.
On October 27, the governor made the decision official, effectively precluding any major improvements to the rail network for at least the next 20 years. Doing so also put the state on the hook to repay $271 million in federal funds that had been spent on the project. The federal government has since reduced that amount, and the state has hired a D.C. law firm to try and lower the bill further.
Toll Road Widenings Advance
Even as major transit projects languished, the Christie administration borrowed billions of dollars to advance major road widening projects. Both the Garden State Parkway widening (between mileposts 63 and 80) and NJ Turnpike widening (6-8A), which the Corzine administration broke ground on, advanced further under Gov. Christie.
» Continue reading…
(Click to view report.)
Following on the heels of a letter from the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, Environment New Jersey, and NJPIRG urging Governor Christie to redirect the billions in transportation funds that had been slated for the Access to the Region’s Core project to transit and repair projects, a new TSTC report identifies [...]
Longtime MTR readers may have wondered where Tri-State’s annual analysis of New Jersey’s capital plan is. Typically, we’ve produced a detailed analysis of the capital plan in the late spring or early summer. In April of this year we published a brief “preview” of the 2011 capital plan, in anticipation of a more thorough [...]
Montclair and Somerville are New Jersey’s newest Transit Villages, the NJDOT announced last week. The towns are the 21st and 22nd to receive the designation, which allows them to apply for $100,000 land use planning and technical assistance grants through the Transit Village program and gives them priority when applying for other state grants. The [...]
Ground has been broken on the Access to the Region’s Core project, which will double rail capacity between New Jersey and NYC and transform transportation in the metropolitan region. But, Philip Barbara of Reuters writes in the Star-Ledger, federal officials are getting nervous as NJ’s Transportation Trust Fund inches closer to bankruptcy. In fact, [...]
A gas tax referendum may be on the table, and a smaller transportation capital plan is on the way, NJDOT Commissioner Jim Simpson said during a heated State Senate Budget Committee hearing last Thursday. Though the hearing was ostensibly on NJDOT’s and NJ Transit’s fiscal 2011 budgets, senators spent the bulk of it grilling [...]
The buying power of New Jersey's 10.5 cents/gallon gas tax has eroded over the years. Note: In 2009, the tax was equivalent to 5.8 cents/gal in 1988 dollars.
On Friday, NJ Governor Christie’s transition team released a sweeping review of state operations. Not surprisingly, nearly all of the key transportation issues facing the [...]
From left: NJDOT Commissioner nominee Jim Simpson, NJ Transit Executive Director nominee Jim Weinstein.
Moments ago, incoming Governor Chris Christie announced that Jim Simpson is his nominee to head the NJ Department of Transportation and Jim Weinstein will lead NJ Transit. Both come to their positions with plenty of transportation experience.
New NJDOT [...]
Speedway Elementary School in Newark (seen under construction in this photo) is at the intersection of two major roads that feed into and off of the Garden State Parkway.
We learn some of our most important lessons in elementary school: how to share, how to read, how to study. For the students slated [...]
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Masthead Mobilizing the Region is published by the staff of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign.
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