Tag Archives: crashes

News, Transportation

Want to Help the University of Washington Upgrade Burke-Gilman Trail?

The University of Washington is requesting $12 million from the U.S. Department of the Transportation’s TIGER program to upgrade the 1.8 miles of the Burke-Gilman Trail that skirt its campus. Because fewer than four percent of TIGER applicants receive funding — from a pool of $473 million this year — the UW is asking trail users and supporters to publicly sign on in support of the project. (Last year, Seattle received $14 million in TIGER funds for the Mercer Street project.)

Studies of the trail’s current usage rate it “very poor” or “failing,” and not simply because of the cracks and heaves in the pavement. Since 2012, the UW notes, the trail has had to (or will have to) accommodate traffic from the Alder and Elm residence halls, Children’s Hospital and University Village expansions, and the completion of Husky Stadium, along with the Hec Edmundson Pedestrian Bridge. 2016 brings an even larger impact, with the opening of the Stadium light rail station. Pedestrian use may almost double, while bicycle usage is projected to soar beyond even that.

The UW isn’t planning a simple resurfacing. It wants to rethink the trail, which historically has been stitched together in segments of different widths and materials, as a unit. The plan (pdf) is to separate pedestrians and cyclists: pedestrians will walk on a concrete path, while bicycles will be ridden on asphalt. (Joggers will still have gravel shoulders for their use.) Crosswalks would use painted sections to continue the trail’s pedestrian- and bicycle-path distinctions.

Intersections and crossings of the trail will be pruned back, so that people only enter the trail in “mixing areas” — keeping the unwary stroller from blithely stepping in front of a weekend peloton. At one of the more dangerous intersections, where Pend Oreille Road NE crosses into campus from Montlake Boulevard NE, the trail would become an underpass instead. And the trail would clearly ask for more consistent behavior from pedestrians and cyclists each time it meets a road, as opposed to the ad hoc mix of stop lights, stop signs, yield signs, and unsigned crosswalks in place now.

There’d also be non-metaphorical pruning of the vegetation and trees, to prevent further root incursions once the new path is laid down. Benches would be added alongside the trail, along with more bike racks. Lights would keep the trail bright during the fall and winter afternoons.

 

News, Transportation

Northwest Bucks National Trend Toward Increase in Traffic Deaths

Streetside memorial at NE 75th St, after a fatal collision (Photo: MvB)
Streetside memorial at NE 75th St, after a fatal collision (Photo: MvB)

Seattle may rank eighth on INRIX’s 2012-13 ranking of the “Top 10 Worst Cities for Traffic in America,” but if early projections from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration stand, the Northwest will have notched a seventh-straight-year of declining traffic fatalities. That’s in contrast to the U.S. as a whole, which saw fatalities increase by five percent between 2012 and 2011, to a rate of 1.16 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled (VMT), for a total of 34,080.

Context is important: That five-percent rise still makes 2012 one of the safest years in the past 60. Back in the 1960s, when Don Draper and colleagues were tooling around half in the bag, the fatality rate was more like five deaths per 1oo million VMT. In Washington State, it reached an all-time low of 0.8 in 2010 and 2011. In 2011, just 454 traffic fatalities were recorded.

Traffic volume was up very slightly, by just 0.3 percent, but only the Northwest Region 10  (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska) and Region 2 (New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) managed a reduction of traffic fatalities, year-over-year, of one percent. New England and the Southwest reached double digits in their increase in deaths, trailed by California and Arizona with their nine-percent rise.

Most of the spike in traffic deaths came during the wintry first quarter of 2012.

Because the numbers are preliminary, the NHTSA isn’t pointing fingers at specific causes. It was true, though, that in 2011, about half of all people killed in accidents weren’t wearing their seat belt. (In Washington State, where seat belt usage is high, about one-third of people killed weren’t wearing theirs.) Texas, which has the fastest speed limits in the country, has seen an increase in deaths from single-vehicle accidents — losing control of the car at 85 mph is more likely to kill you.

Why would people lose control? A survey finds that “at any given daylight moment” in the U.S., some 660,000 drivers are messing with their cell phone or other electronic device. Despite states banning texting or even holding a cell phone, that number has remained constant since 2010. Distracted driving meant the deaths of 3,331 people in 2011.