Ecobici bike share of Mexico City announced plans to increase operations next year by 180 new stations and roughly 3,000 new bicycles. Photo by Angelica.

Welcome back to TheCityFix Picks, our series highlighting the newsy and noteworthy of the past week. Each Friday, we’ll run down the headlines falling under TheCityFix’s five themes: integrated transport, urban development and accessibility, air quality and climate change, health and road safety, and communications and marketing.

Integrated Transport

Mexico City’s Ecobici bike share announced plans for expansions next year, with 180 new stations and roughly 3,000 new bicycles.

A U.S. amendment’s passing was defeated this week that would have eliminated federal funding for bike paths. The effort was the third of its kind from Republican senators in less than two weeks.

The London City Council and the London Transit Commission announced it is currently working a plan to add a bus rapid transit (BRT) system to the city’s mass transit network. Though, London City Councillor Harold Usher remarked that plans are still in their infancy.

The Twin Cities’ metro transit provider is exploring the feasibility of BRT lines in eleven of its cities’ densely developed corridors.

Urban Development + Accessibility

The winner of Rio de Janeiro’s 2016 Olympic Park design contest was announced. The contest submissions included plans for redeveloping the park space into a mixed use neighborhood following the Olympics proceedings.

A recent study found that 38 percent of private vehicle owners in Ahmedabad, India are hesitant to use the city’s BRT system because they feel it doesn’t reach close enough to their homes.

BNKR Architecture proposed a unique solution to increasing Mexico City’s urban capacity amidst little free space with an underground 1,000-foot, pyramid-shaped “earthscraper.”

ArtPlace offered $14 million in grants for “creative placemaking” projects. The grants are available to non-profits, governments, individuals, and companies.

Air Quality + Climate Change

A new study links recent increases in cyclone intensity around the Arabian Sea to a host of air pollutants, including aerosol accumulation, diesel emissions, and soot.

Amtrak celebrated its 30 million passenger service during the 2011 fiscal year.

GM Korea unveiled the first hybrid vehicle in its Korean segment, the Alpheon eAssist. The compact car offers a 25 percent improvement in fuel economy and a 22 percent CO2 emissions reduction as compared to the standard Alpheon.

Health + Road Safety

Recent disruptions in BlackBerry email, Messenger, and internet services in Abu Dhabi were linked to a 20 percent decrease in traffic crashes.

Exposure to city smog is linked to cognitive deficiencies in children, according to a new study led by Lilian Calderón-Garcidueñas of the National Institute of Pediatrics, in Mexico City, and the University of Montana.

The Pennsylvania Senate presented a texting while driving ban to Governor Tom Corbett for enactment. If signed, Pennsylvania will be the 35th state in the U.S. enlisting the ban.

University of Wisconsin researchers uncovered that if U.S. Midwesterners ran half of their short-distance errands by bike as opposed to car, the comparatively healthy active transport change would result in 1,100 deaths being avoided each year, and $7 billion saved in reduced health-care costs.

Communications + Marketing

General Motors China Science Lab recently hosted their 2012 GM Global R&D Symposium in Shanghai. The event primarily highlighted the team’s work on automotive lightweight material and battery research and technology development.

Joining together in the fight against distracted driving, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the U.S. Ad Council released three Public Service Announcements as part of a new campaign entitled “Stop the Texts. Stop the Wrecks.”

U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood introduces the Urban Bikeway Design Guide. Photo by Ben Owen.

New York City Transportation Commissioner and current NACTO president Janette Sadik-Khan, along with U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, today announced the print release of the Urban Bikeway Design Guide, the preeminent resource for designing and engineering bikeways in cities. The guide was previously released as an interactive document and can be found here.

The mission of the guide is to provide cities with state-of-the-practice solutions that can help create complete streets that are safe and enjoyable for bicyclists. The examples in the guide are based on the experiences of the best cycling cities in the world. In order to create the guide, the authors conducted an extensive literature search from both design guidelines and real-life experiences, and assembled a comprehensive list of bike lanes, cycle tracks, intersections, signals and markings as they are used around the world.

The guide is tailored to U.S. cities and will function as a set of standards to bring innovative design concepts in bicycle infrastructure, Sadik-Khan explained. Since establishing bicycle infrastructure, cities have seen traffic fatalities at their very lowest rates, she added, explaining that the guide is not merely a how-to on bicycle infrastructure implementation but also a way to establish safer streets.

LaHood echoed Sadik-Khan’s sentiments and explained that the guide will provide communities with design principles for safe and available bicycle infrastructure.

Congressman Earl Blumenauer drew the press conference to a close by praising NACTO’s efforts in assembling the innovative principles in the Urban Bikeway Design Guide and added that such a guide would have been tremendously helpful while bringing bicycle infrastructure to Portland, Ore. The congressman added that much of the city’s knowledge on good bicycle infrastructure design came from trial and error. Blumenauer also added that these design principles will provide an economic boost to communities, in addition to creating safer roads for drivers, cyclists and pedestrians.

The guide was developed under the guidance of traffic engineers and planners, as well as academics with deep experience and knowledge in urban bikeway applications. Click here for a list of all participating professionals.

To read the online version of the guide, click here.

The city of Lviv in western Ukraine started the first stages of building new cycling routes for the city’s bicycle commuters. The Executive Committee of the City of Lviv approved a 9-year implementation plan for the city’s new cycling infrastructure. The approved plan includes a 270 kilometers (168 miles) of cycling infrastructure to be completed by 2019.

Lviv’s new bicycling infrastructure is part of the city’s active promotion of bicycle culture. Working with local non-governmental organizations, bicycle dealers and cycle-friendly partners, the city is pursuing a sustainable mobility agenda and cooperating with other cycling cities worldwide.

In order to initiate construction of new infrastructure, the city council allocated 1 million Ukrainian Hryvnias (US$125,000) to the project, however, the city is still pursuing additional internal and external funds.

The construction of cycling infrastructure is progressing simultaneously at multiple sites; however, the five proposed sites do not yet form a continuous cycling network. Each cycle path follows its own style depending on the road conditions and traffic density. Some cycling paths are designed as bi-directional roads whereas others mix one-directional bicycle traffic with pedestrian space. The width of the paths also varies from 1.5 meters to 3 meters wide. The one unique future for all of the cycle paths is the red color designating it as separate traffic from private vehicles.

According to Oleh Shmid, the mayor’s advisor on cycling development—the first such position in Ukraine—the largest obstacle to promoting bicycle culture in Lviv is influencing behavior.

Explains Shmid:

“The main and the biggest barrier of cycling development is the stereotypes concerning cycling. The technical obstacles are, of course, connected with the peculiarities of historical heritage in Lviv. The global experience, though, shows that this hurdle is not insurmountable. The future problem may be the excess of prudence of Lviv citizens, who will use cycling paths somewhat reluctantly. This may give officials the purpose to close projects connected with cycling, since there is no demand of society for them. That is why, I ask people to get on their bikes and push the cars out of roads.”

Shmid also explains that the city’s newfound efforts to proliferate cycling comes from the overwhelming amount of private vehicle traffic. “A modern city is difficult to imagine without a complex system,” Shmid says. “We can see cars everywhere and they have occupied a great part of public space. The city has no technical possibilities to handle such a great amount of vehicles anymore. It is necessary to choose either to develop Lviv for people or to make it comfortable for cars.”

Shmid also adds that cycling is the best transport solution for the city, especially since it is only 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) wide at its broadest point.

As for advice to other cities taking on similar projects, Shmid says that being systematic is key. “Cycling infrastructure has to be integrated into the city transport network,” he says. “This should be taken into account in the early stages of any city development projects.”

But according to Shmid, no cycling infrastructure can be successful without public participation. “The best input of any Lviv citizen for cycling development is to start using bicycles,” he says.

To learn more about Lviv’s cycling initiatives, click here.

Los Angeles is expanding its network of bicycle lanes by removing car lanes. Photo by Mark Hogan.

Last week, officials in Los Angeles unveiled the city’s newest bike lane, reports the Los Angeles Times. The 2.2-mile bike lane along 7th Street from Catalina Avenue in Koreatown to Figueroa Street in downtown eliminates an entire car lane and instead dedicates the space to the approximately 27,000 bicyclists who ride in Los Angeles every day.

“Hold on to your hats, folks, we’re actually removing a lane for a car — in favor of a bike lane — in Los Angeles,” City Councilman Ed Reyes said during a news conference at MacArthur Park. “By doing so, we, as a city, are changing the way we see bicycles, as not only a recreational vehicle but as a legitimate form of public transportation.”

“It’s really symbolic,” said Allison Mannos of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition. “It’s not only showing that L.A. is changing overall and becoming more bike-friendly as a city … [but] we’re able to bring [bike lanes] to areas where people are depending on their bikes every day,” reports the Los Angeles Times.

In the article, Mannos explains that the 7th Street bike lane proposal emerged out of conversations with laborers who rely on the thoroughfare to commute. According to Mannos, cyclists are not only middle-class white urbanites who choose to cycle despite being able to afford private vehicles; cyclists are also low-income minority communities who depend on mass transit and affordable commutes.

Tim Fremaux, a traffic engineer at the Department of Transportation in Los Angeles, explained that the transformation of the street is in line with the city’s Bike Master Plan, which calls for more than 200 miles of new routes every five years. In fact, Fremaux adds, 7th Street was an ideal site for the transformation because of its low traffic.

The 2.2-mile bike lane is only the beginning of 7th Street’s transformation. Officials hope to add another 2.9 miles through downtown and into Boyle Heights, the article reports. These efforts are all in line with other bike lanes popping up around Los Angeles. Early in September, the city unveiled two new bicycle lanes: a 1.6-mile path on 1st Street, between Boyle Avenue and Lorena Street; and a 0.6-mile path on Chuenga Boulevard, between Odin and Yucca streets.

New York City attempts to make room for bicyclists. Photo by James D. Schwarz

A recent article in The New York Times points to some interesting statistics regarding the vision of transport commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and the increase in cycling in New York City. According to John Pucher, a Rutgers University professor who studies bicycle trends around the world, bicycle commuters in New York City make up 0.6 percent of the commuting population. This puts New York City behind Chicago, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Portland.

But as Frank Bruni notes, investing in bicycling infrastructure presents a Catch-22. “With only a small percentage of Americans using bicycles as their primary method of transportation, there’s no huge public outcry—or immediate political benefit to—remaking city streets so that they’re a little less friendly to cars and a lot more hospitable to bikes,” Bruni explains. He further notes that without the necessary infrastructure, safety precautions and policy encouragements, “biking isn’t convenient and attractive enough to win all that many converts and thus a political constituency.”

Although New York City’s bicycling culture has doubled in the last two decades, automobile drivers still dramatically outnumber cyclists. According to figures from the Department of Transportation, about 15,500 cyclists daily enter Manhattan’s central business district, which stands small in comparison to 762,000 cars, the article reports. But Bruni confirms that bicycle ridership has definitely grown in New York City, especially since a decade earlier, when only 4,700 cyclists entered Manhattan’s central business district.

Read the full article here.

According to Transportation for America, pedestrians will always take the shortest and the most reasonable path, even if that means jaywalking. Photo by Gateway Streets.

The rapidly growing car culture in Mumbai has led officials and urban planners to compromise pedestrian infrastructure for car-centric and congestion-easing strategies. According to the Times of India, although 44 percent of citizens walk some distance to work, the pavements dedicated to pedestrian safety have been shrinking. As a result of such design decisions, pedestrians now make up 78 percent of all road fatalities. Bikes and three-wheelers follow, making up 7 percent and 4 percent of road fatalities, respectively.

The evidence of shrinking sidewalks comes from the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), where researchers found that the accessibility of sidewalks in Worli, Mumbai had significantly narrowed. “There used to be over three-metre-wide (10 feet) pavements in the past which have shrunk after a flyover was constructed and road widening undertaken,” said Rakesh Kumar, director of NEERI. “Existing pavements are reduced due to encroachments by electric and telecom boxes, trees and even bus stops.”

City infrastructure aside, suburban areas are worse off when it comes to road safety. “Calling pedestrians ‘forgotten citizens,’ Chembur resident Vijay Sangole said areas like the R C Marg junction (where the monorail construction is underway ) are perilous for walkers,” reports the Times of India. “Pedestrians are most marginalized along trunk routes like the express highways, Jogeshwari-Vikhroli Link Road, and the new link road from Andheri to Dahisar, observed activist Krishnaraj Rao who led the Sahasi Padhyatri movement in 2008. He added that foot overbridges were stationed at an interval of three to four kilometres, inconveniencing pedestrians who have to cross roads.” 

Pedestrians make up an alarming majority of road fatalities in the developing world, but this disturbing phenomenon is not unique to the developing world. The World Bank and the World Health Organization estimate that car occupants account for almost 60 percent of road fatalities in developed countries, but the lack of pedestrian infrastructure has been making some headlines over the last year.

The Case of Raquel Nelson

On April 20, 2010, Raquel Nelson and her three children set out to cross Austell Road, a five-lane road, in their suburban town in Atlanta, Ga. They had just gotten off the bus, which dropped them off across the street from their complex. Following the other passengers coming off the bus, Nelson and her three children waited for a break in traffic and walked across the road to the median, to again wait for another break in traffic. When one of the other pedestrians made a run to the other side, Nelson’s four-year old son, A.J., followed, letting go of his mother’s hand.  At that point, A.J. was struck by an oncoming car. After hitting A.J., the driver sped off, fleeing the scene of the crash.

A.J. was killed by the hit-and-run driver.

It was later revealed that the driver who struck A.J. was blind in one eye and had been drinking and using pain killers before he got behind the wheel. He was convicted and served six months of a five-year sentence.

A.J.’s mother was also convicted of reckless conduct, improperly crossing a roadway, and second-degree homicide by vehicle by the jury. Her conviction carried a sentence of 36 months, for which she asked for a new trial and was granted her request by Judge Katherine Tanksley. In the meantime, Judge Tanksley sentenced Nelson to 12 months of probation.

Outrage from the Transport Community

Raquel Nelson being charged with vehicular homicide struck a chord with Transportation for America, a coalition supporting an array of transportation policies.  “According to the office of Cobb County prosecutor Barry Morgan, Nelson–who had no car at the time–committed vehicular homicide by attempting to cross a five-lane highway with her three kids to get to her apartment, after being let off the bus,” said the TfA article.

Further enraging is that Nelson’s conviction came from a group of jurors who had never taken a bus in metro Atlanta.

“Nelson, 30 and African-American, was convicted on the charge this week by six jurors who were not her peers: All were middle-class whites, and none had ever taken a bus in metro Atlanta. In other words, none had ever been in Nelson’s shoes:

They had never taken two buses to go grocery shopping at Wal-Mart with three kids in tow. They had never missed a transfer on the way home that caused them to wait a full hour-and-a-half with tired and hungry kids for the next bus. They had never been let off at a bus stop on a five-lane speedway, with their apartment in sight across the road, and been asked to drag those three little ones an additional half-mile-plus down the road to the nearest traffic signal and back in order to get home at last.

And they had never lost control of an over-eager four-year-old as they waited on a three-foot median for a car to pass. Nor had they watched helplessly as a driver who had had “three or four” beers and two painkillers barreled toward their child.”

The Huffington Post echoed this point in an article published in July 2011.

“Nelson, a black woman, was convicted by an all-white jury. She relies on public transportation; she is a pedestrian in a car-oriented Atlanta suburb. During jury questioning, none of the jurors who would eventually convict Nelson raised their hands when asked if they relied on public transportation. Just one juror admitted to ever having ridden a public bus, though in response to a subsequent question, a few said they’d taken a bus to Braves games.

Nelson was not judged by a jury of her peers; she was convicted by a jury that had no understanding of the circumstances that compelled her to cross the street where she did.”

Pedestrian Behavior

According to Transportation for America, road design and public transportation in suburban communities are not sufficient to address such traffic incidents and fatalities. What pedestrians will do, TfA explains, will be to take the shortest reasonable path.

The Huffington Post agrees and reinstates the importance of sound road design as a prevention technique. The article writes, “There is something to be said for designing cities with an eye toward how people actually behave, not how urban planners wish they would. Putting a bus stop in the middle of a busy highway, three-tenths of a mile away from the nearest crosswalk—while zoning for apartments and businesses on the other side of the same street—is poor planning.”

Ben Welle, assistant project manager of Health and Road Safety at EMBARQ (the producer of this blog), believes that these examples show the dangerous situations all road users must face when cities are planned only for cars. “The thing to remember is that the one thing that is always involved in a car crash is a car, so slowing them down through good design and shifting trips through high quality mass transit, walking and biking facilities can really reduce risk,” he says.

Dario Hidalgo, director of Research and Practice at EMBARQ, emphasizes the importance of  inclusive road planning but also argues in favor of reducing vehicle miles traveled to protect all road users. He writes:

“Car centric urban development, the kind the U.S. cities have been applying for 80+ years, has resulted in many social and environmental inequities.  The sad case of Raquel Nelson’s son, and her own verdict in the legal case against her, are just symbolic of what are the priorities in such a society: to yield to cars, to endanger children in favor of car access, to see pedestrian and public transit users as rare individuals, to be lenient with car drivers which may not be able to drive,  to ask people to walk 1 mile when direct distance is 300 feet, and to leave the decision to a jury that is not familiar with the needs of vulnerable populations.  All for the sake of increasing speed and accessibility for cars, not for people.  At the same time, cars are safer for those inside, and roads are safer for those driving, forgiving their human mistakes, but not those of people outside the cars.  It took five generations to reach this state; I hope it does not take another five generations to come back to a more balanced, human-centric approach.  I am still optimistic: governments around the world have placed the Decade of Action on Road Safety in the center of the public agenda, and the way forward is clear: it includes going beyond the safe car and safe road for cars, it includes reducing vehicle miles driven to reduce exposure, with urban development and sustainable transport measures—more walking, more biking and more transit.”

In order to protect pedestrians, some cities turn to design tactics, like adding overpasses or underground tunnels. Mogilev, Belarus, for example, started constructing a 12-meter underground pedestrian tunnel in 2009 to help pedestrians avoid the heavily trafficked roads above ground.

Cities also ticket jaywalkers to help curb road fatalities.

What is your experience with pedestrian infrastructure in your city? Which design or policy strategies have you seen that work?

Click on the image below to watch a special by PBS on jaywalking and pedestrian infrastructure.

Dario Hidalgo argues in favor of reducing vehicle miles traveled, which would thereby reduce exposure and the chances of pedestrian road fatalities. Click on the image to watch the PBS special on jaywalking.