Between 2007 and 2015, eight crashes occurred on the segment of West Club Boulevard where the Durham team staged their demonstration project, including six crashes involving people waking (marked in green) an two involving people biking (marked in pink).
The team from Durham realized they needed to go beyond their typical online engagement and public meetingm model to make sure Walltown residents and people who ride the bus had a voice in guiding their demonstration project. In addition to collecting input through online surveys, they conducted in-person intercept surveys, where they spoke with people waiting at the bus stop who use the street on a day-to-day basis about the problems they were experiencing and the changes they would like to see. They also spread the word about their project through local media sources and staged pop-up meetings at nearby community events including a neighborhood association meeting, the Northgate Children’s Festival, and the Earth Day Festival.
The Durham team spreads the word about their project and asks for input on future art for the new crosswalk.
The Durham team constructed a protected pedestrian refuge within the existing median. They also closed a lane of traffic and created a separate space for buses to pull over at the bus stop.
The results of Durham’s project speak for themselves. The team collected data before and after the project to measure changes in how people move through the space. Prior to their demonstration, zero percent of drivers yielded to people crossing the street between the bus stop and the shopping mall, but after they installed improvements this rose to 20 percent. Additionally, median driving speeds dropped from 30-33 miles per hour to 28-29 miles per hour. That may not sound like a lot, but a difference of five miles per hour can make a huge difference for safety, greatly reducing the likelihood of a crash and the severity of injuries should a crash occur. Furthermore, 73 percent of people who participated in intercept surveys following the installation reported feeling an increased sense of safety thanks to the changes.
The Durham team celebrated the success of their demonstration project during the final Safe Streets, Smart Cities Academy workshop in Pittsburgh.
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The Safe Streets, Smart Cities Academy is funded by Road to Zero, a coalition of over 900 organizations committed to reducing traffic fatalities in the United States to zero over the next three decades.