Stepping into danger
Pedestrian fatality in Oakland highlights growing national problem
With the Jan. 18 death of a University of Pittsburgh student struck by a Port Authority bus along Fifth Avenue in Oakland, Pittsburgh joined a disturbing national trend.
At a time when traffic deaths across the country have gone down over the past 10 years, there has been one major exception: pedestrian deaths. The number of people struck and killed by a vehicle while they were walking was projected to top 6,000 in 2019 for the first time since 1990 and has shown a 35% increase in the past 10 years.
In Oakland, the third busiest economic development corridor in Pennsylvania behind Philadelphia and Downtown Pittsburgh, there’s the daily crush of motorists, public transit, bicyclists, college students and workers coming and going from three universities, major hospitals and research facilities. The death of Pitt senior Barbara Como, which is still under investigation by Pittsburgh police, follows more than three dozen pedestrian accidents in that area in recent years, 10 of them involving Port Authority
buses, according to a review of accidents statistics from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and Port Authority.
“It’s not just a problem in Pittsburgh but across the nation,” said Jane Terry, vice president of government affairs for the National Safety Council. “The one area where we see an increase in traffic deaths is in vulnerable road users, pedestrians and bicyclists.”
The Oakland Corridor
So many people want to be in Oakland on weekdays that Port Authority makes 2,065 daily weekday trips through the corridor on 23 routes carrying nearly 79,000 passengers. That’s down over the weekend, but it still runs 20 routes that make 1,280 Saturday trips with more than 43,000 passengers on Saturdays and just under 26,000 on Sundays.
Add in employees and medical patients who drive their own vehicles and thousands of students who live in the area, to say Oakland is a busy corridor is an understatement. With that many people in one area, the risk for accidents increases.
A review of PennDOT statistics from 2014-18, the most recent years available, shows there were 40 vehicle-pedestrian accidents in the 11-block area of Forbes and Fifth avenues between Craft Avenue and North Craig Street, none of them fatal. Port Authority statistics from 2015 through Jan. 18 show buses were involved in 10 of those accidents, including the fatality two weeks ago.
Todd Kravitz, PennDOT’s district traffic engineer for Allegheny, Beaver and Lawrence counties, acknowledged an increase in pedestrian accidents in general across the region. The agency has taken steps in the past two years to improve intersection markings and traffic lights on Forbes and is in the midst of a major project to improve intersections on East Carson Street on Pittsburgh’s South Side with bump-outs, lights and crosswalk markings after a spike in pedestrian accidents there. Fifth Avenue is a city street so PennDOT has no jurisdiction there.
Mr. Kravitz said the department reviews statistics over in five-year segments to look for trends and
relies on four principles to keep motorists and pedestrians safe: engineering, enforcement, education and technology. Despite efforts in those areas, he said, the number of accidents attributable to human behavior — speeding, drinking, distraction, for example — has increased from 50% in 2004 to more than 90% last year, he said.
“We are doing a lot of these good improvements, but we’re not experiencing the benefits we’re hoping for,” he said. “It’s not helping when pedestrians don’t have their heads up.”
Port Authority’s record
Before they drive alone, Port Authority operators receive a minimum of 10 weeks of training, including 125 hours on the road with an instructor. Much of that training is centered on safe practices, learning to use mirrors, recognizing potentially dangerous situations and how to avoid or navigate them safely.
In a given year, the authority’s operators log about 23 million miles on 98 bus routes and the light rail system. In the past five years, the agency has had 288 reportable accidents: 219 involving other vehicles and 69 involving pedestrians, resulting in seven deaths. Three victims were pedestrians, including one involving a light rail vehicle that was ruled a suicide.
Statistically, that’s about one death for every 16.4 million miles traveled. Even one is too many, said authority CEO Katharine Eagan Kelleman, who subscribes to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Zero Vision goal of eliminating traffic accidents that result in deaths or serious injuries.
“We don’t have to accept that,” Ms. Kelleman said. “I think there are always things we can do better.”
One item already underway is a review of the agency’s 7,000 bus stops over the next six years, with an emphasis of improving or eliminating stops that could be unsafe.
The transit agency also in the final stages of designing a Bus Rapid Transit system, which will put buses in exclusive lanes between Downtown Pittsburgh and Oakland, with a goal of increasing ridership and reducing the number of cars in the corridor. That will include curb-protected, two-way bike lanes on Fifth Avenue, where buses currently operate in a contraflow lane.
Richard Retting, a traffic safety expert with 38 years of experience, said fatal pedestrian accidents involving public transit vehicles are “rare” and happen so infrequently that there is little research on such fatalities. Mr. Retting, who works in Washington, D.C., for international traffic safety firm Sam Schwartz and consults with the Governors Highway Safety Association, said transit buses are involved in the least amount of fatal traffic accidents of any kind, about 50 a year.
Mr. Retting maintained that number could be even lower if agencies required collision avoidance technology on all of their vehicles. That technology, which is becoming common on cars and notifies a driver of a potential collision and can even apply the brakes automatically to avoid a collision, is available but not widely required, he said.
“There is technology today that is available that maybe could have prevented that accident [in Oakland],” he said. “The collision avoidance technology allows us to go beyond what the human operator can do.”
Port Authority spokesman Adam Brandolph said the agency tested a system about 10 years ago that warned pedestrians if they got too close to a moving bus but discontinued it when residents complained it was too loud. It hasn’t tested the type of system that would warn operators, he said.
National overview
So why are more pedestrians dying across the country? Opinions vary from distracted drivers and pedestrians — smartphones are the culprit — to larger SUVs that cause more serious injuries, to economic changes that cause more low-income people to walk or ride a bike, to combined streets that have motor vehicles, bikers and walkers sharing the same space.
Mr. Retting said there is “no rational explanation” other than the growth of smartphones, whose introduction closely corresponds to the increase in pedestrian accidents. He called it “part of the price we’re paying” for always being connected.
Pittsburgh Police Commander Ed Trapp, who oversees the traffic division, said in a statement that his officers do all the enforcement they can, but safety is mostly the responsibility of drivers, bikers and pedestrians.
“Simply put: If you are driving a vehicle, you need to avoid all distractions and focus on the road and your surroundings. That means cell phone use can wait until you’ve reached your destination, music should not be so loud that you cannot hear emergency vehicle sirens, and, of course, follow all traffic rules. Speed limits are not suggestions — they are limits,” he said.
“Pedestrians also need to be careful … Never assume drivers see you.”
Ms. Terry seconded the need for everyone traveling to be aware of their surroundings.
“When you operating in these mixed environments and do something wrong, the results could be deadly.”
In a given year, the Port Authority’s operators log about 23 million miles on 98 bus routes and the light rail system. In the past five years, the agency has had 288 reportable accidents: 219 involving other vehicles and 69 involving pedestrians, resulting in seven deaths. Three victims were pedestrians, including one involving a light rail vehicle that was ruled a suicide.