Pedestrian deaths here ‘dramatically’ surging
71 struck, killed so far this year, leading to calls for better urban planning
James Llamas, an engineer-in-training at a transportation consulting firm, knew Houston streets are twice as dangerous as New York City’s.
But it hit home this year when Alex Hill, a 21-year-old close to many of Llamas’ friends, was struck and killed while crossing Westheimer in the early hours of Jan. 8, just down the street from the restaurant where the South Carolina transplant waited tables.
Over the next 10 months, the list of pedestrians in Houston killed by cars grew long. At least 71 were killed as of Oct. 31, according to the Houston Police Department — a tally already 31 percent higher than the total for all 2015, with two months still remaining.
“The numbers are just dramatically going up, and it’s been really hard for us to explain why,” HPD Sgt. Derrick Hall said. The spike does little to help Houston’s street-safety reputation, which suffered in 2013 when the police chief hit and lightly injured a pedestrian downtown and in 2014 when the research group Smart Growth America calculated the metropolitan area ranked as the country’s seventh-most dangerous for pedestrians.
Urban planners say this year’s surge in deaths may be driven by millennials’ preference to walk and seniors’ reliance on travel by foot. A local mobility advocate says many of the deaths highlight poor design across the city. And national data suggest it may owe partly to increased driving spurred by low gas prices.
Advocates and planners said the city needs to work more on safe streets by building sidewalks, narrowing lanes, encouraging safe speeds and adding crosswalks.
Many of the 71 deaths came as people tried to cross freeways or streets outside of crosswalks. However, local mobility advocate Jay Blazek Crossley said authorities often blame those pedestrians for their own deaths.
“But why are they incorrectly using the infrastructure? Maybe it’s because we’re designing this infrastructure wrong,” said Crossley, who until May led the Houston Tomorrow group for 10 years. “Anywhere where you have to walk four blocks to get to a crosswalk is wrong . ... Anywhere where a human thinks it makes sense to run across a freeway, (there is) a problem of design.”
Emiko Atherton, who leads Smart Growth America’s “Complete Streets” coalition, said design issues become evident as cities attract more millennials, who preferred walking over driving by 12 percentage points in a 2015 National Association of Realtors survey.
Crosswalks far apart
Seniors also may be walking more as it becomes more popular to “age in place” by staying in their homes as they grow older. Nearly 90 percent of those 65 and older said they prefer that option, according to a 2014 AARP survey.
Given the rising numbers of pedestrians, Atherton and others said traffic calming can greatly reduce the chance of fatal crashes. While pedestrians could survive a 25 mph impact, 45 mph crashes will almost certainly kill them. And in Houston, Crossley said, “Most of our big streets are designed to get you to drive 45, speeds that are just about guaranteed to kill a pedestrian.”
Traffic can be slowed on city streets with environmental changes like narrower lanes, roadside trees and the less-than-beloved
speed bump.
The planners said crosswalk spacing should reflect likely human behavior. Many streets go a quartermile or more without a crosswalk, Atherton said, and few people will take a hike just to find a crosswalk — especially when it’s hot and humid.
One victim who was making such a “midblock arterial crossing” — also known as jaywalking across a busy street — was Jose Torres, an 18-year-old killed just outside city limits while crossing Aldine Mail Route Road in the
predawn hours of Oct. 26. Although his apartment complex sits directly across the street from MacArthur High School, the senior would have had to walk nearly a quarter-mile in either direction to reach a crosswalk. His mother realized he was struck when she saw his shoes lying in the road.
Fatal crashes up, too
Houston police said overall traffic fatalities also have increased, but not as sharply. The first 10 months of 2016 show 21 percent more crashes than the same period last year, while this year’s pedestrian tally already tops all 12 months of 2015 by nearly a third.
The Bayou City is not alone. Traffic deaths are up across the country, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced last month. The first half of 2016 saw 10.4 percent more traffic deaths nationwide compared to the same period in 2015, a year that saw 7.1 percent more fatalities than 2014.
The increase could be driven partly by consumers spending more time on the road after gas prices fell in late 2014. However, the number of miles driven has not grown as quickly as the
number of fatalities.
Steve Radack, a Harris County commissioner, said “hundreds and hundreds of miles of county roads” lack sidewalks, and many subdivisions in unincorporated areas have been designed without thought to pedestrians.
And distracted driving doesn’t help, Radack said. He criticized the Legislature and former Gov. Rick Perry for being “unresponsive” and not banning texting while driving.
Focusing on all users
Whatever the cause, planners agreed Houston can do more to combat traffic deaths. Llamas said the region is about 40 percent more dangerous than Los Angeles, another car-dependent metropolis.
Crossley called on Mayor Sylvester Turner to join the “Vision Zero” effort to eliminate — or at least reduce — traffic fatalities, and to follow up on Annise Parker’s executive order requiring city planners to consider all street users’ needs, not just motorists.
“Cities were all planned ... with the auto in mind. It was about moving cars, not people. As we’ve seen a change in preferences and needs, we are not designing with users in mind.”