Public Transit promotes Safety

[daveklepper]

Press Release – The Hidden Traffic Safety Solution: Public Transportation

14 September 2016

 

For more information:

Todd Litman ([e-mail])

Victoria Transport Policy Institute (www.vtpi.org)

Office: 250-360-1560 | Mobile: [phone]

 

Mantill Williams ([e-mail])
American Public Transportation Association

Office: 202-496-4869 

"The Hidden Traffic Safety Solution: Public Transportation" (http://www.apta.com/mediacenter/pressreleases/2016/Pages/Hidden-Traffic-Safety-Solution.aspx ), a new study by Todd Litman, published by the American Public Transportation Association, shows how high quality public transit services and more transit-oriented development can increase safety for users and communities.

 

Public transportation is overall a very safe travel mode. Transit passengers have about one-tenth the traffic casualty (death and injury) rate as automobile passengers, and transit-oriented communities have about one-fifth the per capita traffic casualty rate as automobile-oriented communities. This occurs because high-quality public transit helps create more compact and multi-modal communities where residents drive less and at lower speeds, and where higher-risk groups have viable alternative to driving. These benefits are large but often overlooked in conventional planning. More comprehensive safety analysis can justify significantly more support for public transit and transit-oriented development.

 

This study shows that vehicle death and injury rates tend to decline significantly in a community as public transit ridership increases. Cities that average more than 50 annual transit trips per capita have about half the average traffic fatality rates as cities where residents average fewer than 20 annual trips. Since Americans average about 1,350 annual trips on all modes, this increase from less than 20 to more than 50 annual transit trips represents a small increase in transit mode share, from about 1.5% up to about 4%, equal to an average increase of just three transit trips per month per person.  

 

Pro-transit policies increase traffic safety in several ways, including reduced risks to travelers who shift from automobile to transit, community-wide crash reductions due to less total vehicle travel and safer traffic speeds, and reductions in high-risk driving. High quality public transit tends to increase the effectiveness of other traffic safety strategies. Efforts to reduce higher risk driving, such as graduated licenses for teens, senior driving testing, and impaired and distracted driving campaigns, become more effective if implemented in conjunction with transit service improvements which provide more viable alternatives to driving. Traffic fatalities involving high-risk groups, such as youths, are much lower in transit-oriented communities. Since most casualty crashes involve multiple vehicles, even responsible drivers who always observe traffic laws and do not use transit themselves benefit from pro-transit policies that help reduce higher-risk driving and therefore their risk of being injured by another drivers’ mistakes.

 

Despite these large benefits, conventional planning tends to overlook and undervalue these benefits. The economic evaluation of transportation policies and projects seldom considers the full safety gains provided by transit service improvements and transit-oriented development, and traffic safety programs seldom advocate transit improvements as crash reduction strategies. The report critiques current traffic safety programs: of eleven major programs reviewed, only two (the "Global Road Safety Partnership" and the "Transportation Planner’s Safety Desk Reference") mention transit as a possible safety strategy, and even they provide little guidance on how to predict the safety impacts and evaluate the full benefits (including co-benefits) of transit service improvements and transit-oriented development. These programs assume that transit can only provide modest safety benefits, reflecting little understanding of the ways that pro-transit policies leverage additional crash reductions.

 

This is an important and timely issue. A recent report by the U.S. Center for Disease Control, "Vital Signs: Motor Vehicle Injury Prevention — United States and 19 Comparison Countries In 2013" (http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm6526e1.htm ) indicates that, despite huge investments in safer roads and vehicles, and traffic safety programs, the United States has by far the highest traffic fatality rate of among 20 peer countries: 10.3 death per 100,000 population in 2013, more than twice the median of the other 19 industrialized countries. Reducing this high traffic death rate will require new traffic safety strategies, including public transit service improvements and more transit-oriented development.

 

Additional Information:

 

Study Fact Sheet: http://www.apta.com/mediacenter/pressreleases/Documents/Fact%20Sheet%20The%20Hidden%20Traffic%20Safety%20Solution.pdf

 

"America Has a Terrible Traffic Safety Record Because We Drive Too Much" (http://usa.streetsblog.org/2016/09/08/america-has-a-terrible-traffic-safety-record-because-we-drive-too-much ), StreetsBlog.

 

"Investing in Transit Is an Investment in Saving Lives" (http://blog.tstc.org/2016/09/09/investing-transit-investment-saving-lives ), Mobilizing the Region.

 

"A New Traffic Safety Paradigm" (http://bit.ly/2ciSV8P ), Institute of Transportation Engineers All Members Forum.

 

"High Quality Public Transportation Can Provide Huge Traffic Safety Benefits" (http://www.planetizen.com/node/88491/high-quality-public-transportation-can-provide-huge-traffic-safety-benefits ), Planetizen.