[sustran] Press Release - The Hidden Traffic Safety Solution: Public Transportation

[Todd Litman]

Press Release - The Hidden Traffic Safety Solution: Public Transportation

14 September 2016

 

For more information: 

Todd Litman (litman at vtpi.org)

Victoria Transport Policy Institute (www.vtpi.org)

Office: 250-360-1560 | Mobile: 250-508-5150

 

Mantill Williams (mwilliams at apta.com)
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-Saf
ety-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%2
0Hidden%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.