Juan Tarango of Tempe, Arizona, has been an avid cyclist for over 30 years. For him, it’s about exploring, exploring his city, state, country and even other countries. He loves to see kids ride bicycles, having fun and getting physical activity. But he hated seeing how many kids show up with bike-related injuries at the Phoenix Children’s Hospital ER where he worked. “One kid─wasn’t going fast, wasn’t doing tricks─falls, hits his head, and ends up with life-changing brain injury,” Tarango said. Tarango wanted to help. He wondered: What could he do to teach Latino and all kids bicycle safety behaviors, and thus reduce bike-related injuries?
Children, Bicycling, and Injuries
Bicycling is good for your health. For kids, it can help develop muscle ...
The safety of roads and sidewalks impacts everyone. Although Complete Streets initiatives are traditionally led by a transportation or public works sector, the public health organizations have played a role in communities across the country. A new report from the University of Chicago’s Institute for Health Research and Policy provides key strategies from public health agencies, advocates, and practitioners in 15 U.S. jurisdictions who have engaged in Complete Streets-related initiatives in their communities.
Why Complete Streets?
Complete Streets initiatives aim to create more equitable transportation systems by providing affordable, convenient, and accessible modes of mobility for all users. This includes individuals who rely on walking, biking, and public transit as their ...
One person is injured every 2 minutes and one killed every 2.5 hours on Texas roads. Texas (39.4% Latino) is the eighth-most dangerous state for people walking. Latinos and people of color, people in low-income neighborhoods, and older adults are in the most danger when walking. Unfortunately, it can take decades to create safer roads if there is no political will. That’s why Vision Zero Texas is asking Texans to sign a petition for safer neighborhood streets and send a letter to leaders of the Texas transportation system requesting a zero-fatality goal. Click here to sign a petition asking state leaders to allow cities to lower speed limits. Click here to send a letter asking transportation leaders to prioritize road safety to end traffic deaths. Vision Zero Texas will ...
Health disparities exist because unjust laws, policies, and practices have shaped the physical, economic, and social environment over many generations. This creates inequitable opportunities for education, jobs, housing, and transportation. Law and policy are essential tools to reduce health disparities, which particularly affect Latinos and other communities of color that face more poverty and less opportunity than communities with more political and economic power. Individuals and groups with political, financial, legal, and social power can ensure that laws, policies, institutions, and investments do not intentionally or unintentionally benefit some at the expense of others. Join #SaludTues at 1 p.m. ET on April 23, 2019, to tweet about legal and policy strategies that ...
Speed—not speeding—is the most critical factor in the severity of a crash. However, due to state preemption of local authority, many cities can’t lower speed limits without lengthy state studies and procedures. Some cities, though, are still pushing to drop speeds, and uplift safety.
Lower Speed Limits, Safer Roads
Traffic crashes are one of the leading causes of preventable death in the U.S. In 2017, speeding accounted for more than one fourth of all traffic fatalities, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Check out this interactive map of over 59,000 speeding fatalities between 2010 and 2015, thanks to the National Coalition for Safer Roads (NCSR) and the Vision Zero Network. A 5 mph increase in the maximum speed limit was ...
Chronic kidney disease is a crisis in the U.S. — yet, the intersection of transportation and healthcare is failing. Public transportation agencies, healthcare providers, and patients are concerned about the rising demand, cost of providing dialysis trips for patients with the illness. Of the forms of dialysis transportation, ambulance rides only make up 5% of trips in the US. However, they account for half of the $3 billion spent annually on dialysis transportation, according to a 2013 study in the Journal of Health Economics and Outcomes Research. Costs could be reduced by one-third if ambulance use dropped to 1% of trips.
Gathering Needed Data
Before policy could change, all parties involved needed to know the lay of the land. In 2016, researchers with Cooperative ...
Florida leads the nation in the number of pedestrians killed while walking on the street. The state (25.6% Latino) had the highest Pedestrian Danger Index numbers, according to the latest Dangerous by Design report from Smart Growth America. In response, Grover Robinson, the mayor of Pensacola, announced that the city created a new staff position to increase the safety of city roads by advancing Complete Streets. This is another step in the city’s plans to make pedestrian safety a priority, following the Florida Department of Transportation updating their 30-year old Complete Streets policy in 2014. “The problem we have is that we’ve done such a good job at building streets, and building them for cars, and building them for cars to go fairly fast that they aren’t ...
During rush hour, the eight-lane Mississippi River Bridge in Minnesota collapsed, killing 13 people, and injuring over 140 more on Aug. 1, 2007. This tragedy was a wake-up call for officials in the Minneapolis-St. Paul “Twin Cities.” They could not afford to build their way out of congestion or repair the state’s deteriorating transportation infrastructure. To achieve safe transportation improvements for a growing population, the Twin Cities’ Metropolitan (Met) Council began to transition away from policies that move vehicles to ones that move people. The evolution began by rethinking how to measure road performance, according to a case study of the Met Council by the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT).
Motivation to Change
The bridge collapse highlighted ...
Transit-rich, walkable communities strengthen the local economy, create opportunities for Latino and other vulnerable residents, and enhance community resilience. That’s why America Walks, a nonprofit organization, released four case studies sharing collaborative efforts to improve safety, walkability, and access to transit in four communities across the country. This is another effort in their Transit-Walkability Collaborative, which was established in 2017 by America Walks and eight other organizations. As part of the case study series, America Walks recognized: Nashville, Tennessee (10.4% Latino); Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania (17.3%); Hartford, Connecticut (44.3%); and San Bernardino, California (64.3%). Two counties in particular offer valuable insights into inspiring ...
