On the September 2009 edition of City Inside/Out: Council Edition, a viewer named Rick asked Seattle City Councilmember Nick Licata the following question: “I know we’ve spent millions of dollars in the last few years on pedestrian safety, including better crosswalks, wider sidewalks, more signage, education campaigns, etc. Do we know yet if any of that has had an effect? Are pedestrian accidents actually lower year over year?”

Councilmember Nick Licata, co-chair of the Council’s Pedestrian Safety Committee, says, “We have over 400 pedestrian [-vehicle] crashes per year. It’s still too early to give a positive answer” on whether the City’s pedestrian safety effort is working. Licata went on to cite national studies that show that sidewalks reduce the number of pedestrian/vehicle crashes.

In 2004, the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Research Program released a report that summarized research on pedestrian safety in the United States including the safety effects of various roadway features. According to the FHWA’s summary, “[S]ites with no sidewalks were the most hazardous to pedestrians, and sites where sidewalks were present on both sides of the road were least hazardous.”  Surprisingly, the FHWA found that painted crosswalks did not improve pedestrian safety. In fact, on multi-lane roads with a high volume of traffic, more pedestrian-vehicle crashes occur in painted crosswalks than unpainted ones. Researchers conjecture that pedestrians exercise less caution in painted crosswalks.

There are 952 miles (at 16 blocks to a mile, roughly 15,232 blocks) of city streets that do not have sidewalks, according to the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT). Bridging the Gap, a voter-approved transportation levy, provides around $1 million per year for building new sidewalks. With this funding, in 2008, the City built 15 blocks of new sidewalk; in 2009 the City’s goal is to increase that amount to 25 blocks.

Councilmember Licata said, “We are making the improvements…The expectation is, ‘Yes, we will see these changes,’ but we are not going to see them in the next six months. It’s going to take a couple of years.”