News & Blog
“Complete Streets After Dark”
By Ken Stapleton
Broad consensus appears to be in place across the United States to plan, build, and rebuild communities that encourage and support more transportation options. The benefits for pollution reduction, affordable lifestyles, government efficiency, and even public health are clear. “Walking is the miracle drug” according to Ed McMahon, Senior Fellow at the Urban Land Institute.
At the same time, rates of walking to work are at the lowest levels ever, and only a very small percentage of people use bicycles to get around on a regular basis – most of them men. Total transit ridership is up slightly since 2000, but the percentage of total trips to work on transit remains at less than half of what it was in 1960. At least transit ridership has reversed the curve with a slight increase over the last decade.
Over the last 20 years, strong advocacy measures have begun to influence transportation policy to assist with a return to walkability, transit use, healthy/active lifestyles, and sustainability. These have focused primarily on street design, including crosswalks, bike lanes/paths, shade trees, lane configurations, signalization, and streetscape amenities like benches. Groups like the Congress for New Urbanism, New Partners for Smart Growth, and the Complete Streets Coalition at Smart Growth America have all focused on changing government policies and standards related to traffic safety and daytime comfort. While they have definitely had an impact, it has become clear we cannot wait another 20 years to see substantial change and a reversal in private vehicle use.
Importantly, these groups have almost completely ignored the issue of personal safety from attack as they attempt to move the dial to shift travel modes back to walking and transit. This includes a failure to recognize the higher rates of fear and avoidance by women and the elderly – two crucial demographic cohorts that continue to grow in size and importance. Because personal safety is such a fundamental issue for people’s transportation choices, because private vehicles serve as “personal protection devices” during travel, and because most daily travels includes at least one trip segment after dark, the historical failure to intentionally and innovatively address personal safety – a market-based response – is largely responsible for the continued overwhelming use of single occupancy vehicles in urban environments.
More specifically, current Complete Streets studies and reports fail to establish lighting standards along key pedestrian and bike pathways, design standards for locating and building transit stops and stations, operating and program policies for transit that impact both real and perceived safety, land use patterns and landscaping standards along key pathways, and even ways to effectively and accurately measure perceptions of safety that keep people in their private vehicles. While the reasons for this historical oversight are not really known, it is likely they result from a continued focus of such efforts around more suburban places where fear of attack while walking and biking is less prevalent.
At the same time, the vast majority of urban places across the country have made very little progress with mode shifts despite the existing mixed use environments, high population densities, supportive land use regulations, existing sidewalks and transit routes, and abundant investment in “streetscape” improvements such as pavers, benches, bike racks/lockers, and decorative lamp posts called for by traditional Complete Streets policies. From an investment impact perspective, the potential ROI from investing in these urban environments is clearly much higher, but it also requires overcoming strong and lingering personal safety fears. A change in perspective is essential.
The “Complete Streets After Dark” approach provides an opportunity to accelerate those changes. By incorporating the SafedesignTM system for improving real and perceived safety into Complete Streets efforts, levels of perceived personal safety are improved enough for important target populations to switch to walking, biking, and transit. This includes the elusive “choice riders” for transit, children struggling with obesity (and their mothers who are afraid to let them walk and play outside), and even the aging baby boomers who need to rediscover walking to enjoy their extended life spans.
Several innovative concepts of the SafedesignTM system help ensure high impact solutions related to real and perceived safety – and Complete Street mode shifts. These include: Safety Thresholds, Total Travel Path, Perception Leads to Reality, After-Dark Design Perspectives, and Positive-Indirect Messaging.
- Most HIAs don’t consider the dark and safety – particularly perceptions.
- Bike and pedestrian plans often don’t even discuss what happens after dark.
- Dangerous by Design completely avoids talking about the fact that most pedestrian fatalities occur after dark.
- Complete Streets guidelines barely mention lighting, let alone the dozens of other design and program features needed to get people out of their personal protection devices (aka cars) and walk, bike, or take transit.