Steps Anchorage Can Take to Reduce Pedestrian Fatalities

September 28 — Anchorage has a serious problem with car-pedestrian collisions — so much so that by the time you read this, the statistics may be worse than when this was written. As September draws to a close, 13 people have died on Anchorage roads this year after being hit by cars, a grim toll that matches the previous record (13, set in 2022) for an entire year — and more we still have three months. to go Six died alone this month. This toll should be unacceptable to all Anchorage residents, whether you drive, walk, bike, or a combination of the three.

The bad news

One of the harshest aspects of Anchorage’s pedestrian death toll is that some of the factors that contribute to it are deeply entrenched and difficult to change, especially quickly. One is that, although this year is much worse than usual, there are natural factors at play: this is the time of year when the evenings get dark, but there is still no snow on the ground to increase visibility for car headlights and highlight the darkness . – silhouetted pedestrians. Combine that with dry streets that drivers feel safe driving at or above the speed limit, and it adds up to a situation where drivers can’t stop in time to avoid unexpected pedestrians in the traffic lanes.

The other difficult factor in solving pedestrian deaths is that Anchorage, like most US cities, developed most of it around the same time that car culture was exploding—and our infrastructure reflects that car-centric focus. Only in the city center are the pedestrian facilities, housing and businesses adequate to make pedestrian traffic practical. Combine that with lower speed limits and better lighting in most of the city center than in other parts of the city, and it turns out that fatal collisions between cars and pedestrians are relatively low, given the high concentration of people on down.

And that’s the problem with the pedestrian situation in most of the city: speed limits are high, lighting to see well is inadequate, and facilities to help people on pedestrian transit routes safely are few and offer little protection – they have there were a lot of cars. pedestrian collisions at crosswalks, after all.

There has been a tendency in some areas to blame pedestrians for the collisions they are involved in, with people saying they are to blame for crossing streets in poorly lit areas while under the influence of alcohol or other drugs, or for not take care enough for oncoming traffic. But while there is certainly more pedestrians can do to make themselves more visible, the risks and consequences of collisions fall so disproportionately on their shoulders that victim blaming is crass at best – while we should we do everything we can to improve pedestrian behaviour, the fact is that people who have to cross the road are not going to walk half a mile in the wrong direction to get to a pedestrian crossing, nor is it realistic to expect them to thing. The solutions we can implement to solve the problem are mostly on the side of improving driver awareness and behavior, as well as making it easier for pedestrians to get where they’re going without accidentally entering traffic lanes.

The good news

Where there’s a will, there’s a way. There are several actions we can take to reduce the risks to pedestrians on Anchorage roads.

The Anchorage Assembly on Tuesday passed a largely symbolic ordinance urging action on some of the most obvious levers government can pull: speed limits, lighting and a pedestrian safety education campaign. While the measure was mostly a call to others in municipal and state government to take action, it made some concrete recommendations to help the problem — notably a reduction in the speed limit on roads where pedestrians have been killed. Those with long commutes certainly won’t appreciate the prospect of slower transit, but the truth is that pedestrian collisions happen when drivers can’t stop in time, and slowing traffic not only increases the likelihood that drivers will be able to react, it decreases and the likelihood that the speed of accidents will be fatal when they occur.

More street lighting is also a good idea, at least in the darker months – and especially before there’s snow on the ground to help with visibility. This is more of a medium-term solution, as more lights cost money and take time to install, but that only makes it more important to start now.

The fundamental solutions to this problem are infrastructure-based, which means they will take time and money. We need to rethink our transportation system to separate pedestrians from cars that need to transit quickly from north to south or east to west. This can look different in different places, depending on what makes the most sense: pedestrian overpasses, separate non-motorized transit lanes, traffic control measures that prevent pedestrians from trying to cross in unsafe areas. The Seward Freeway corridor needs to be rerouted, a process that is now in the planning stages. And finally, the redesign of pedestrian-hostile roadways, such as the Gambell-Ingra couplet that connects Seward and Glenn freeways, should incorporate design features that do not lead to the unsafe crosswalks we see today.

Improving pedestrian safety is not an insurmountable problem, but it is one that will take time, effort and money. Nothing will change, however, if we don’t start taking the first steps now. It was no easy task to rebuild the Port of Alaska, for example, but with sustained, focused effort, it is still possible for us to make the necessary infrastructure improvements. Fortunately for us, that money exists – pursuing federal transportation funds to help improve the safety of pedestrians and other non-motorized users should be a top priority for the municipality as well as the Alaska Legislature in its next session. Because while making the roads safer is expensive, it doesn’t hold a candle to the cost to our community that has to bury more than a dozen of its members every year because we made the wrong choices.