Cycling, traffic safety, traffic justice, and legal topics; energy, transit and transportion economics
For background on the SLM (Shared Lane Markings, a.k.a. sharrows) on the phoenix-side, see here, and more pictures here. That first link has an explanation as to why this bridge is an important and useful link for bicyclists. Continue reading “Guadalupe and I-10 Bridge”
This is pretty interesting for those of us in the Ahwatukee / Chandler area…
[ update: 11/2017 here is the “15%” Initial Project Assessment ; also see below for related update on Phoenix side circa 2020 ]
[Updates, as of early 2022; project is completed, scroll down]
City of Chandler has made a request for TA/CMAQ (see also alameda-drive-tempe-bicycle-pedestrian-proposal for more about TA/CMAQ) funding to add BLs on Chandler blvd between where they stop now (~ 54th St) and continue them to the “far” side of the bridge (City of Phoenix jurisdiction). It’s about .4 miles and the bottom line cost estimate is ~ 600,000 (details are in the link below). The main money driver here is some of the area needs to have curb/gutter/sidewalk relocated in order to make room. See the area on Google Maps. Continue reading “Funding proposal would add BLs on Chandler Blvd over I-10”
Noted here for historical curiosity:
EXECUTIVE ORDER No. 86-4 established the Arizona Governor’s Bicycle Task Force in 1986 by governor Bruce Babbitt.
It was later repealed by executive order in 1996 by Governor Fife Simington. The stated reason for the repeal was ” in recognition of that fact, the Alternative Transportation Task Force created on June II, 1996 has been authorized to study and implement alternative
transportation systems”. EO 96-11
Here is an image of AGBTF executive orders 86-4 and 96-11 : ArizonaGovernorsBicycleTaskForce (in case the azmemory pages disappear).
You can read that : Establishment of Alternative Transportation System Task Force Executive order No. 96-7. I can’t tell what that task force may or may not be doing currently (or ever?).
There is no excuse for improperly engineered bike infrastructure. It takes on two forms, 1) simple straight-up wrong, and 2) “fake” facilities, those which masquerade as something they’re not; they’re in reality nothing more than shoulders, yet they are intentionally tarted-up to appear to be, and even be referred to as bike lanes (see e.g. Flagstaff, below). Continue reading “No Excuse”
From time to time, the question about bicycling on freeways (a.k.a. highways, or more officially “controlled access highways”) comes up. Just what are the rules? This ADOT page has a good summary:
…Of course, not all roads are open to pedestrians and bicyclists – pedestrians are prohibited from walking along all controlled-access highways. Bicyclists are permitted by ADOT policy to ride on the shoulders of controlled-access highways, except where prohibited…
Let’s dig a little deeper… By statute, the state (ADOT) or local authorities may prohibit bicyclists’ use of any part of a controlled-access highway: Continue reading “Bicycling Prohibitions on Highways/Freeways”
It turns out (who knew?) that ADOT sells their crash database for a nominal sum. I purchased the 2010 version, the latest full-year available (2011 is supposed to be ready in July). This data is either similar to (or synonymous with) something referred to as the Arizona (or ADOT?) Safety Data Mart — thus the acronym asdm sprinkled throughout. Continue reading “ADOT Traffic Collision Database”
ADOT’s Bicycle Safety Action Plan Study ( the study’s home-page link is now dead ) is a multi-phase plan to assess and improve bicycle traffic safety, with emphasis on Arizona state highways. In urban areas that often means the interchanges. Here are direct download links to final reports:
During the five-year study period “There were a total of 9,867 bicycle crashes statewide in Arizona… crashes that occurred on state highways were extracted from the statewide data set. There were 1,089 bicycle-motor vehicle crashes reported on state highways between January 1, 2004 and December 31, 2008” from this a focus area was determined, within the focus area there were 746 bicycle crashes. PBCat was used to crash-type all 746 of these collisions.
Thus this data set accounts for a small minority of bike-MV crashes, around 11%. But Working Paper 1, table 15 offers a useful comparison between the studied data and all statewide data. For example, we see the same suspiciously-high percentage (24 to 25%) of “other” fault ascribed to bicyclists as with other studies. As I’ve written before, the “other” fault is generally the result of a poor/improper crash investigations that tends to wrongly faults cyclists who are doing nothing illegal (see Understanding Collision Summaries) — this is statistical proof of poor-quality investigations are a statewide problem for bicyclists. This is a shortcoming of the crash reports, and not the BSAP; in Working Paper 1, figure 20, something they call “primary contributing factor” by crash group is assigned overwhelmingly to motorists (67%), and only 24% to bicyclists.
There was a lengthy, front page A1, Arizona Republic article by Sean Holstege on Sept 17, 2011 which perhaps was intended to be about the plan but did wander, understandably, to general topics. For example they make great hay out of the per capital fatality stats, without any discussion of how to interpret them — e.g. how weather probably affects them, with Arizona being more of a year-round cycling state; or a higher per capita usage, e.g. Arizona has significantly higher (than US) percentage of commuters (according to census figures, see Working Paper 1, Table 1 — Arizona is 0.9% versus 0.5% nationwide).
The story, as many “bicycle safety” stories do, lacks context of traffic in general. So, for example, there was a chart of the number of bike-MV collisions (about 2,000/year total). There is no mention of the fact that that represents only a tiny fraction of all MV collisions ( which ran well over 100,000/year over the study period). And though it mentions the number of fatalites, say 25 in 2008 — it never mentioned the total number of traffic fatalities (it runs around, and lately something under, 1,000 per year).
So here are some hard numbers, over the five year period 2004 – 2008 there were 681,466 MV crashes, of which 9,730 were bike-MV — a little less than 1.5% (taken from the historical overview in the 2009 Bicyclist Fatality study, which were gleaned from AZ Crash Facts — note that the numbers a slightly different in the BSAP, but I don’t know why). The number of fatalities is 4,943 total, 132 bicyclist; or 2.67% — so bicyclist fatalities were somewhat over-represented but not dramatically so.
Note that the ADOT plan by design is aimed at the small percentage of bike-MV crashes that occur on the state highway system. “The majority of bicycle crashes in Arizona (approximately 90 percent) occur on local, city, and county roadways outside of ADOT jurisdiction”
Also, by the way, the article inaccurately stated that the BSAP recommends a mandatory taillight law. That was in an earlier draft but was since removed — I don’t believe there is adequate evidence to support the additional burden on cyclists. The article does correctly mention that the BSAP recommends state-level sidewalk law clarifications, which seem like a worthy endeavor, given the huge proportion of sidewalk-related collisions, along with the current legal murky morass that currently exists when cyclists who cycle on the sidewalk subsequently collide with vehicles in crosswalks and driveways.
The raw data from the 746 crashes studied can be viewed and mapped at this google fusion table. I also read the data into a mysql database, bsap, password access available upon request using a scheme analogous to asdm and presently only available on mysql.azbikelaw.org, and not on the godaddy server.
The crashes studied were full-blown pbcat 2.0 with crash types, groups, cyclist’s direction; that’s the good news. The bad news is it’s not clear how that relates to bicyclist crashes in general.
Fatal vs. non-fatal: The dataset mentioned above, the 746 crashes includes only 4 fatalities and is data only from the focus area. The BSAP report has several charts and graphs that refer to 24 fatalities. The distinction is that the total 24 is over the entire SHS (state highway system); whereas the 4 is only the focus area. I don’t have the raw pbcat data for the 24 (or rather , the other 20).
Here is a bunch of data extracted via query from ASDM data — currently covering years 2009-2014. In other words, it is an attempt to automate the types of data presented in the BSAP but applied to all Arizona bike-MV crashes, not just state highway system.
Many of the motorist drive out’s (from stop signs, or performing a right-turn on red) involve counter-flow sidewalk cyclists. Out of the 746 crashes studied here are the top 5:
Table 5 – Top 5 Crash Types Percentage of SHS Focus Area Crashes Crash Type Description 103 13.8% Bicyclist Ride Through ‐ Signalized Intersection 83 11.1% Motorist Drive Out ‐ Sign‐Controlled Intersection 76 10.1% Motorist Drive Out ‐ Right‐Turn‐on‐Red 71 9.51% Motorist Drive Out ‐ Commercial Driveway / Alley 61 8.17% Motorist Drive Out ‐ Signalized Intersection 746 Total SHS Motor Vehicle‐Bicycle Crashes
—
Also interesting title of this PBIC presentation How to Create a Bicycle Safety Action Plan: Planning for Safety. It’s from the toole design people so, as expected, is filled with nacto and facilities stuff.
ADOT’s 2010 Motor Vehicle Crash Facts has just been released.
Highlights are the total number of fatalities continued to fall; there were a total of 762 persons killed in 2010, a 5% decrease from the year before.
There were 19 bicyclists killed on Arizona’s road in collisions with motor vehicles in 2010, which compares favorably with the 25 killed in 2009. That means there are two (possibly three) missing from this tally for 2010.
The MOST COMMON DRIVER VIOLATION is (remains) Speed too fast for condition
There were 106,177 crashes in total, of which 1,914 were bike-MV crashes.
[updated regularly; the one release in May 2014 can be found at smartgrowthamerica.org I don’t think anything much has changed Phoenix and Arizona still rank “high” (bad) ][direct download of 2016 edition]
While we’re on the subject, t4america.org released the latest version of their recurring report Dangerous By Design 2011; where metro-Phoenix has a recurring, starring role as a particularly dangerous place for pedestrians — the 8th worst rate in the US. The only places significantly higher are basically several (!) metro areas in Florida.
Bad for pedestrians tends to translate into bad for motorists and bicyclists, as well — in other words, we’re all in this together. Arizona’s motorist fatality “VMT rate is over twice as deadly as Massachusett’s. The disparity in per capita rate, since Arizonans drive more miles, is even worse…. more”
But you are not likely to hear anything about how or if or why Arizona isn’t closing the gap; or even that a gap exists! — rather that deaths overall have merely fallen. Here is a typical new-release-style story: azfamily.com story
Back to the DbyD report, they have this concept called PDI, the Pedestrian Danger Index; Phoenix-metro at 132 is many times worse than, for example, Boston-metro at 21.6.
And just to throw out a factoid, for the year 2009 (the most recent year for which detailed stats are available) there were more bicyclists killed within the City of Phoenix (9) than were killed in the entire state of Massachusetts(6).
The population of Phoenix is 1.5M versus State of Massachusetts having 6.5M…. The C.O.P., accused rightly as being an enormous-sprawling place covers 516 square miles, the state of Massachusetts 7,840 square miles of land area.
John Allen’s blog reflecting upon the fact that in the DbyD report, the Boston-metro area came in dead last (SAFEST!) of all large metro areas in US — “Strange, isn’t it — the Boston area has repeatedly been derogated as supposedly having the nation’s craziest drivers”.
A couple of days after the data was released, and somewhat to my chagrin, the arizonarepublic/news/articles/2011/09/02/20110902arizona-deadly-rural-roads.html did a fairly long and detailed piece on what ADOT is doing to identify and address rural highway problems… though, interestingly, the latest Crash Facts shows a steeper decline in rural as opposed to urban fatalities.
So far, no one that I know of, has said or suggested that Arizona’s high rate of rural fatalities is what accounts for Arizona’s overall high traffic fatality rate. Perhaps that is so?
As mentioned in the article, rural fatal crashes tend to be single-vehicle — though that is a little misleading because a bike-MV, or ped-MV crash is defined as a single-vehicle.
Here are the number of fatal crashes split by urban/rural for 2009 and 2010:
Peds fatal crashes, total/urban/rural: 156 / 102 / 54 ( 2009: 121 / 77 / 44)
cyclists killed, total/urban/rural: 19 / 17/ 2 ( 2009: 25 / 17 / 8 )
(all inclusive) Number of fatal crashes, total / urban / rural: 698 / 354 / 344 (2009: 709 / 299/ 410)
…
Here is some discussion of the 2010 National results: early-estimate-of-motor-vehicle-traffic-fatalities%C2%A0in%C2%A02010/
How did I miss this one?
Should State DOTs Prefer Bicycle Lanes or Wide Curb Lanes? A.L. Dennison, 2008 [.pdf] This report was produced for ADOT in cooperation with US DOT/Federal Highway Authority.
Bicycle facility advocates have long debated the respective merits of bicycle lanes (BLs) and wide curb lanes (WCLs); this report investigates their claims… This study found no apparent relationship between fatal bicycle/motor vehicle collisions and type of bike facility… A significant handicap to any analysis of bicycle travel or safety is the paucity of reliable data.
Of great interest to me was the categorization of bicyclist fatalities over a four year (2003-2006) period, based on police reports. Somehow I missed this report entirely even as I echoed its complains about the “paucity of reliable data” for cyclist/traffic collisions while researching Manner and Fault in Bicyclist Traffic Fatalities: Arizona 2009.
According to my (from ADOT’s Arizona Crash Facts) records there were 15, 27, 35, 30 fatals in 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006, respectively. This totals 107, but the report says that “We obtained 85 (97%) of 88 microfilmed fatal bicyclist/motorist crash reports submitted to AzDOT by police agencies in Arizona between 2003-2006”. The missing 3 (88-85) are explained in a footnote. But one wonders, where are the other 19? (=107 – 88). Does that mean that not all fatalities are submitted to ADOT? … so the answer i am told is that it covers the time period 17-Oct-2003 to 25-Sept-2006, which makes sense.
ALISS — stands for Accident Location Identification Surveillance System… it apparently feeds the ADOT Safety Data Mart.
As of Jan 1, 2009(?); Arizona has new forms. The old “Arizona Traffic Accident Report” will now be an “Arizona Crash Report” (as an aside, if you don’t know why that is significant, please see here). You can see what’s on the new form here, in a presentation by Rick Turner; includes the tantalizing bullet point “Customers Will Be Able to Query, Analyze and Retrieve Their Own Crash Data”. Continue reading “New Crash Forms / ALISS database”