Request to prioritize pedestrian funds for pedestrian safety

Akos Szoboszlay, President, Modern Transit Society

To greatly and inexpensively improve pedestrian safety, the Modern Transit Society (MTS) requested the VTA/County BPAC to approve a Request with six points. If approved by the Board of Supervisors, priority would be given to fixing unsafe design failures of County Roads, rather than paving over existing pedestrian paths, which adds nothing to safety (crash avoidance) but has been County Roads' usual practice, and their departmental top priority for spending pedestrian funds.

A slide show with photos depicts the situation for pedestrians: [download or open in browser this 15 MB pdf file]. The dark green numbers are Vehicle Code sections or quote numbers of Board of Supervisors policies and orders, which are being violated by County Roads. These are quoted and listed in this link: 

BOS policies and orders. (Also provides link for original documents.)

County Roads requested $1.7 Million for 1.7 miles of sidewalks, which was approved by the BPAC and VTA Board in the fall of 2006, with no input from pedestrians. It would pave over existing smooth, flat pedestrian paths, which adds nothing to safety. Here is a page from that request (see the photos), and is commented in red by MTS: 

County Roads request, commented in red

In contrast, the County Roads staff report from 1991 indicates $375,000 [at $75,000 per year for “several years”] to create pedestrian paths along the “entire expressway system”. [See quotes 1 and 2 in BOS policies and orders.] Clearly this needs to be accomplished prior to paving over existing paths.

A separate web page explains the reason for each item in this Request, provides evidence with links to photos or documents, and also provides sources for the quotes (with links).

Priority for pedestrian funds needs be at (a) intersection corners, (b) where people walk in traffic lanes/acceleration lanes, and (c) where there are prohibitions that force needless crossings of the expressway. The 1991 Board order for path creation must be also complied with at all other locations, as is shown on maps of the recently proposed future sidewalks. Here again, is the Request with six points that we are requesting from the BPAC, the Expressway Policy Advisory Board (PAB) and the Board of Supervisors (BOS).

For more information, see our Expressway Topics, Links page.

Original file = bpac-10-07.doc (via XP Word)