ATLANTA — On the weekend in March when Brittany Glover would have turned 34, her mom stood on the identical busy highway in Atlanta the place her daughter died six months earlier.
Glover, a flight attendant with a ardour for garments, was coming from an leisure venue through the early morning of Sept. 19, 2022. She had lived in Atlanta for under 48 hours when she was hit by a driver whereas crossing Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway, which elected officers and activists name some of the harmful streets within the metropolis. The driver fled and hasn’t been recognized.
“Brittany didn’t have to die,” her mom Valerie Handy-Carey stated, surrounded by buddies and supporters as dashing automobiles whizzed by. Atlanta, she stated, must do extra to guard pedestrians and cyclists.
She’s removed from alone in her name to motion.
With pedestrian deaths within the U.S. at their highest in 4 many years, residents throughout the nation are urging lawmakers to interrupt from transportation spending targeted on automotive tradition. From Salt Lake City to Charlotte, North Carolina, annoyed residents are pushing for elevated funding for public transportation and enhancements that make it safer to journey by bike or on foot.
“We already hit the point of diminishing returns,” stated Roby Greenwald, a public well being professor at Georgia State University. “We’re going to have to examine other transportation modes that make that easier or else we’re just going to have to deal with increased congestion, increased traffic fatalities and increased air pollution emissions.”
PHOTOS: Push for transit, walkable communities rising throughout US
Nationwide, the variety of pedestrians killed in 2022 rose 13%, and bike owner fatalities had been up 2% for the 12 months, based on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
“There are plenty of people who must bike and walk for transportation because that’s their only means of transportation,” stated Rachael Panik, a Georgia Tech transportation programs engineering researcher.
Panik beforehand labored as a transportation planning guide for cities throughout the southeast. She stated there was unmet demand for biking and strolling in most of them.
“More people want to bike, more people want to walk, but they can’t because it’s either not safe or the destinations that they need to get to are too far and they can’t,” she stated.
Quanisha Ball, 31, was struck by a automotive and killed in November whereas crossing a road on her strategy to work within the Atlanta suburb of Decatur. The driver was recognized however by no means charged.
“I wanted to cross that street to see how dangerous it is. It’s dangerous,” stated Courtney Thompkins, Ball’s mom. Pushing a button provides pedestrians lower than a minute to cross seven or eight lanes of visitors, including that velocity bumps, higher lighting and longer crossing occasions would assist.
Atlanta City Councilman Jason Dozier stated he realized he might have been one other sufferer – he was hit by a automotive whereas using a motorcycle.
“That experience really did a lot to radicalize me,” Dozier stated.
He and 10 council members have proposed zoning laws to stop drive-thrus and fuel stations from being constructed across the Atlanta BeltLine, a motorcycle and pedestrian path that runs via quite a few metropolis neighborhoods.
Some metropolis leaders throughout the nation are already taking large steps to scale back automotive visitors.
In 2021, the town council in Charlotte, North Carolina, adopted a plan to broaden their transit system by including shaded bikeways, bus routes and commuter rail strains within the subsequent twenty years. One purpose is to scale back single-person journeys by 25%, stated Shannon Binns, president of Sustain Charlotte, a nonprofit group targeted on native sustainability.
“It’s an ambitious goal, but of course it will require us to really make a lot of different decisions budget-wise to give people those opportunities to get around without a car,” Binns stated.
Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall has made pedestrian security a precedence for 2023 after her metropolis noticed a rise in fatalities in 2022 and a tragic begin to 2023. In the span of some weeks, two units of children on foot and a pair sharing a bicycle had been all hit by drivers however thankfully survived, she stated.
“The accidents that have happened from vehicles increasing means that we have to go beyond the way we’ve been operating,” Mendenhall stated.
A neighborhood mobility advocacy group known as Sweet Streets Salt Lake City has labored with the town council to drop the velocity restrict on residential streets and is pushing the town to create a community of byways that cater to strolling, biking and jogging.
“We really do believe our policy choices are killing people, and the way we stop doing that is by changing those policies,” Sweet Streets Board member Benjamin Wood stated.
Despite some encouraging indicators, advocates face excessive hurdles to creating walkable and transit-friendly communities.
The Utah Transit Authority carried out an on-demand service that could be a mixture of a public bus and ridesharing. It’s been widespread, but it surely’s underfunded.
“We didn’t realize it would be as wildly popular as it is, and now, we’re turning away rides because we can’t afford to run more service,” the transit authority’s transportation division director, John Larsen, stated throughout a January work session.
In Charlotte, metropolis council members have complained concerning the lack of progress with the 2030 Transit Corridor System Plan.
The metropolis should acquire native funding to entry federal {dollars} for the mobility plan. One possibility is to create a referendum for an area gross sales tax, however metropolis officers are already listening to it will be unlikely to win approval from the state legislature. Dana Fetton, a lobbyist for Charlotte’s metropolis authorities, not too long ago informed council members in the event that they introduced the transit plan as is to the legislature, it will be “dead on arrival.”
Winning funding for secure or sustainable transportation tasks is a problem nationwide.
The Georgia Department of Transportation first devotes assets to tasks thought-about state priorities, reminiscent of interchange and bridge enhancements. That leaves decrease tier tasks – like bettering the parkway the place Glover was fatally struck in Atlanta – to compete for funding.
Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway had greater than 1,900 crashes over the course of a decade earlier than building started to make it safer by narrowing components of the roadway from 4 lanes to 3, based on the Georgia Transportation Department. The adjustments received’t have an effect on the stretch the place Glover was killed.
Standing on a nook of the busy road with a handful of birthday balloons and flowers, Handy-Carey stated she was nervous about whether or not any enhancements would come.
“I’m feeling that the state of Georgia, the city of Atlanta, Fulton County, didn’t value me or my daughter’s life,” she stated. “Even after Brittany was killed, you still have more people dying. How many more people have to die?”
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