RTC sets up group to address pedestrian safety

By Ashley Livingston (contact)

Thursday, Oct. 9, 2008 | midnight

The Regional Transportation Commission recently laid the framework for a project that aims to keep pedestrians safe on Nevada's roads: the Pedestrian Safety Action Plan.

During a meeting Sept. 30, RTC Planning Manager Jerry Duke and others from the RTC met with representatives from Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, Clark County, Henderson, The Federal Highway Safety Administration, Nevada Department of Transportation, The Nevada Office of Traffic Safety, and UNLV's Safe Community Partnership to take the first steps in a multi-jurisdictional approach to pedestrian safety that may be uniformly used by local jurisdictions in Southern Nevada.

The goals of the group include guiding future planning and land use as it pertains to pedestrians, targeting specific locations in need of safety enhancements and implementing policy changes.

The group will meet several times during the next few months to discuss all aspects of these changes before the project's finalization in May, which should lead to implementation of measures designed to protect pedestrians including possible modifications to existing infrastructure and policies.

The Nevada Department of Public Safety reports that as of Sept. 29, there have been 37 pedestrian fatalities statewide this year, 35 of which occurred in Clark County.

Nationally, Nevada ranks on the high end with 2.7 pedestrian crash fatalities per 100,000 residents compared to the national average of 1.73 pedestrian crash fatalities per 100,000 residents, as reported by the National Office of Traffic Safety in June 2008.

Some of the tools the RTC and other members of the group will use in their efforts to curb those numbers include digital imaged data collected by the RTC and the RTC's GIS Crash Database.

Duke said the RTC began work on digital images of the streetscape of urbanized areas of Southern Nevada 2 1/2 year ago. The digital imaging can be used to digitally 'drive' any street and see medians, traffic lane width, signs, crosswalks and sidewalks and to evaluate the existing conditions.

The GIS Crash Database has been an RTC project for about a year and a half. It will allow users to evaluate crashes by looking into the specifics of past crashes, including the time of day, month and year the crash occurred and variables such as the ages and sex of those involved as well as the crash type and severity, Duke said.

The group will use and evaluate the information to determine how to lower the high number of pedestrian casualties in Southern Nevada.

These efforts should affect engineering, education, enforcement and safety enhancement programs, states a document covering the development of the plan that was presented by the RTC at the meeting.

After the implementation of measures and modifications, the document said the plan calls for ongoing evaluation and assessment.

"This (the Pedestrian Safety Action Plan) is part of an orchestrated ongoing safety and awareness process that we're trying to raise the bar on," Duke said.

Ashley Livingston can be reached at 990-8925 or ashley.livingston@hbcpub.com.