Planning the way for pedestrians' transit safety

With most transportation centered around automobiles, users of other travel modes are often overlooked — including pedestrians and transit riders.

So when Pace Suburban Bus wanted to look at how stakeholders in northeastern Illinois could come together to implement and better maintain pedestrian infrastructure, Illinois Center for Transportation and Illinois Department of Transportation teamed up in their joint project, “R27-200: Construction of Pedestrian Infrastructure along Transit Corridors.”

Lindsay Braun, a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professor, leads the effort along with Chuck Abraham, IDOT’s manager of program support (planning).

“One of the big challenges in the U.S. is that we have a long tradition of planning primarily or even exclusively for automobiles. Even now, as interest in planning for pedestrians is growing, it’s still difficult,” Braun said.

“Car culture is still ingrained in a lot of our agencies and, perhaps most importantly, funding sources are still pretty small and uncertain for pedestrian infrastructure,” she added.

This is particularly true in suburban areas, where land tends to be more spread out and pedestrian walkways less connected, creating larger areas for transit agencies to serve.

So the two teamed up with Pace, the Regional Transportation Authority and other stakeholders to figure out how to provide pedestrians in the Chicago suburbs with safer and more convenient access to transit services and stops.

“You can have great transit service, but if people can’t get there — if sidewalks, crosswalks and other parts of the pedestrian environment aren’t supportive for walking — then people won’t be able to get to that great service,” Braun said. “It’s really important to think about transit and pedestrian infrastructure together.”

Braun’s team began by reviewing strategies transit agencies use to plan for pedestrians as well as documenting policies, plans, programs and funding sources in the region.

Key to the project are their interviews with transit agencies, city planners and engineers, pedestrians, and transit riders, all of which helped them to better understand their challenges and priorities for building and maintaining pedestrian infrastructure near transit.

Together the team came up with 24 innovative policy solutions involving planning, funding, coordination, education, prioritization and amenities to combat the challenges they identified.

“We came up with recommendations for agencies and decision-makers at different levels to improve pedestrian infrastructure, specifically near transit stops — but also more broadly, so other types of pedestrians can benefit from them as well,” Braun said.

“Our hope and our expectation is that this will make pedestrian infrastructure in northeastern Illinois more complete, more convenient, more accessible and safer,” she added.

The two also hope those solutions will allow transit agencies — who provide transit services and install bus stops — to better partner with local governments and regional planning agencies — who build pedestrian infrastructure and determine land use — to improve pedestrians’ access to transit.

“Implementing this study’s policy recommendations can lead to more extensive, well-maintained sidewalk networks and other pedestrian infrastructure that can encourage more people to take public transit because it will be safer and easier to reach,” Abraham said.

“It can also encourage other people to enjoy their communities because people will have places where they can safely walk,” he added.