California Pedestrian Safety Assessments Program: Technical Approach

On behalf of the California Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) and the UC Berkeley Institute for Transportation Studies Technology Transfer Program (Tech Transfer), Fehr & Peers developed a technical guide to conduct Pedestrian Safety Assessments (PSAs) in California. The guide incorporates best practices in pedestrian safety engineering, planning, and policy, and is intended for use by a team of two evaluators. The PSA has two key elements: a two-hour, pre-visit phone interview that considers a city's existing pedestrian safety policies, programs, and practices; and a two-day field visit, where evaluators provide feedback from the interview and conduct walking audits of several locations in a city. The programs, policies, and practices feedback is based on a benchmarking analysis that considers how a city’s efforts compare to national best practices in areas such as collision analysis, safe routes to schools, and crosswalk design. Interview and benchmarking topics range from those directly related to pedestrian safety to those that support walkability in general. The walking audit provides an opportunity to discuss recent research regarding crosswalk treatments and other engineering best practices, and work with a city to both select candidate treatments for each focus area and also create policies and guidelines to apply prototypical treatments citywide. Since the program’s launch in the spring of 2008, twenty-one cities across the state have received a free assessment. The program is expected to continue in future years, with a waiting list of cities already forming