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Report: Tampa Bay area second-most dangerous in U.S. for pedestrians

File photo by CHRIS URSO

Temple Terrace police investigate a fatal crash in October involving a pedestrian at North 56th Street and Temple Heights Road. Two separate fatal crashes involving pedestrians occurred about three miles apart that day.

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By TED JACKOVICS | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 9, 2009

The Tampa-St. Petersburg area ranks second to Orlando as the most dangerous U.S. metropolitan area for pedestrians in a report released this morning by two non-profit coalitions that advocate for transportation issues.

Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach ranked third and Jacksonville fourth nationwide in a pedestrian danger index devised by the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership. The Transportation for America group collaborated on the report, which rounded out the list with Memphis, Raleigh, Louisville, Houston, Birmingham and Atlanta.

Punta Gorda, Sebastian-Vero Beach, Ocala, and Panama City-Lynn Haven ranked as more dangerous to pedestrians than Orlando when smaller cities in Florida were added to the mix, while Lakeland-Winter Haven ranked ahead of Tampa-St. Petersburg.

The index is a computation that uses the average pedestrian fatality rate per 100,000 residents over a two-year period and the percentage of residents who walk to work during that period.

When metropolitan areas were compared by the percentage of overall traffic deaths that were pedestrians, Tampa-St. Petersburg ranked fifth nationwide behind New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Miami-Fort Lauderdale.

Tampa-St. Petersburg reported 192 pedestrian deaths in 2007 and 2008, 22.4 percent of all traffic deaths. In the past 15 years, more than 76,000 pedestrians have been killed nationwide.

Orlando and Tampa top the report's index ranking despite a very low proportion of pedestrians who walk to work – 1.3 percent and 1.7 percent respectively.

"In other words, the few people who do walk in Orlando face a relatively high risk of being killed in a traffic accident," the report stated.

A primary reason that Florida cities suffer from a disproportionate rate of pedestrian deaths involves the state's automobile-oriented transportation systems, including highways built with an emphasis on the speed of vehicles rather than attention to walkways, the report said.

Those who might think that pedestrians among Florida's retiree population contribute more heavily to deaths among those who walk might be in for a surprise: The portion of elderly people dying as pedestrians in Florida is not out of line with the national average, researchers found.

Seventeen percent of Florida's pedestrian deaths in the years in 2007 and 2008 were 70 or older, the same as the national average.

And half the states had rates of elderly pedestrian deaths higher than Florida.

"Given the benefits that walking provides, from improving health to reducing the costs of congestion, it remains all too dangerous in many parts of the country," the report stated.

"The good news is that communities that choose to change road policies and invest in safer designs see fewer deaths and injuries, even as they make their neighborhoods more livable and invite more people to walk and bicycle."

That plays into the Hillsborough County Transportation Task Force policy in its recommendation for a one-cent sales tax increase to fund improved mobility, including light rail, bus and non-transit projects.

A list of potential projects that could be funded if the tax increase proposal were placed on a ballot in November 2010 includes a pedestrian bridge over U.S. 301 north of Stare Road 674 and 56th Street sidewalks in Temple Terrace.

Reporter Ted Jackovics can be reached at (813) 259-7817.

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