Denver Country Club doesn't shovel its sidewalks.

It has been a cold and wet winter. One result of this is that I haven't been riding as much because the roads have been so icy. But another result of this is that is I have acquired a mountain bike! (Or "rescued" one, as they say.) So I don't have to be quite as skiddish on the ice as I am on the skinny little tires of my zippy little road bike.

One stretch of bike route that has made skiddish is the portion of D14 that runs east/west along 1st Avenue, north of the Denver Country Club.



This is also part of the Cherry Creek Trail, where it briefly comes above ground.

First of all, this is one of the more sketchy "Use the sidewalk" portions of bike route that I have seen in Denver. The sidewalk feels narrow. There's enough room for opposing foot/bike traffic to pass each other, but there have been several instances where I decided to stop and wait for the oncoming joggers or bikers to pass before continuing. Especially when portions of the sidewalk are lost to ice mounds.

Further more, this narrow little sidewalk is woefully unprotected from the 1st Avenue traffic. Here's what a well protected sidewalk looks like.



This sidewalk, an example from completestreets.org, protects users from street traffic with grass, trees, and a shoulder on the road. Actually, it looks a lot like the the west side of the same country club:



Compare the above sidewalks to the one in question, along 1st Avenue:





This sidewalk in no way protects its users from street traffic, which you can see is considerable.

Imagine once more that the sidewalk—as is often the case—is covered in ice. On this sidewalk, a slip or a spill could mean instantly entering the flow of traffic if you're not riding close to the hedge.

The hedge, incidentally, which is just tall enough to prevent any sunlight from hitting the sidewalk, leaving it caked in ice long after it has melted off elsewhere.

And so, although I might brave it now that I have this new mountain bike, I've taken to abjuring this little stretch of D14/Cherry Creek Trail/1st Avenue. I've marked it as a seasonal trail hazard on my map. And I'm going to call up the country club and suggest they raise their dues if they can't spare twenty dollars to outsource the shoveling of their sidewalks to a twelve year old from the neighborhood.

Roads in the south

I've been in Birmingham, my home town, this Thanksgiving. And I've been looking at the town of my youth through a fresh set of eyes, through a new lens. My impression of Birmingham may now be forever skewed, partially because of my experiences from bike commuting in Denver for a over a year, but more so because of having read the Dangerous by Design report, and because of my ensuing obsession with complete streets and safe infrastructure.

Birmingham streets suck. It's obvious and it's tragic.

As I drive though the heart of downtown and as I drive through the surrounding suburbs, I can't help but feel all kinds of respect and admiration for Elisa, Anna, and all the other souls who choose to brave the roads and bike in the south.

I don't know what it is about rural areas that spell out danger for pedestrians, and the report focuses on metro areas with populations of over one million, so I lack data on smaller rural areas. But I would suspect that small rural towns aren't much safer than large southern cities.

That is, I don't think it unreasonable for Zoe's mom insist she wear construction gear while out for a jog.



No matter where you go, you're likely to hear an assertion following the "People in x drive y" formula. And sometimes there's some truth to these assertions. For example, people in Denver drive through red lights. They just do. I find myself doing it, too. The traffic signals have odd timing cycles.

And people in Birmingham drive fast, through neighborhoods and down side streets, amongst pedestrians and joggers and people walking their dogs who don't have sidewalks or other mobility options.

Edit: It was just brought to my attention on BikeSkirt that Alabama ranked dead last, 50 out of 50, on the League's list of Bicycle Friendly States this year.

It's depressing and it's discouraging, but I find hope in the fact that several of the most dangerous metro areas are now also leading the pack in spending on walking and biking. It suggests to me that they have realized that something is wrong and the cities are now taking steps toward fixing the problem.

And I'm encouraged by advocacy groups like Birmingham's Bicci Coop, and these guys, who are organizing a car free week in Jackson, Mississippi, a town too small to land on the list of 52 large metro areas, but which has a pedestrian danger index higher than the fifth most dangerous area.

So. Good luck to them and to everybody else out there drawing attention to inadequate and dangerous infrastructure.

I hope you soon get to enjoy the safe roads you deserve and that you don't get hit by a car before then.

Pedestrian safety in Denver and elsewhere

Denver's rankings in T4A's "Dangerous by Design" report

Transportation for America released its Dangerous By Design report this week. The report assesses the danger of walking in major US metropolitan areas, and ranks the cities according to their Pedestrian Danger Index.

Fifty two metro areas were assessed. Denver ranked 23, with a PDI of 75.6, which makes it more dangerous than 55% of other areas. We're off the average of 77.4 by 1.8 points.

It is interesting to note that the ten most dangerous metro areas are all in the south, with the top four all being in Florida (Orlando/Kissimmee, Tampa/St. Petersburg/Clearwater, Miami/Fort Lauderdale/Pompano Beach, and Jackson). Having spent nearly all of my formative years in the south, I have to say this doesn't surprise me. It has been my experience that roads often narrow and lack sidewalks, and traffic flows through much too fast through residential and commercial areas alike.

Another table in the report shows the absolute number of pedestrian deaths, unadjusted—as the PDI is—for the number of people walking to work. Denver is tied for ninth most dangerous on this list with San Diego.

So absolute number of pedestrians killed by traffic in Denver is well above the norm, but because we have a proportionately large number of people walking to work, our PDI index is close to average.

New York City occupies a unique place on this list. It has among the highest number of actual deaths, and one of the lowest PDIs. Because they have by far the largest number of pedestrian commuters: 6% of all commuters, compared to an average among the other large metro area of 2.2%

Another figure reported is the average federal funds spent each year, per person, on biking/walking projects. Denver allocates $0.65 of its transportation budget, which gives it a ranking of 42/52 on this list. Bottom 10.

Interestingly, Tampa and Jacksonville, the 2nd and 4th most dangerous cities, are near the top of this list, shelling out $1.86 and $2.25 respectively. This is encouraging because it leads one to assume that the cities have recognized and are addressing the dangers detailed in this report.

Here are the figures for the other parts of Colorado.

Safety Rank within state	Metro Area	Pedestrian Danger Index	Total Ped. Fatalities (2007-2008)	% of Traffic Deaths that were pedestrians	Avg Yr Fed $ spent per person	% workers walking to work	2008 Population
1	Denver-Aurora	75.6	79	20.4%	$0.65 2.1%	2,506,626
2	Grand Junction	38.2	3	7.0%	$1.33	2.8%	143,171
3	Pueblo	34.1	2	4.1%	$1.08	1.9%	156,737
4	Greeley	21.4	3	3.3%	$0.41	2.9%	249,775
5	Boulder	16.7	4	10.5%	$3.55	4.1%	293,161
6	Fort Collins-Loveland	12.6	2	3.9%	$1.73	2.7%	292,825
7	Colorado Springs	6.7	3	3.4	$0.69	3.7%	617,714

Denver is obviously the most dangerous place to walk. Hopefully that will change as our Living Streets task force begins accomplishing tasks.

LAB's "Bicycle Friendly Communities" with Pedestrian Danger Index

The League of American Bicyclists maintains a list of "Bike Friendly Communities." as part of their Bicycle Friendly America program. Communities are evaluated on "the 5 Es" (Engineering, Education, Encouragement, Enforcement, and Evaluation & Planning) and a 28 page whopper of an application submitted by a representative of the community.

T4A's Pedestrian Danger Index cannot be applied directly to this list because the areas are defined differently. T4A defines "metro areas" such as Denver-Aurora, with a population of over 2 million. LAB "communities" tend to be defined by city boundaries, giving Denver a population just over 550,000.

But anyway, for curiosity's sake here are all cities in the top two tiers (Platinum, and gold) with, where available, the corresponding PDI.

City/Community	Rank	PDI
Boulder, Colorado	Platinum	16.7
Davis, California	Platinum	Not available
Portland, Oregon (PDI includes data from Vancouver and Beaverton)	Platinum	36.4
Corvallis, Oregon	Gold	7.9
Eugene, Oregon (PDI includes data from Springfield)	Gold	31.3
Fort Collins, Colorado (PDI includes data from Loveland)	Gold	12.6
Jackson, Wyoming	Gold	Not available
Madison, Wisconsin	Gold	7.8
Palo Alto	Gold	Not available
San Fransisco, California (PDI includes data from Oakland and Freemont.)	Gold	40.9
Seattle, Washington (PDI includes data from Tacoma and Bellevue.)	Gold	31.1
Stanford University, California	Gold	Not available.
Tucson/East Pima, Arizona	Gold	72.8

Like I said, you can't really apply the PDI directly to this list, but it's interesting nonetheless.

That's all for now. I'm going to keep pouring through this report.