What were the ultimate benefits to system users?
Improving walk/bike connections improves mobility and safety for everyone. When people can walk or bike, whether it’s to the store or to a bus stop, that’s one less car ahead at the next traffic signal and one more parking spot left open for someone else. This makes the transportation system more sustainable over the long run for people using every mode of transportation, including the estimated 25% of Washington residents who cannot or do not drive for whatever reason.
The recommendations in the Plan for network improvements also address the most critical issue in traffic safety: the disproportionate serious injuries and deaths of vulnerable road users. In Washington, as in other states, these occur at rates far above walk/bike mode share in either trips or miles traveled, over 21% in 2021.
The equity analysis in the Plan highlights the core issue: these serious and fatal crashes occur disproportionately in places with more low-income households, more people with disabilities, or more Black, Indigenous, and people of color. We cannot get to a transportation future in which everyone has access to safe, comfortable connections unless we address active transportation safety.
By designing our communities to prioritize the rapid movement of automobiles, we have created places where it is difficult—even dangerous—for people to walk or bicycle. Creating a more balanced transportation system through cost-effective investments in active transportation systems can simultaneously result in healthier places, healthier people, and healthier local economies.
How did the project focus on alternative modes of transportation or improve multi-modal access?
This project is ALL about identifying active transportation system needs, planning for those needs, programming projects and improvements to best meet those needs, and effectively delivering those investments, working closely with our transportation system partners. Our ultimate goal is to ensure that travelers of all ages and abilities in Washington are able to travel safely and efficiently to get to their destinations, whether for work, play, shopping, education, or recreation.
The Plan assesses the needs for accessible pedestrian and bicyclist facilities, highlights safety concerns, and provides the first-ever examination of state right of way and its suitability for active transportation. It provides new metrics for tracking and reporting progress that emphasize the importance of complete and accessible walk/bike facilities and connections to transit and other modes, particularly in overburdened communities. It calculates the environmental, health and economic benefits to society when people shift trips from driving to walking or cycling.
For consideration of future investments, the Plan lays out a rational approach to prioritizing safety and operational performance needs on state highways as part of the overall networks people use to reach their destinations. It provides objective, quantitative metrics to describe needs and measure the effects of changes. It also incorporates the Safe System Approach, which emphasizes using engineering approaches that acknowledge humans make mistakes and that crashes with greater impact force are more deadly, especially for vulnerable road users.
