Guest Commentary: Protect pedestrians. It’s Good for the Earth
Guest Commentary: Protect pedestrians. Information technology's Practiced for the Globe
A make clean air advocate calls for better traffic safety measures citywide—every bit a way to too lessen the effects of climate change
Dec. 12, 2018
It is heartening to run into the City of Philadelphia incorporating cycling and pedestrian injuries into its annual Community Health Assessment , alongside babyhood asthma hospitalizations and other alarming health indicators. With President Trump expected to finalize his dangerous repeal of federal automobile fuel efficiency standards, we will demand to provide creative, local methods to reduce mobile-source pollution while improving traffic safety and anticipating the effects of climatic change.
Transportation is the largest source of air pollution in Philadelphia and the leading correspondent to climate-irresolute carbon dioxide emissions in the country. Although Philadelphia leads the nation in some disturbing health indicators, similar traffic deaths per capita, nosotros tin can protect pedestrians while reducing both the contributors and furnishings of climate change. So many indicators put North-Central Philadelphia at the highest risk, including pedestrian and bike crashes (excepting high-volume Center Urban center), childhood asthma hospitalizations, lack of healthy food access, lack of recreational access, housing code violations and, ultimately, poverty.
Transportation is the largest source of air pollution in Philadelphia and the leading contributor to climate-changing carbon dioxide emissions in the country.
Expanded and innovative green-space in Philadelphia can encourage more efficient transportation habits while protecting pedestrians, in improver to improving drainage and mitigating the heat-island consequence that raises temperatures in some metropolis neighborhoods.
In Boston, Rose Kennedy Greenway is a dandy example of using urban space to reconnect neighborhoods with a stretching linear park over the highway. But at that place are plenty of cracking examples of green, resilient infrastructure within our own city. The newly christened Trolley Portal Gardens is an ideal confluence of flora and pervious pavement framing the city'due south prized trolley network. Even something as simple as the big potted plants at 48th and Baltimore have worked wonders to improve pedestrian safe at that treacherous five-indicate intersection. Beyond looking pretty, absorbing stormwater and providing oxygen, the big potted plants literally protect pedestrians from automobiles while shortening crossing distances.
The series of pelting gardens around Warren Grand Harding heart school in Frankford accept likewise reduced flooding at nearby parks and athletic spaces while providing a teachable moment to young students. Wide Street, the Ben Franklin Parkway and the infamous Roosevelt Boulevard (among many others) would certainly benefit from a similar treatment.
We tin't beget not to do this. Later a marked improvement in air quality from 2012 to 2013, Philadelphia'south ground-level-ozone (smog) concentrations have stagnated, if not gotten worse. In 2017, Philadelphia suffered 2 sequent "red ozone days" for the first time since 2011 . This summer saw another "cherry ozone twenty-four hour period" where it was unhealthy for all populations to be outdoors preceded by 2 consecutive days where it was unhealthy for "sensitive populations" like asthmatics to breathe, up to a quarter of Philadelphia'due south population. The (brief) reprieve in air pollution can be attributed to at least 14 Pennsylvania ability plants either retiring or converting to natural gas since 2010, but as Philadelphia and the region grows, automobiles will increasingly dominate the urban center'southward air pollution burden.
Philadelphia's asthma epidemic may be it's most racially stratified public health emergency. Even though the urban center's childhood asthma hospitalization rate is the lowest information technology's been in 15 years, black and hispanic children in Philadelphia are more than iii times as likely to be hospitalized for asthma symptoms than the average child in the The states. A black child in Philadelphia is more twice every bit likely to exist hospitalized for asthma symptoms than the boilerplate black child in the U.S. Co-ordinate to a study of national childhood asthma hospitalizations from 2000 to 2009 published by the Periodical of Pediatrics , 13 percent less children were hospitalized nationally over that fourth dimension period, but the same statistic actually saw a slight increment in the Northeast region of the country.
Even something equally unproblematic as the large potted plants at 48th and Baltimore take worked wonders to amend pedestrian safety. Beyond looking pretty, absorbing stormwater and providing oxygen, the big potted plants literally protect pedestrians from automobiles while shortening crossing distances.
The recently released National Climate Assessment identified that sea level is also rising 3 times faster in the Northeast than the global average. Although it is often ignored in development proposals, introducing more porous surfaces into the city could simultaneously reduce flooding events while giving pedestrians more than protection from roadways.
While Philadelphia saw an initial decrease in traffic fatalities after adopting Vision Zero in 2016; 2022 and 2022 accept seen a rebound in traffic fatalities with 99 and 88, respectively . Philadelphia's contempo " Strategic Transportation Plan " noted that half of employed Philadelphians drive to work and "are typically full-bodied in wealthier areas far from the urban core." A country-use cess revealed that Philadelphia contains 2.2 1000000 parking spaces for 1.56 one thousand thousand people .
A separate 2022 report from the Center City District concluded that travel times from Broad Street to 23rd increased 10 to xx percent from 2013-17, with bus travel times upwardly 25 to xl percentage for the aforementioned bridge. In that time Middle City became the densest downtown in the United States, only behind Midtown Manhattan. While the proposal to institute a class of traffic enforcement officers could reduce illegal driving downtown, it volition not reduce the causes or furnishings of climate change and increased air pollution.
The World Meteorological Organization but appear that 2022 volition be recorded as the quaternary hottest twelvemonth always globally, making the last 4 years the iv hottest years always . 2022 is already on record as the second most precipitous year ever in Philadelphia, only backside 2011 . Philadelphia's tragic traffic violence puts the city in a unique position to protect pedestrians while reducing climate-changing, asthma-inducing air pollution. We need real incentives for more than fuel efficient vehicles with expanded green infrastructure to better drainage, cool the urban center and create barriers between pedestrians and vehicles.
Russell Zerbo has been an advocate for the Make clean Air Council since 2012. He currently serves on the Philadelphia Health Department'southward Climate Alter and Health Advisory Grouping and works inside the Philadelphia Health and Surround Ethnography Lab based out of Drexel University. Accomplish him at [email protected] .
Photo by David Flores via Flickr 
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/guest-commentary-protect-pedestrians-its-good-for-the-earth/
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