With road crashes killing around 1.3 million people each year, experts are examining how a more integrated approach can improve safety on the streets. Speaking at a panel on efficient public transport for safe and active travel at the UITP Summit this week, Montreal city councillor Sophie Mauzerolle said a “paradigm shift” is needed when looking at Vision Zero’s aim of eliminating deaths and serious injuries on roads.
“Right now when there’s an accident, we call it an accident. People say ‘well it’s inevitable’, and everyone goes back to business. With Vision Zero we want to change this so people think there are no deaths which are inevitable – this is preventable and we can do something about it.”
The city launched its Vision Zero Action Plan in 2019, which committed to reducing the number of deaths and serious injuries on its roads to zero by 2040. Measures like the reconfiguration of streets, boosting modal share and educating the public have been part of its strategy, but Mauzerolle acknowledged there were challenges.
“In Montreal we do have some leverage for the configuration of roads, but we don’t have all the legislative powers which are at the upper levels of government. So really, we want people to take public transit, and this is the biggest challenge because we’re not the ones financing it. The best way to avoid crashes is to avoid cars, and getting people onto public transport is key. But it’s a challenge when you have to take away parking spaces or reduce [road] lanes. We’ve been working hard on boosting our cycling infrastructure, but we’re still in North America, so people are attached to their cars.”
Health and transport are interconnected
In September 2020, the UN adopted a resolution proclaiming a Decade of Action for Road Safety (2021-2030). The plan, which set a target of preventing at least 50 percent of road traffic deaths and injuries by 2030, was developed in cooperation with the World Health Organization (WHO) and aligns with the Stockholm Declaration by emphasising the importance of a holistic approach.
“Road safety, public transport, [and] walking and cycling are all interconnected,” said Dr Fiona Bull, Head of Unit, Department of Health Promotion, World Health Organization. “The better public transport we have, the safer we can make mobility and prevent deaths. Central to this is a safe, sustainable and affordable, accessible public transport system.”
User experience
Cities and governments should also consider that walking is part of the public transport journey, according to Walk21 Foundation’s CEO Bronwen Thornton. “What’s interesting is that we forget that the public transport journey includes that walk to the station. In London [a council] prevented putting in pedestrian crossings that would enable people to get to their bus because it would slow the bus journey down – which is kind of counterintuitive. We have to think of the two in parallel, as pairs that are part of the same journey. Research clearly shows that when you have more walking, cycling and public transport, streets are safer and people are more active. We embrace public transport as part of our active mobility agenda, because the combination of walking and cycling with public transport is the safest and most efficient way of moving people around.”
In Dublin, Walk21 undertook a project looking at transport from a gender perspective, examining why women were more reluctant to take public transport journeys on the city’s Luas tram. “Here was this beautifully engineered public transport service, but women weren’t liking it because despite all of its qualities, the user experience wasn’t comfortable – they didn’t feel safe, it dropped them off mid-block where there wasn’t any street frontages or pathways,” said Thornton. The foundation developed an app to ‘walk with the people’ to understand their experience and translate this to changes on the street.
“Research has shown that when you ask people about their public transport journey they will talk about the walk to the station as the singular most influential factor as to whether they enjoyed the trip or not. If you’re only measuring the experience on the train or at the station, you’re missing a big part of your customer’s experience.”