Challenge

Broward County, FL, is consistently ranked as one of the top four most dangerous places in the country for bicyclists and pedestrians. The county is auto-centric, with limited provisions for walking and bicycling. However, the need is high. In addition to the identified safety issue, social inequalities exist that are accentuated by the necessity to own a car, which is not feasible for many low income residents.

Solution

In order to address these issues, the Broward MPO hired Kittelson to undertake the Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Action Plan (BPSAP). The Kittelson worked to determine the challenges (from a policy standpoint) to creating quality pedestrian and bicycling infrastructure and developed a plan to address these challenges. Broward MPO staff and Kittelson worked alongside a steering committee known as the Advocacy Team (or “A Team”) to guide this effort and participate in the data analysis and field reviews. As part of the plan, the Advocacy Team identified five crash hot spots and classified these hot spots into five different typologies (urban intersection, suburban intersection, urban corridor, suburban corridor, and beach access corridor) as a way to expand the application of the crash analyses countywide. This team identified a priority list of action items to pursue based on feedback from the data and analysis.