Pedestrian Safety Audit

Audit ATX speaks with Auditor Justin Lanier about a recent audit that evaluated  whether the City is effectively promoting pedestrian safety. Transcript available on Buzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1419979/episodes

Transcript

Sam: Welcome audit enthusiasts and fellow Austinites to another episode of Audit ATX. 

Maxx:The podcast that dives deep into audits and investigations our office does to make Austin better for all residents. 

Sam: We're your hosts: Sam 

Maxx: and Maxx. 

Guest: 

Maxx: Welcome back to Audit ATX, y'all. Today, we're here with Auditor Justin Lanier to talk about a recent audit our office conducted. This audit goes into pedestrian safety within the city of Austin. Justin, thanks for being here to help us learn about this process and digest some of the findings today.

Guest: Thanks, Max. Glad to be here.

Sam: To get us started here, Justin, could you tell us and our listeners about the objective of this audit and why it was conducted?

Guest: You bet. So the objective of this audit is, is the city effectively promoting pedestrian safety? And the reason why we did this audit is really following up on the fact that the city had adopted a Vision Zero in twenty fifteen. And that is a goal of zero traffic deaths and serious injuries. And what we've seen over the last ten years is a lot of variety in terms of those numbers of traffic deaths and serious injuries in twenty twenty five. Right. We had the lowest rate of crashes since twenty fifteen, but we're really still far from zero.

Maxx: So, Justin, before we get too far along here, what do you think both Sam and I and our listeners need to know as far as context or background information goes before we take a deep dive?

Guest: Yeah. So two things I want you to know is among folks who are working on Vision Zero, there's really three prongs that we think about approaching this issue from. So one would be engineering, one would be enforcement and another would be education. And then secondly is just understanding that there's a lot of stakeholders. There's a lot of people involved in addressing this issue. City departments. So our transportation and public works, our police department, our homeless strategies and operations department, as well as our city council and even our residents who are going to vote on things like funding for pedestrian safety. And lastly, we can't forget about the State Texas Department of transportation.

Sam: Okay, so noted on the three E's and the myriad of stakeholders involved here. So can you walk us through what the audit team looked at, as well as the steps the team took to complete the work?

Guest: Absolutely. We did a lot of work here, so we looked at best practices from federal agencies around pedestrian safety. We interviewed a ton of staff. We reviewed plans and policies and procedures from some of those departments. We looked at crash data that's collected by the state and augmented by our city departments. We looked at timelines and spending and progress and some of the goals that we've set. And lastly, we surveyed and interviewed staff in six peer cities.

Maxx: That sounds like quite the undertaking to, first of all, gather all that information and analyze it, I'm sure. But let's go ahead and jump into the findings. What can you tell us about the findings in general and what your team found in this audit?

Guest: Sure thing. So this first finding is a big one. I'm going to take it piece by piece. So our first finding is that the city has implemented various initiatives to improve pedestrian safety in Austin. However, progress continues to be slowed by challenges including incomplete data and jurisdictional authority. First thing you got to know is that our city was designed for drivers, right? Really was made to move people quickly around the city and cars, and now we're trying to make it safer for other road users like pedestrians and cyclists. And the city has come up with plans to try and do that. Like its pedestrian safety action plan, it's implemented a lot of infrastructure improvements. It's completed educational outreach, and it's done enforcement, though notably that has dropped. And this has been due to patrol officer vacancies as well as officers addressing other competing priorities.

Maxx: Thanks for sharing the improvements to pedestrian safety. What can you tell us about some of the challenges found in this audit?

Guest: So there are two big challenges that we talked about in this finding. First is around data. So it's really important to understand where and when pedestrian crashes occur. Our city currently uses text dots crash data, information from news stories from our EMS, from our fire department, our hospitals. But some things are still missing from the data. For one, there are a lot of unreported crashes. And second would be some key inputs from officers. One is geolocation information. So where specifically did the crash occur? And secondly, contributing factors. Things like whether a driver was under the influence or whether somebody failed to yield. The second major challenge is about jurisdictional authority. So the state of Texas currently owns a little over fourteen percent of the roadway miles in Austin. Think about roads like I-35 and Lamar. These are high speed roads with really few pedestrian crossings. The city currently needs the state's permission to make changes on these roads to improve pedestrian safety. And while both the state and the city have made a commitment to achieve zero traffic fatalities, they're trying to balance a number of things, right? The state wants to keep vehicles moving efficiently, and the city wants to improve safety by slowing people down. So among this range of priorities, staff are trying to coordinate to improve and make these roadways safer.

Sam: I've definitely noticed a lot of the work that the city has done in this area, from data analysis to infrastructure improvements, as well as some of the work that still appears to remain, such as stretches of seemingly incomplete sidewalks. What should our listeners know about the second finding here?

Guest: Okay, so the second finding is that about forty percent of fatal pedestrian crashes involve people who may be experiencing homelessness. So just to really underscore how disproportionate this number is, there are about seven thousand five hundred people experiencing homelessness in our city, and our total population is just about one million. Now, the city is making some efforts to address pedestrian fatalities among people experiencing homelessness. Austin Homeless Strategies and Operations, for instance, is doing targeted outreach and transportation, and public Works has been working with the Texas Department of Transportation to put up barriers to discourage crossing and to prevent camping near high speed roadways. And the city has plans to dedicate more resources to this population and these roadways in the coming years. However, the percentage of fatal crashes involving people experiencing homelessness is consistently high year over year and even got as high as fifty five percent in twenty twenty.

Maxx: Y'all definitely found a lot here from the sounds of it. And I also see that there was an additional observation as well. So tell us about that.

Guest: Yeah. So our additional observation is that limited funding resources impact the transportation and public works departments ability to achieve current pedestrian safety goals within established timelines. Transportation and public works projects that help pedestrian safety are primarily funded with bonds. And the bond that is funding that work will largely be spent by the end of this year. Any future funding is uncertain because it requires that council puts it on the ballot, and then that voters approve that bond funding.

Sam: Definitely hear you about the potentially tenuous situation, given the bond funding. A lot of parallels here between this and what we heard from the speed reduction audit earlier this year as well. So thank you for recapping all of that for us. Can you talk us through what was recommended based on the findings?

Guest: Absolutely. We would recommend Austin Transportation and Public Works work with our public safety departments to fill gaps in their incomplete data. Second, we'd recommend continuing to strengthen the relationship and coordination between the city and the state. Third, Austin Transportation and Public Works and the homeless strategies and operations should evaluate their current efforts, should continue to implement new strategies, and then just continue to improve these efforts over time.

Sam: Awesome. Well, Justin, thank you for taking the time to come on the podcast to talk about your work with us. Look forward to having you back here sometime soon.

Guest: Thanks so much.

Maxx: Thanks for listening to this episode of ATX. For more information about this report, you can visit our website at austintexas.gov/auditor or shoot us an email at austinauditor@austintexas.gov. 

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