I'm willing to face an unpleasant fact: Motor vehicles kill 7,500 pedestrians in the U.S. every year. Worldwide, 1.35 million people are killed each year in motor vehicle accidents and 20 million to 50 million are injured. For further reading see: https://theconversation.com/deaths-and-injuries-in-road-crashes-are-a-silent-epidemic-on-wheels-182735

Our society needs to encourage walking and bicycling. However, forcing bicyclists to die or to get injured for doing right by the climate is another way of asking the poor of the nation (and likewise of the world) to pay gratis for the climate largess of the relatively wealthy. Again, motor vehicle manufacturers whose products are involved in most of the killings and maimings, and governments that build substandard bicycle infrastructure, are largely immune from any class action lawsuits that would restore the balance between them an innocent pedestrians. They both need carrots and sticks to clean up their ugly death rate.

Most citizens are used to complaining to city hall and nobody ever listens. If you want a bike path and you want to listen to people's opinions about the bike path, be prepared to listen to an overall somewhat upset and disturbed general public. In particular you might hear complaints that city hall never fixes or clears the existing pedestrian sidewalks and that city hall never enforces the laws against drivers parking on the sidewalk and/or illegally blocking or endangering vehicular traffic so that they can run into a bank and get some cash.

P1. Pedestrian and bicyclist crosswalks at night

Between the Rhode Island State House and its main parking lots is a fast, dangerous four lane highway. Now, possibly because it's the state's bosses that might someday end up laying mangled and dying on the pavement, that's different, so the R&D and deployment actually got ramped up at only one critical crosswalk in the entire State of Rhode Island. Isn't science wonderful?

Most pedestrian and bicyclist crosswalks need an order of magnitude stronger lighting at night, so that drivers can clearly see the moving pedestrians and bicyclists from a distance. This isn't my idea but I'll be an idea champion for it.

Bicyclists and pedestrians that are approaching the crosswalk, not just bicyclists and pedestrians in the crosswalk, need to be clearly illuminated. The lights need to be mounted at a good height above bicyclists' heads, in order to have the lights not blind the bicyclists. The lights might be offset on both sides of the crosswalk in order to front-illuminatate the bicyclists and pedestrians to oncoming drivers in both directions. A red light signal for cars might help. Remember that in practice modern pedestrians will occasionally dash across a crosswalk against the green.

Keep the energy-intensive crosswalk illumination on until 30 seconds after motion detectors have most recently registered a pedestrian or bicyclist motion.

Europe is experimenting with building slightly different heights of roadways, one level for cars, another level an inch higher for parked cars and another level for bicycles. The different heights instruct drivers to keep their lanes in a way that painted white lines (that eventually fade) don't quite do.

I don't believe in axle-breaking or tire-breaking bumps in the road. Harassing drivers' pocketbooks is ultimately dangerous because it lowers drivers' ability to drive and makes them upset. Real stop signs always work and people obey them. Consider a three-way or four-way stop at any high pedestrian traffic street corner, not a speed hump. However, the Rhode Island State House uses an enormous moon launch of a speed hump, money was no object, so large that snow plows have no trouble plowing over it, and believe me it does the job. The speed limit over the launch ramp is 10 mph.

I do believe in instructive raises in the road. Every pedestrian crosswalk should be raised perhaps 1 1/2 inches above the road surface, with an extremely gentle grade up and down that snowplows can handle easily. If installed, all four corners of any raised crosswalk will need storm drains. Why should pedestrians and wheelchair users have to ever splash through puddles at a crosswalk in winter snow conditions? Ice freezing at these crosswalks is inherently a slippery long-term hazard and a public medical nuisance, so we want to avoid creating the problem.

Rumble strips indented into the roadway in front of crosswalks are also instructive, and they don't interfere with plowing. It's useful if the rumble strip indentations drain properly.

P2. Above-street pedestrian and bicyclist skyways

Manhattan's High Line, a 1.45 mile reworking of an above-street rail freight line into an outdoor pedestrian walkway, is well-liked. I've heard of a similar converted elevated rail line in Paris, the Promenade Plantee.

Someone should try building an elevated bikeway from scratch above a downtown area to keep cyclists away from deadly traffic and to encourage bicycle-friendly second story commercial businesses downtown.

A bicycle elevator is designed first for raising weaker bicyclists especially upwards to the skyway, and second for moving wheelchairs both up and down. At the bottom there's a small ramp-up to the elevator to take some of the average bicyclist's forward velocity away, plus a wheelchair ramp, and at the top of the elevator there's a small incline downward onto the bikeway to speed the bicyclist onward from a standstill on the elevator. It would be nice if bicycles rolled on and rolled off the bicycle elevator in the same direction.

We might need enough width on the elevator for two three-wheeler bicycles or wheelchairs and enough total width for four bicyclists, with a padded grab bar down the middle for the center two bicyclists to grab onto. A three wheeler trike for an unstable bicyclist or a fairly wide motorized wheelchair should take up two bicyclist slots. A fast elevator ride up to the top would be nice. Not a few bicyclists can coast down from the skyway to ground level on a slightly steep, straight ramp, and it's possible that avid bicyclists can get up this same ramp without bothering with the elevator.

For hauling bicyclists up a long, steep urban hill, see my Teleport Transit.

Denmark has inclined moving walkways that act as bicycle escalators. An elevated bikeway might equally need a bicycle up-escalator. The currently operating Trampe bicycle lift design, where a moving footplate propels the cyclist's foot, the cyclist and the bicycle up a steep upgrade, is a low-cost competitor here. Safety is a concern, with the understanding that motor vehicles are a more immediate danger to cyclists.

Downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota has an enclosed pedestrian skyway system, a series of enclosed second story pedestrian walkways that connect 80 blocks worth of downtown buildings to create an indoor mega-mall effect. With a non-bicyclist pedestrian skyway system it's economical to run the walkways through the second floors of local office buildings. A heated pedestrian skyway can often increase the rent for local second floor commercial space, especially in extremely cold climates.

P3. Reducing pedestrian deaths

Bogata, Colombia has tried painting stars on roadways with people's names, to remind drivers where cyclists and pedestrians have been killed by cars. This public relations technique has reportedly lowered fatal cyclist and pedestrian collisions by 35%.

P4. Bicyclist-controlled road paving crews

Bicyclist organizations should demand more direct political clout in saying which potholes must get filled quickly. The recent default has been vandals painting obscene images on the bottoms of potholes, forcing cities to cover the images with asphalt. Politics shouldn't be that alienated from saving lives.

Poison ivy shouldn't be growing across sidewalks or leaning over sidewalks into people's faces but I've seen poison ivy-covered sidewalks where I live.

P5. Traffic signals

Traffic signals should be able to visually identify oncoming vehicles, bicyclists and pedestrians. Pedestrians suffer more than drivers in extreme heat, in extreme cold and in extreme precipitation, also pedestrians do an inordinate amount of the dying on roadways. Pedestrians are the ones taking better actions concerning climate change. So by rights, signals should typically change to let pedestrians walk through intersections with little stopping.

I remember reading two cases of elderly pedestrians who died at traffic signals within a mile of my house. It's not easy for a mobility-impaired person to keep up with a young traffic engineer's idea of a young pedestrian's speed walking across an intersection. Slower-walking pedestrians need extra time to cross the street, and a smarter signal could properly monitor the pedestrian's progress across the street.

When a bike path crosses a roadway, a traffic signal should be able to deduce when a car is about to run the light and hit a bicyclist despite the red light signal. In such cases a red light isn't enough. The traffic signal should blast a fire truck's foghorn at the oncoming vehicle to get the drunk driver to stop. Better yet is the spoken word, "Stop!"

In temperate climates, roadways and bikeways should absorb heat in the winter for better melting, but they should shed heat in summer. Applying some type of temperature-sensitive whitewash that dissolves in frost would do the job each summer.

See also: trellis-shaded bikeways