Age-friendly walkability report looks at street safety for seniors
The Council on Aging Ottawa (COA) and Ecology Ottawa hosted a special event on February 25 to launch An Age-Friendly Walkability Report: Safe Streets for Seniors and Other Valuable People in Ottawa.
The report summarizes a two-year project carried out by the COA’s Pedestrian Safety Committee involving walkability and pedestrian safety audits in three Ottawa communities – Hintonburg, the Glebe and Kanata-Beaverbrook in the winter, spring and fall of 2014-15. Residents from age 2 to 85 (and several dogs) carried out the walkability audits in sunny, rainy and snowy weather.
“To our knowledge, we are the first city in Canada to carry out walkability audits in all seasons,” says Peggy Edwards, a member of the Pedestrian Safety Committee. “Snow, ice and cold winds impose serious challenges to seniors and people with disabilities, which need to be prioritized for attention in a winter city like Ottawa.”
The report talks about the factors that put older adults and other vulnerable pedestrians at risk and the city policies and plans that affect pedestrian safety and walkability. It also makes available an age-friendly walkability audit checklist that other communities can use, and recommendations to improve pedestrian safety and walkability, especially for seniors and other vulnerable road users, such as young children and people with mobility problems.
As a guiding principle, the report recommends to the city of Ottawa to adopt an age-friendly “feet first” approach to transportation and public space design that assigns priority to users in this order: pedestrians (including those using motorized mobility aids), cyclists, motorcyclists, drivers of motor vehicles. Detailed recommendations seek to implement an age-friendly, inclusive complete streets approach. This includes speed reduction strategies and strategies to prevent collisions with people who use wheelchairs and who have vision and hearing disabilities. Curb cuts increase accessibility for pedestrians with disabilities and allow easy movement by people travelling in wheelchairs, scooters and walkers.
All signalled intersections could be equipped with audible pedestrian signals and instructions to activate them. To prevent collisions at mid-block uncontrolled crossings, the city could incorporate pedestrian crossing islands on roads with four or more lanes or with very long distances between intersections. There are strategies to improve winter walking – enhanced ice removal on residential streets and escalating snow removal standards from Class B (snow packed) to Class A (bare surface) around all transit stops, schools and in residential areas where seniors’ residences are located.
The report does not overlook the need for a network of safe, accessible, free, clean and environmentally responsible public toilets and water fountains in parks, major transit stops and key public places to meet the needs of residents and tourists in Ottawa. The recommendations are to take advantage of all new construction and reconstruction to include public toilets, to make toilets in public buildings and parks open and accessible all year round, and to develop a city map of public toilets.
One important recommendation calls for enhanced enforcement of the Highway Safety Act requiring drivers to wait until pedestrians have completely crossed the road before proceeding at school crossings and pedestrian crossovers. Lastly, the city must review the implications of and plan for increasing numbers of mobility scooters and motorized wheelchairs as the population ages.
COA’s goal is for the city to adopt a Vision Zero goal which aims to reach zero fatalities and serious injuries to pedestrians and cyclists by 2020.