A Response to Oklahoma's Active Transportation Plan
The state's first Active Transportation Plan is a blend of shining features and room for improvement
Last month, the Oklahoma Department of Transportation (ODOT) released their draft of the state’s first Active Transportation Plan (ATP). I have some thoughts. I recently learned that the deadline for public feedback is Nov. 9, so this post is going to come out just in time.
To create the ATP, ODOT collaborated with various established groups in Oklahoma, and gathered public input through an online survey and several virtual townhall-style meetings. The online survey appears to have been used as a key component of the federally mandated Vulnerable Road User (VRU) assessment, and the data from this survey forms the foundation of the problem areas ODOT is looking to address in the ATP.
Positive Aspects of the Plan
Recognition of the Need for a Plan
An investigation into active transportation in Oklahoma is long overdue. As noted in the ATP, pedestrian/bicyclist fatalities and serious injuries are on the rise. ODOT has recognized this and is making an effort to correct this tragic reality, beginning with this Active Transportation Plan. The recognition that a plan is needed (and the effort expended in creating one) might be taken for granted when evaluating the plan itself; however, the issues surrounding active transportation have never been given the proper attention in our state, and doing something for the first time is difficult. I absolutely consider this to be worth praising.
Useful Statistics on the Benefits of Active Transportation
I appreciate seeing statistics that stress the importance of active transportation, both from a personal and a social perspective. Here are a few of my favorites from the ATP, in no particular order:
“Bicyclists and walkers, on average, spend similar amounts or more, and make more trips than those using automobiles at local retailers” (ATP, p. 6). Check this one out, Main Street advocates!
“Projects that support walking, biking, and moving actively using assistive devices cost over 75 percent less [emphasis theirs] to build per mile compared to typical, car-focused transportation projects…” (ATP, p. 6). This one is great to remember when worried that prioritizing active transportation projects will mean that roadways will never get their potholes fixed. Additionally, maintenance will cost less and be required less often due to the much smaller impact of VRUs on the facility compared to heavy vehicles on a roadway.
“More people walking and bicycling for transportation means fewer vehicles on the road, reducing congestion and parking demand” (ATP, p. 7). I’ll also point out that providing parking facilities for bikes at destinations takes up less space (about 12 bikes per car equivalent) and should be a suggestion for active transportation implementation.
“Active friendly projects can increase property and sales tax revenue by up to 10 times” (ATP, p. 6). Awesome. Take note, local governments of all sizes.
Figure 3: Impact of Speed on Pedestrian Safety shows how dangerous for pedestrians a vehicle going faster than 20 miles per hour can be. A pedestrian struck by a vehicle traveling 40 miles per hour has a 73% chance of being killed or seriously injured (ATP, p. 13). This is a very important statistic to consider in parts of our towns that have speeds reaching or exceeding this velocity.
“Across Oklahoma, VRU fatalities and serious injuries have been on the rise, with a 23% increase in pedestrian fatalities across the state from 2017 through 2021” (ATP, p. 14). Even one Vulnerable Road User death is too many. I’m glad to see language in the ATP that reflects the need to improve safety.
“Bold, but Realistic”
One of the goals of the Active Transportation Plan is to be “bold, but realistic” (ATP, p. 4). It’s great to hear that ODOT wants to be bold when working toward active transportation! And it is difficult to balance what is bold with what is realistic in a certain timeframe. Just make sure you don’t use “realistic” as an excuse to abandon efforts in active transportation when growing pains arise.
The focus on reduction of road injuries and deaths is one of the best aspects of the ATP. I love that in Chapter 2 we read “The next steps in Oklahoma should include adopting a goal of zero VRU deaths or serious injuries by a target year in Oklahoma…” (ATP, p. 14). This is possibly the most bold statement in the ATP. I would encourage specifying a target year, and if you want to stay as realistic as possible and still actually make progress toward this, you could choose 2045, to align it with the end of the most recent Long-Range Transportation Plan.
Making actual design and policy changes today and implementing them both preemptively and as the road surfaces come up for renewal will significantly reduce the number of deaths and serious injuries per year as we approach 2045. While I’d love to be more bold than that, the reality of the built environment we currently have is that it is unsafe for VRUs, and reducing this number to zero will likely take decades. I would implore ODOT to truly make this a priority and do the hard work of undoing years of unsafe roadway design, especially in towns and cities. You have to start somewhere, and the ATP is a great place to start, but don’t neglect to execute on the plan.
Safety at the Forefront
The Active Transportation Plan lists takeaways from their online workshops in Chapter 2. The Safety and Connectivity concerns listed are all important and I’ll list them all here (ATP, p. 21):
High speeds
Lack of sidewalks, shoulders, bike facilities
Important destinations on busy streets with no sidewalk
Long crossings or lack of crossings
Conflicts with vehicles, trucks
Lack of lighting, signage
Low-income users disproportionately affected due to lack of vehicle access and other factors
These are addressed in Chapter 3, Recommendations and Strategies. SC10 in particular identifies the way ODOT-controlled roadways can be made more safe for active transportation: “Continue to provide pedestrian signals, warning beacons, signage, striping, and lighting at intersections of state routes with high-volume pedestrian crossings” (ATP, p. 29).
In Ada, Mississippi Avenue (State Highway 99) has a 2,000 foot stretch between 10th Street and Arlington Avenue with no controlled crossing points. In fact, there are no official crossing points at the Mississippi/Arlington intersection, either. Along this stretch are a number of fast food restaurants and other businesses, and people often cross this stretch on foot or by bicycle. It’s dangerous behavior, but the reward of not having to walk an extra quarter to half mile to make a legal crossing outweighs the risk of personal safety for these individuals. For two individuals between 2016 and 2017, this gamble resulted in being struck by a vehicle (OHSO Interactive Crash Maps).
At the very least, beacons, striping, and lighting could alleviate the safety issues along this corridor. At best, a full street redesign would transform this section of Ada to be safe, slow, and more of a destination than a highway. This, however, is a topic for a different post.
There are stretches like this in every mid-sized or larger town in Oklahoma, where state highways “serve as main streets or otherwise part of a community’s street network” (ATP, p.10). It is great that ODOT recognizes the safety improvements needed inside our cities’ limits.
Areas of Potential Improvement
There are several ways I have found the Active Transportation Plan to be lacking. These do not negate the positive aspects outlined above; however, constructive criticism is the most important kind of feedback to both give and receive - otherwise, the status quo will win the day. The status quo has been maintained for far too long. It’s time for this change, and I hope my feedback here can push the state even further in this positive direction.
Undue Conclusions from the VRU Survey
The Vulnerable Road User survey and resulting safety assessment serves as the foundation for many of the conclusions on what is needed or desired by the public in the way of active transportation. However, there are some concerns I have with the reliability of the data and conclusions reached, based on how the survey was conducted and the questions included.
Lowest Income Demographic Underrepresented
“Incomes lower than $34,000 [per household] are underrepresented in the survey, with over 6 percent of the population reporting having less than $10,000 household income, 2 percent of the survey respondents reported being at that level of income” (VRU, p. 13). In fact, the figure is 1.3% based on Figure 19. 10.6% of respondents reported less than $35,000 in household income account. According to Census.gov, 15.8% of households in Oklahoma are under the poverty level (Poverty in the United States: 2022, p. 47). Based on these supplemental statistics, I agree with the VRU survey that the lowest income demographic is underrepresented.
This underrepresentation is concerning because it has the potential to alter the conclusions outlined in the ATP. For example, Parks/Trails was the most important location respondents wanted to reach using active transportation, and Health Benefits was the top reason for using active transportation. I suspect the results would be a little more utilitarian (not wanting/being able to spend money on a car) for the lowest income group, increasing the share of responses attributed to those values.
Assumptions Around Walking/Bicycling Distance
The survey asks respondents what locations are within 1/4 mile and 2 miles of where they live in an effort to determine the feasibility of reaching desired destinations through walking and bicycling, respectively. One issue with these arbitrary distances is that utilitarian active transportation users (those who have no alternative mode of transportation) are already traveling further than this, regardless of the active transportation facilities available.
There is a group of low-income duplexes near where I live. Every day, disabled residents from this neighborhood ride their mobility scooters to the grocery store. There are three options close by, and the largest option is Pruett’s. All three stores are around 0.4 miles from the duplexes, nearly twice the distance an “able-bodied individual” (VRU, p. 5) is expected to be able to walk.
These folks maneuver their way along the shoulder of Broadway Avenue, cross JA Richardson Loop, do their shopping at Pruett’s, and return the way they came. There is not a single ADA compliant sidewalk along the route, and the intersection of Broadway and Richardson Loop is very dangerous for pedestrians, even more so for the half-speed mobility aids used by these citizens. Every person deserves the ability to grocery shop without risking their life. Determining what is within active transportation distance by an arbitrary measure does not shed adequate light on the need that already exists for utilitarian active transportation users.
Demographics Could Be Matched to Response
One great reason to collect demographic information is so conclusions can be drawn from the responses given by demographic. The VRU report does not match demographics to responses, so we miss out on interesting data points like: “Which incomes want to use active transportation for which purposes?” and “Which incomes currently use active transportation for which benefits?” along with more particular insights.
Additionally, the “most important locations to be able to access with active transportation” (VRU, p. 6) question having a limit of three choices from fourteen options makes this question useless for drawing good conclusions unless broken down by a demographic like Number of Vehicles Owned or Income Level; however, the result of this question was used to identify “parks and trails” as the most important destination to reach by active transportation. On the bright side, the runners-up (shopping, employment, and schools) were also noted in the ATP.
Demographic-specific results for these survey questions could have given a more well-rounded profile for the entire VRU assessment and provided a better understanding of “the needs of those at the lowest end of the income scale as this population is the most transportation cost burdened” (VRU, p. 13).
Why Not Encourage People to Get to Work Using Active Transportation?
Chapter 2 discusses “Means of Transportation to Work” in Oklahoma compared to the United States. In Oklahoma, a total of 2% of the population gets to work by active transportation, and 0.2% get to work by public transit. However, the ATP follows these figures by concluding “it is important to keep in mind that traveling to work is typically one of the longest trips that most people make on a regular basis and for many it may be simply too far to walk or bike to work” (ATP, p. 17).
Seems like a reasonable conclusion, right? After all, 85.9% of Oklahomans use vehicles to get to work (ATP, p. 17). Also, the ATP encourages people to use active transportation for other trips which often are closer and so more feasible.
However, after looking at the results of the VRU survey, we see that 24% live within 2 miles (bikeable distance) of work, and 6.6% live within a quarter-mile (walkable distance) of work. Additionally, 36% could bike to transit stops (VRU, pp. 6-7). Why not outright encourage those within walking, biking, or public transit + active transportation distance to get to work through these non vehicle dependent methods? This could be a simple copy change and addition to the recommendations in Chapter 3.
Extending Shoulders is Not a Good Strategy for Improving Active Transportation
Let me be clear. Extending shoulders is a good thing to do on state highways. I do not doubt that adding wide shoulders to the rural highways which currently have no shoulder improves safety and comfort on those corridors - for motor vehicles.
My problem with extending shoulders as a suggestion for active transportation lies in the data produced by the VRU survey.
In Table 1, 68% of respondents said they felt Uncomfortable or Very Uncomfortable bicycling on “rural roads”, with an image depicting a paved two-lane road with no shoulder or curb cuts and a cyclist hugging the white line but still decidedly in the roadway (VRU, p. 7). The roadways matching this image are almost exclusively state highways or county roads and have posted speed limits between 45 and 65 miles per hour. As the statistics around vehicle speed show, being struck by a vehicle driving these speeds will almost certainly result in serious injury or death (ATP, p. 13). Only 13% of respondents said they felt Comfortable or Very Comfortable riding in these roadways (VRU, p. 7).
Also in Table 1, 51% of respondents said they felt Uncomfortable or Very Uncomfortable riding on “Bikeable road shoulders”, with an image depicting a person on a bicycle riding in the center of an approximately six-foot shoulder adjacent to a two-lane roadway. 25% responded they felt Comfortable or Very Comfortable riding in this facility (VRU, p. 6).
This figure surprised me. I expected a much larger increase in comfort level in this upgrade of bicycling conditions, especially given the emphasis on extended shoulders as a strategy in the ATP. Why might there still be so many holdouts from riding on extended shoulders?
I’d prefer to use data to back up my conjecture; however, an opportunity in the VRU assessment survey was missed. A question on “what bicycle facilities do you frequently use” could have given us insight into where people actually go. 25% of respondents said they’d feel comfortable riding on the shoulder - but how many actually ride on the shoulder of a highway frequently?
Since the data wasn’t collected, anecdotal evidence is the best tool I have to attempt to explain the still-low comfort levels riding on a widened shoulder. I have a relative who has bicycled cross-country twice, once from coast-to-coast and once from Oklahoma to Canada. What they explained to me was that they often felt more comfortable in the roadway (riding on the white line or just inside) even when there were widened shoulders, because drivers would be more respectful. Since the possibility of striking a cyclist was more likely and the drivers wanted to avoid that happening, they would slow down and move over, sometimes completely to the other lane. However, if they rode on the shoulder, drivers felt more comfortable and would rarely slow down or move over.
An important thing to emphasize about this anecdote is that this bicyclist was cycling for recreation, not for function or necessity. The most important users of active transportation, and therefore the demographic that should be given most consideration during evaluation and planning, are those who do not have a good alternative. I have only seen people walking along highways, with shoulders or without, when they have no other way to get to their destination.
Another issue for those bicycling in the shoulder is that debris from the road often ends up on the shoulder. This could be pieces of tire, metal, glass, dead animals, or even construction materials, all of which could cause a person on a bicycle to crash or suffer a tire puncture. The roadways are often mostly debris-free because motor traffic knocks it to the shoulder; but the shoulders rarely get swept and it collects there with no motor traffic. The shoulder is meant for unexpected circumstances for car owners. Recreational cyclists use them at their own peril.
Rural highways and high-speed roadways are built to move lots of cars between towns quickly. Active transportation for functional trips should only mix with this type of roadway when there is no alternative; therefore extending shoulders, while a perfectly good and acceptable project for ODOT to focus on, should not be emphasized as a strategy for improving active transportation.
Transit as a Strategy to Improve Active Transportation
There is a way to facilitate active transportation in and between towns safely and equitably which (un?)surprisingly did not make a grand appearance in the ATP, and that is public transit.
You may be thinking, “well of course public transit wasn’t highlighted as a strategy, it’s not active!” This is true at face value, but the two are interconnected. Public transit widens the area of potential destinations for active transportation users. Wider adoption of public transit over driving also reduces vehicles on the road, making active transportation conditions safer and more comfortable. Furthermore, if executed correctly, public transit can bring equity to disabled users, the lowest income demographic, and other often underrepresented groups, while also encouraging ridership among users who have the option to drive.
Active transportation improvements in other areas can also improve public transit adoption. The biggest problems faced by public transit are speed/frequency of routes and the last-mile problem. The last-mile problem is essentially the question of “once I’ve completed my bus/train trip, how do I get where I want to go?” Making the locations served by public transit more walkable and bike-friendly improves the comfort level and convenience that transit users experience once they de-board the transit service. In addition, fewer vehicles on the road thanks to increased transit and active transportation use will help prevent buses getting stuck in traffic.
Part of the reason I was surprised at the lack of mention of public transit in the ATP is that it seemed to be considered when creating the VRU survey. Bus stops were included when asking respondents “Do you live within [walking/biking distance] of any of the following” and “what places are most important to be able to reach using active transportation.” 34.6% responded they lived close enough to bike to a bus stop (VRU, p. 6), 23% responded they lived close enough to walk to a bus stop (VRU, p. 5), and 11.6% responded it was an important destination (VRU, p. 6). So why wasn’t public transit mentioned in any of the recommendations in the ATP?
I don’t expect ODOT to outline a detailed way public transit should be used to improve active transportation. Even for (non-car) travel between towns these public services are largely handled by partners, as noted in the ATP. But most of the groups in charge of implementing active transportation and/or public transit in Oklahoma will be looking at state guidelines and the ATP for how to get started. A simple way for ODOT to highlight public transit as a tool for active transportation adoption would be to include public transit consideration as a listed recommendation in Chapter 3.
I don’t mean to rag on ODOT for the ways the ATP is lacking. It honestly is a good starting document for active transportation adoption. Due to time, I could not fully outline other excellent aspects of the plan, especially the takeaways condensed from the large amount of online workshop suggestions. And the recommendation to update the existing design guides and policies to embrace and protect active transportation. Also, local governments should take special note of the resources for fundraising outlined in Chapter 4. Okay, seriously, I could write several more articles outlining the positives in the plan.
My parting thought for the future is this: ODOT, for the sake of all the Vulnerable Road Users in Oklahoma, please be bold in the next iteration of the ATP. Look to countries who have been approaching Total Zero Deaths for decades for inspiration. Consider that “realistic” depends on the timeframe. Major changes to the way we approach transportation today, adopted over decades as facilities need updating, will create massive improvements in quality of life for active transportation users of the next two generations.
Works Cited:
Active Transportation Plan (ATP) and Vulnerable Road User Safety Assessment (VRU), Combined Document