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Conversations about Creating a Culture of Activity: Profiling the people, places, programs, and policies that help to promote a culture of activity within our communities.
Note: This transcript was exported from the video version of this episode, and it has not been copyedited
00:00:00:04 - 00:00:04:01
John Simmerman
Beth Osborne, welcome back to the Active Towns Channel.
00:00:04:04 - 00:00:06:20
Beth Osborne
Thanks for having me back.
00:00:06:22 - 00:00:14:06
John Simmerman
Beth, I love giving my guests just a quick opportunity to introduce themselves. So who the heck is Beth Osborne?
00:00:14:08 - 00:00:52:20
Beth Osborne
I am currently the president and CEO of a national nonprofit called Smart Growth America. We are focused on the built environment, so transportation, housing, land use, economic development, brownfields. And the goal is to bring all of those areas of investment, of human investment into communities, to create places that are healthy, prosperous and resilient. A lot of times, those different programs operate in silos, and we like to see things broadly and how those different programs and investment types interact.
00:00:52:22 - 00:01:16:25
Beth Osborne
Our goal is to make them work together for better results, and we tend to focus our work on supporting local and state governments, civic leaders and advocates who are aligned with our mission. We dig in with them and figure out what's standing in their way. We do a lot of research into what is and isn't working across the country.
00:01:16:25 - 00:01:34:24
Beth Osborne
And from that research and that technical assistance, we develop ideas for how things can be better through policy change, legislative, regulatory and sometimes just things like training and tools and information.
00:01:34:26 - 00:01:46:24
John Simmerman
Fantastic. I love that, I love that, and we've got the landing page for the Smart Growth America website right here cued up and ready to go. I love technology when it actually works.
00:01:46:26 - 00:02:09:07
Beth Osborne
Fantastic. And this is our relatively new website. It went live last fall, so it's still pretty new. And we try to be helpful in in defining smart growth for people, which is what people come to our website most for, but then also define what we do and and how we further that mission.
00:02:09:09 - 00:02:40:13
John Simmerman
Fantastic, fantastic. Now we do have people tuning in from all over the world. I just see that we have Jeff James tuning in from Germany. So good evening to all of you over there in the Central European Time zone. Is so wonderful to have you here now. Last time we had you on Beth, you had a slightly different role because something happened and something changed in the interim between when we when we recorded that, that episode and now.
00:02:40:15 - 00:02:45:18
John Simmerman
So talk a little bit about what happened for you career wise.
00:02:45:20 - 00:03:12:06
Beth Osborne
Yeah. Last time we talked, I was the lead of the transportation team, which makes up about half of the organization. And I you know, while anyone who works at Smart Growth America has to work across all the parts of the built environment, the whole point is to work for changes in transportation that are better oriented towards the interaction between transportation and land use and housing.
00:03:12:07 - 00:03:39:21
Beth Osborne
It's still a transportation focus, and I was offered the position of president and CEO of the entire Smart Growth America enterprise. It was made permanent last, I believe, October, about the time this website went live. And and so now I get to to work across all the programs on a regular basis. And I've been really digging into our work on housing affordability.
00:03:39:28 - 00:04:10:14
Beth Osborne
We work very closely with the welcoming neighbors and movements, though our focus is not just on addressing supply but of housing, but making sure that that supply is of the type, place and price that is needed. So it's not enough to just build any housing anywhere. We need to build the type of housing that is in the the lowest supply, which is usually missing middle, and it needs to be in those communities that are in the most demand.
00:04:10:16 - 00:04:41:15
Beth Osborne
There seems to be a belief that if you put housing on the fringes, that it might marginally support what people need, but that's the time for marginal improvements is long gone. We need to really stand and and update the the regulations and the land use code so that the housing can go where it is most needed and we can't build, you know, any old townhouse, it can't be a $2 million townhouse when the affordability crisis is hitting people just starting out.
00:04:41:15 - 00:04:54:12
Beth Osborne
We have to focus on the price as well. So that's been really fun for me. And to look at the fact that transportation is usually the biggest barrier to housing supply because of parking minimums and level of service standards.
00:04:54:19 - 00:05:07:13
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, we'll probably touch upon all of those wonderful topics. But I do want to say, you know, congratulations. Smart growth America turns 25. Was that just this year turning 25 this year?
00:05:07:15 - 00:05:08:16
Beth Osborne
It was last year.
00:05:08:18 - 00:05:08:26
John Simmerman
It was.
00:05:08:26 - 00:05:37:12
Beth Osborne
Last year. Celebrated it in January. And it was incredible. We had a huge crew of former staffers come back to celebrate with us, took a picture of, you know, a good 25, 30 people, all who have gone on to really interesting posts. Some have gone on to run dots, some have gone to work in in cities. And it was just really, really exciting to see everyone.
00:05:37:12 - 00:05:47:21
Beth Osborne
It was the only downside is much like a reunion or a wedding, you just you get to say hi to a lot of people, but you don't really get to talk to everyone. And, you know.
00:05:47:27 - 00:05:48:08
John Simmerman
Right.
00:05:48:09 - 00:05:51:04
Beth Osborne
Just there's only so much time. And we had 200 people there.
00:05:51:04 - 00:06:27:07
John Simmerman
So I love it, I love it. So you and I just saw each other. I mean, it's we were able to finally meet in person in Fayetteville, Arkansas, for the Strong Towns national gathering. You had an opportunity to sit down a sort of like a relaxed chat with with Chuck, my good friend Chuck Moran, the founder of Strong Towns and and you guys sort of previewed a little bit of the Dangerous by Design report, but you also talked a little bit deeper about the same topic he and I live streamed about.
00:06:27:09 - 00:06:57:16
John Simmerman
I think it was in March about their initiative of Mission Accomplished. We need to stop continuing the status quo of building more highway lane miles. The mission accomplished aspect of that is that we're done. We did. We built out the interstate highway system enough already. We need to deal with that. You all had a wonderful conversation, but we didn't get a chance to actually take questions from the audience.
00:06:57:16 - 00:07:22:04
John Simmerman
So I, I don't know, maybe you got a question. Yeah. Now I have you trapped. Were there any were there any interesting discussions or questions that came up after your presentation about that concept of, yeah, we got to change what we're doing because as we'll discuss when we get into the the details of the report, what we are doing is not working.
00:07:22:04 - 00:07:29:00
John Simmerman
It's literally killing people and economies and communities. Yeah.
00:07:29:02 - 00:07:54:13
Beth Osborne
It's incredible. We're we're really not getting anything that that our political leaders promise us out of our national surface transportation program. Frankly, I extend that to most state programs. The states really run the national program, and then they run their own programs. So they are the emperors of surface transportation, and they are producing a truly piss poor result.
00:07:54:13 - 00:08:31:06
Beth Osborne
And I think one of the reasons that's poorly understood is because they also have a budgetary protection in that they don't have to come in hand every year and ask for money. And that's one of the biggest things that I want to see changed. I don't want them to have a trust fund anymore. I would rather see them have to come before the elected leaders and their constituents, at least every other year, and explain what they've done with the money that they've gotten so far, and why they are deserving of any more funding.
00:08:31:08 - 00:09:02:03
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. The issue or the problem that came to mind as I was listening to you and Chuck talk in that auditorium there in, in Fayetteville, is this there's so much built up in terms of as Peter Norton frames it motored them of to keep things going the way they are. They are because there's so much money to be made.
00:09:02:06 - 00:09:20:07
John Simmerman
I have a hard time understanding or believing that it's going to be easy. Nothing's ever easy. But I mean, is it even possible to change the status quo when so much is baked in to keep it, keep that momentum rolling?
00:09:20:12 - 00:09:52:26
Beth Osborne
It's a it's a good question. And I think it's an important question. And it can be it can make you feel defeated when you think about the power and the funding behind the status quo. While no changes made because the people who are doing well under the existing system voluntarily give up control, they are coming before the federal taxpayer and our elected representatives right now begging for an infusion of cash.
00:09:52:28 - 00:10:30:26
Beth Osborne
And you are never weaker as an interest group than when you're begging for cash. So it's it's a good moment to say, oh, you want more money, do you? Well, in exchange, these are the things we need. Unfortunately, at least in the house. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee members did not take advantage of that moment. They just gave money, their taxpayers money away, and they gave it away in the form of debt.
00:10:30:26 - 00:11:07:26
Beth Osborne
So they're really giving their taxpayers, children and grandchildren money away without asking for much. And interestingly, there are a lot of members of the committee, particularly on the Democratic side, who were complaining last year because there was a an enormous number of grants that had been taken away from their districts by the current administration that decided to target blue states and districts and take grant money away.
00:11:07:28 - 00:11:42:12
Beth Osborne
Those members did not even stand up and say, baseline, we get our grants back, and as soon as we get our grants back, we're happy to talk about right now, they just voted for more money to be used to abuse their districts. It is truly amazing and political malpractice. And to such an extent I would need for those members to explain to me as their constituent why they should stay, right?
00:11:42:13 - 00:11:44:00
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah.
00:11:44:01 - 00:12:20:06
Beth Osborne
So I mean, that is both frustrating. But again, there is an opportunity here we need to help those members of Congress recognize that they're not being robbed at gunpoint. They're being asked to invest. And as investors, just like all investors do, they can make demands. And actually a responsible investor would. So that's really the task at hand. I also think, and this was a conversation that came up after that panel with Chuck.
00:12:20:08 - 00:12:47:19
Beth Osborne
It. What is the role of the federal government at this point? And Strong Towns mission accomplished. Memo starts to talk about how they envision it. But after that conversation and a trip I took to Chicago a little over a week ago where this came up again, I just sat down and wrote out a long list of potentials. What?
00:12:47:19 - 00:13:20:26
Beth Osborne
What could it be right now? The purpose of or the role of the federal government in service transportation is revenue sharing with the states. That's really it. But it could be the maintenance of the interstates or national highway system. It could be ensuring that rail stays open, interstate commerce and competition, and inner city passenger rail service. It could be helping to fund major projects like gigantic bridge replacements that overwhelm state budgets, especially small states.
00:13:20:28 - 00:13:51:20
Beth Osborne
It could be maintaining a group of experts that could deploy to agencies to develop capacity to manage one of those megaprojects. We see this in transit agencies a lot. They're organized to operate transit, but not to build it. And so they really need to to get support at the beginning, because as soon as they develop the capacity, the project's done, and then they lay everybody off and they start from scratch the next time, it could be about cross state or regional planning, but we don't have regional governance in this country.
00:13:51:20 - 00:14:34:08
Beth Osborne
So the feds could come in to really support that kind of approach. It could be building out the next system, like transit across the country or intercity rail. It could be about addressing the damage caused by the existing system, like dividing communities and and shrinking infrastructure that's now overbuilt and too expensive to maintain. And I have two other ideas which are more technical, but it could be about data collection and sharing, particularly measuring things like how many jobs and essential services can people reach from their homes by all modes of travel, and developing more accurate tools to evaluate the existing system?
00:14:34:08 - 00:15:09:18
Beth Osborne
And when I say that, I think particularly about transportation models that are incredibly precise but generally totally wrong. So if we could get into that kind of conversation about why the feds, why a federal program, I think we could move in a really positive direction. But we haven't had that conversation really since the 50s. We sort of did it in 91 with iced tea when we proclaimed the interstate system completed, and then we spent three plus decades building more interstates, but we didn't replace it.
00:15:09:18 - 00:15:12:09
Beth Osborne
And we need to give ourselves a charge.
00:15:12:12 - 00:15:21:01
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. As I take a drink from my my iced coffee here, you just said iced tea. What's iced tea?
00:15:21:03 - 00:15:51:06
Beth Osborne
Ice tea. I apologize for defaulting to acronyms, but it was the first bill of what people generally consider to be the modern era of surface transportation. Bills and iced tea stands for. Oh, let me see if I can get it right. It is the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, I believe.
00:15:51:08 - 00:16:20:09
John Simmerman
Fun stuff, fun stuff. It was obvious that as I posed that question to you, you know about the federal dollars in the Highway Trust fund and and it's all interrelated and connected to the report dangerous by design. Because, again, the system that we are stuck with that has evolved over time is a system that is probably the most efficient to killing people.
00:16:20:12 - 00:17:10:06
John Simmerman
You know, it's just insane. And so one of the things that I think we have to, to understand to is how this whole system even works. So before we dive into the report, just say a few words about the money because the money matters. Yeah. We I mean, you said it earlier, the highway trust fund and you know, and this, this concept of well, it's out there this money the and we're sending the states are sending money to the feds and then it's, they're creating this additional fund and then they're sending it back to the states based on various formulas.
00:17:10:06 - 00:17:31:27
John Simmerman
Some states are net donors, some states are net receivers, et cetera, etc., etc.. But I think one of the most fascinating things about the money is that the average driver thinks that the taxes that they pay at the pump are paying for their roads. What's the truth?
00:17:32:00 - 00:18:06:01
Beth Osborne
So going back to the beginning, our current federal gas tax is 18.4 cents per gallon of gasoline. It's 24.4 cents per a gallon of diesel. Everyone pays a state gas. Sorry, a state gas tax on top of that. And in some places you might pay a local gas tax as well. So different levels of government raise funding from the gas tax in order to pay for their priorities and their program.
00:18:06:03 - 00:18:41:13
Beth Osborne
This was originally done at the federal level under the Eisenhower administration, because the goal was to build an interstate system, and you couldn't leave to the states doing something that that went beyond state borders. We really wanted the feds to come in and coordinate them, which is why I think that mission so important under federal budgetary rules, if you raise a certain amount of money through a user fee, which is what the gas and diesel taxes are, you get budgetary protection, which means in that annual budget cycle, you don't have to ask for money.
00:18:41:19 - 00:19:08:24
Beth Osborne
You can guarantee the funding over a longer period of time. The feds generally do five years. Sometimes it's been six, sometimes it's been two. But generally it's five years at a time. And back when I started, there were issues about donor states and donee states. Now, first off, I want to make clear the feds raise money from people not from the states.
00:19:08:26 - 00:19:50:21
Beth Osborne
They do reside in the States, except for in Washington, D.C. that doesn't have any states. We're not a state. We have taxation without representation in Washington DC, just like King George loved. But for the rest of the country, the feds are going into basically the collecting the funding from you as a purchaser of gasoline. So when I started, there were some states whose residents spent more on gasoline than others, and they put more money into the federal program than they got back, and others got back more than they put in.
00:19:50:22 - 00:20:21:20
Beth Osborne
That's the donor and the donee. There have been no donor states for many years now, because the federal gas tax has not come close to covering the cost of the program since 2009. And yet they're getting the budgetary protections and the lack of oversight and claiming that the user should be the beneficiary of all the spending, even though they're taking general funds and they have been for nearly 20 years.
00:20:21:22 - 00:20:46:03
Beth Osborne
So it is very interesting to me that whether they pay their way or not, they seem to get all the benefits of paying their way. Right? Yeah. So that's that's the overall approach. And then the money goes back to states according to a formula that if you write it up, it has to do with your population and the amount of roadways you have and bridges and blah, blah, blah.
00:20:46:03 - 00:21:15:28
Beth Osborne
But in reality, in every reauthorization, reauthorization, the way we keep this bipartisan is by making sure that no member of the House or Senate has their funding cut. So they come up with a way for that formula to be make sure everyone gets more money. Sometimes they change the formula in a way where some states will get way more money than other states.
00:21:15:28 - 00:21:22:06
Beth Osborne
But even the state that's getting the least, they're getting something more.
00:21:22:08 - 00:21:41:13
John Simmerman
It's amazing. It's amazing. Okay, with all that preamble, drumroll, please. Here we are. Dangerous by Design 2026. You all produce this report every two years. How many years has this been going on? How long is this? The iterations?
00:21:41:15 - 00:22:00:07
Beth Osborne
I think we started back in 2009. So we've been doing this a bunch. Eight of them, I think. I think there was one year that we might have missed, but then there was one year that we went early because after Covid, I really wanted to look at the 2020 numbers.
00:22:00:13 - 00:22:24:01
John Simmerman
Right, right. And I love this quote that you pulled out from April 2026 from Jonathan Morrison, the administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Yeah. Hey, American roads are safer. We're only killing just less than 40,000 people, which is down a.
00:22:24:01 - 00:22:27:15
John Simmerman
Little bit. Yeah. But yeah.
00:22:27:18 - 00:22:58:10
Beth Osborne
It's down a little bit from a record high. Yes. So the US has pioneered a way to be able to celebrate reductions in fatalities. First you hit a new record, then you forget that you hit the record and you celebrate coming back to the mean off of that record. So all you have to do is hit a new record every five years, and everyone freaks out for one year.
00:22:58:10 - 00:23:29:28
Beth Osborne
But then you spend four years celebrating, coming back down off of the record. Right? As a result of that kind of approach, if you just look at a straight line between, you know, 2009 and 2024, which is the data we were looking at for this report, there's a 72% increase in pedestrian fatalities. And yet we have people from the safety sector and from government celebrating coming down off of an even bigger high.
00:23:29:28 - 00:23:43:28
Beth Osborne
And yeah, if you if you look at that, that bump, if that bump weren't there and it was just a direct line from the year before that bump to where we are today, we would be we'd have nothing to celebrate.
00:23:44:00 - 00:23:47:02
John Simmerman
But yeah, if you did, if you did from 2019.
00:23:47:04 - 00:23:48:09
Beth Osborne
People real quick.
00:23:48:12 - 00:24:04:02
John Simmerman
Yeah, you did have to murder a lot of people real quick. Yeah. If you did a straight line from 2019 to the current year. Yeah, you've got a nice steep increase. I mean, if that were my stock, my stock account, I'd be, you know, brokerage account, I'd be pretty happy. This is yeah. You wouldn't.
00:24:04:02 - 00:24:27:06
Beth Osborne
Be saying, oh, my God, I lost money. You'd be saying, oh, I've been doing great. And just that attitude alone. And look, I certainly we want to be happy that we didn't stay at that unprecedented high, but we in this country just don't seem to get that we stand out in this.
00:24:27:07 - 00:24:27:16
John Simmerman
Right.
00:24:27:18 - 00:24:35:08
Beth Osborne
We are. We are the example of what nobody wants to be in the wealthy world.
00:24:35:10 - 00:24:48:06
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it that is so true. Here's here's a great comment here coming in. We can take a look at this. There we go.
00:24:48:08 - 00:24:49:10
John Simmerman
All right.
00:24:49:13 - 00:24:54:04
John Simmerman
I love it I love it. Yes. Being creative with our numbers. Yes.
00:24:54:06 - 00:25:01:26
Beth Osborne
Exactly a second. I think you might there might be a little misogyny there.
00:25:01:28 - 00:25:05:03
John Simmerman
No no no. Well what's interesting what's interesting.
00:25:05:06 - 00:25:06:10
Beth Osborne
Is the women do win.
00:25:06:12 - 00:25:28:09
John Simmerman
Yes. Yes they do. What we are really looking at here to is if we put it in a truly historical context of the old, in years, we used to have about 50,000 fatalities per year. Was that back in the 50s or 60s.
00:25:28:12 - 00:26:02:04
Beth Osborne
It bridged over. We we actually saw great numbers in safety starting in the 70s because of safer vehicle design. We, you know, seatbelts were invented. We also. Airbags and I think airbags were the 90s, late 80s someplace around there. So you'll actually see, if you look at the fatalities over decades, you'll see where those improvements happen and fatalities come down a little bit.
00:26:02:06 - 00:26:39:24
Beth Osborne
You'll also see in the early 2000 during the Obama administration, when they put a rear view cameras on cars, as well as new roof crush standards and things like that. And before that, there were side crush and front crush standards that made cars take the brunt of of crashes. That fatalities went down. But we have seen some reversion in terms of safety, because the goal of the OEMs is to make cars look scary, not to make them safe.
00:26:39:24 - 00:27:02:14
Beth Osborne
So we we build the front to be big and terrifying, like, you know, like teeth. And so drivers actually can't see the road and they can't see people my height in front of their car. So what often. Not that I'm that tall, but I am a full grown human. I am 5.2 and they can't see me at all in front of it.
00:27:02:14 - 00:27:30:26
Beth Osborne
And so you run into these problems where the OEMs are saying things like, we need to put cameras on the front of cars so people can see the road in front of them, rather than saying, well, maybe we should change the slope of the hood so that it is possible to see, to see what is in front of you, that leave it to American OEMs to say what we need is to have people take their eyes off the road even more, to look at a camera, to be able to see the road.
00:27:30:26 - 00:27:59:03
Beth Osborne
And then if you add to that, the fact that we have been trying as a country to widen and speed up our roads and bring interstate standards into our cities and, and interstate speeds into our cities on surface roads, you can see how those bigger cars going way faster with drivers that can't see the road in front of them, can't at the speeds they're going.
00:27:59:04 - 00:28:28:21
Beth Osborne
They really can't see everything around them in a peripheral vision, so they can't anticipate a potential conflict. Would, you know, get involved in many, many more deadly crashes. So it's just it's fascinating to see how we developed a purpose, which was to build interstate so people could go long distances at high speed. We knew then that you would never do that on a surface road, because that would be incredibly dangerous.
00:28:28:21 - 00:28:49:01
Beth Osborne
And if you drove at high speed on a surface road, there are too many conflicts and people would crash and die. So we built the interstates and we built limited access highways. And then because the purpose of the program is just to build more of that, we took those standards and applied it back to the surface roads, which we knew in the 40s and 50s would be a crazy, terrible, dangerous idea.
00:28:49:06 - 00:28:51:08
John Simmerman
Right? Right. Yeah.
00:28:51:09 - 00:28:53:25
Beth Osborne
And now we can't seem to figure out what the problem is.
00:28:53:27 - 00:29:15:25
John Simmerman
Yeah. When we look at the total change in road deaths by country and we look at the ten year period, and again, all the data that we're talking about right now has been processed from up through 2024. Yes, I know it's 2026 right now, but that's what how long it takes to be able to get to the data.
00:29:15:26 - 00:29:16:08
John Simmerman
Correct.
00:29:16:09 - 00:29:35:09
Beth Osborne
I will say I wish they would talk about ways to speed this up. It didn't used to take this long. We used to get it in October of the year before. So if you were looking at 2024 data, you would get it in like September or October of 2025. This is now gone all the way to April of the next year.
00:29:35:09 - 00:29:54:07
Beth Osborne
And I have been asking the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for years why? And I cannot get a good answer, but I think that's another thing Congress should be asking, because that is that is a ridiculous time period. And if we're really going to address these problems, we should know what's going on in less than 18 months.
00:29:54:10 - 00:30:33:18
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. Again, looking at the global percent change that we're seeing here and fun with numbers, we'll talk a little bit about the, you know, persistent and what's the word I'm looking for. It's it's ludicrous the way that the United States looks at fatalities and crash rates is by miles driven. And so we should address that. But let's talk first about this, which is the change in road deaths by country in this decade period.
00:30:33:20 - 00:30:34:15
John Simmerman
Yeah.
00:30:34:18 - 00:30:57:09
Beth Osborne
Yeah. I mean, as you can see here, a lot of countries have made a lot of advancement. And the US was moving with its European cohort into the 90s, and that's where we split off. That's actually not when the cars blew up in size, but that is when we started to bring interstate speeds onto our surface roads and and keep trying to expand and expand and expand them.
00:30:57:09 - 00:31:18:25
Beth Osborne
So no matter how many cars are on the road, they can go at top speed. And I think even more, we really started putting people's homes further and further away from the things that they needed. So instead of bringing the things they needed closer to where they are, we said, we'll let you drive faster or we'll let you feel like you might be able to drive faster.
00:31:18:25 - 00:31:49:07
Beth Osborne
As a consolation for not for having land use laws that don't allow you to have a grocery close to where you live. And and this has led us to split off from, you know, other wealthy nations in terms of making those advancements. And especially when you look at things like Vision Zero, where you look at other nation safety plans and they say they expect people to make mistakes, so they try to design the roads in a way that makes behaving the in a in a safe way the easiest thing to do.
00:31:49:07 - 00:32:19:09
Beth Osborne
In the US, we don't. We make the safe thing actually a little bit dangerous. If you go the the marked speed, sometimes you're going to have people racing around you because the design speed of our roadways is often something totally different and much faster. So that sounds technical, but anyone who has ever driven in the United States of America is aware of what that is.
00:32:19:09 - 00:32:45:24
Beth Osborne
When the design speed of the road, the road. It's the speed it's designed to support and the posted speed are different. We call that a speed trap, right? And that's how we treat safety in this country. We we try to catch you in a trap where we can take more of your money, you know, blaming you for going the speed we designed the road for, which is what it's screaming at you while you're driving.
00:32:46:00 - 00:32:49:12
Beth Osborne
Even though.
00:32:49:14 - 00:33:07:27
Beth Osborne
Yes, you do have posted speeds, but we just don't see that. But every half mile or mile. So between those signs, you're just doing what the the built environment is telling you to do through its design. And then even though you paid for that design, you will also pay a penalty for actually following it.
00:33:07:28 - 00:33:18:20
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And comment here from Jeff James again. And not to forget the victims of life changing injuries. Yes.
00:33:18:24 - 00:33:46:25
Beth Osborne
Yeah. And you know I'm so glad you raised that because we bring up injuries here. But we focus more on fatalities. And the injuries are multiple times bigger. And they can be they can be truly life changing. It could mean that you have mobility restrictions for the rest of your life. I know someone who is in a car wreck, who suffered a major concussion and was never able to work full time again.
00:33:46:26 - 00:34:16:15
Beth Osborne
I mean, these things are are really catastrophic and we almost don't get to them. And in fact, these sorts of crashes with pedestrians are one of the main reasons for E.R. visits. So they're loading up our ears. They are, you know, permanently changing people's lives. And that's beyond the fatalities, which are bad enough.
00:34:16:18 - 00:34:32:02
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. This report, again, is primarily focused in on the casualties from a pedestrian perspective, who is a pedestrian in this report.
00:34:32:04 - 00:34:52:03
Beth Osborne
And it's a very good question. It's really somebody who is either operating there. They're moving around by walking or by rolling. So if you are in a wheelchair for example, that would we would still count you as a pedestrian.
00:34:52:09 - 00:34:52:20
John Simmerman
Okay.
00:34:52:21 - 00:35:12:27
Beth Osborne
Very good. But I will say that it can be hard to get those data. We've really struggled. Wheelchairs have been put in a bucket with people who are on scooters and things. So we would like to have better data to be able to separate those who are mobility impaired out from those who are riding scooters.
00:35:13:00 - 00:35:50:12
John Simmerman
Right? Right. And the speed or safety theme comes up again and again and again. You know, it came up in in Chuck Maroons book confessions of a Recovering Engineer, of what the public says is their values and their priorities. And then what the motor dumb and the road builders feel like in the traffic engineers feel like the priorities are talk a little bit about this, this balance between speed and safety.
00:35:50:14 - 00:36:22:16
Beth Osborne
Yeah. The a lot of the rest of the world has recognized that in areas that are full of conflicts. So in the middle of cities, towns, villages where you have street parking, you have driveways, you have cross streets, you have crosswalks. Those are all points of of conflict. And when you have tons of potential conflict, you have to slow down traffic so that the driver or a pedestrian, anyone, has the chance to see where a potential conflict is going to be and avoid it.
00:36:22:16 - 00:36:48:07
Beth Osborne
If you are in a car, and especially if you're in a big and very heavy car, which the US is full of, and they're getting heavier as they're electrified, we need to understand that you need you need to be able to see that potential conflict way sooner. But the faster you're going, the less capacity you have to see things far out because your field of vision narrows as you go faster.
00:36:48:08 - 00:37:17:13
Beth Osborne
So it's just physics that's, you know, lining up against you. Basic Newtonian physics. By the time you see the potential conflict and you slam on the brake, you don't have time to stop in order to avoid avoid a serious injury or fatality. So speed is the point where where we design a roadway for safety or not. And again, back in the 40s and 50s, we knew we can't have high speeds in cities.
00:37:17:13 - 00:37:40:04
Beth Osborne
If we did that, a whole lot of people would die and then we just forgot it. And that's a lot of what you see in other countries where if they want to speed up traffic, they separate on coming traffic, they manage people entering that roadway and exiting that roadway. They don't allow vulnerable users, they don't allow development along the side of that roadway.
00:37:40:04 - 00:38:13:02
Beth Osborne
They do a lot to simplify the roadway. So going at high speed can be safe in our country. And as Chuck says, you know, in strong towns, we like to do a hybrid of the street. In the road, something is supposed to be locally serving and something that's supposed to be a regional through Thruway. And he calls it a strode, and he often refers to it as being about as effective as, you know, AA0 my God, why can't I not think of it?
00:38:13:02 - 00:38:14:21
John Simmerman
The a futon. Yes.
00:38:14:24 - 00:38:15:07
John Simmerman
Futon.
00:38:15:08 - 00:38:24:08
Beth Osborne
Yes, yes, it's a terrible bed and it's a terrible sofa, but it's trying to be both. And that's what American roads are. They're terrible streets and they're terrible roads.
00:38:24:09 - 00:39:05:21
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, yeah. When we look at this, this kind of visual that we have here of these most dangerous streets that we have, they are these strobes. They are these environments where we're mixing speed and a squishy, soft people. So from a pedestrian perspective, from a person in a wheelchair, from a person on a mobility device. And by the way, is there anybody who's crunching this data the way you all are in, in terms of in, in the United States for people on bikes?
00:39:05:24 - 00:39:25:25
Beth Osborne
Yeah, I think the bike League does a version of this with, with bicyclists as well. I, I thought we it might be good to put them together. But frankly there's so much already in this report, I'm afraid that if we put even more in it, it would just get more more confusing. And I don't want it to turn into a treatise.
00:39:25:27 - 00:39:35:06
Beth Osborne
I want it to have a pretty clear message. But in terms of railway safety, we have so much that we need to talk about that we have room for many, many reports.
00:39:35:12 - 00:40:04:03
John Simmerman
Yeah. And going back to the data collection too, and Wes Marshall and I talked about this is that he covers this in his book Killed by. Killed by a traffic engineer, that the data collection is so bad. And so it's exploring the data but bad data in bad. Yeah. When you have limited data, it's and it's also, you know, it's a function.
00:40:04:03 - 00:40:31:19
John Simmerman
And he talks about it brilliantly. So folks, if you haven't read that book, be sure to do so or pop on over and watch my recording of two different live streams with Wes Marshall about that book. But yeah, so exploring the data and diving into the deadliest places in America, I have a sense that we're going to see a common theme here of even more strokes.
00:40:31:21 - 00:41:04:08
Beth Osborne
Yeah. And that is, look, it's where the majority of traffic is, but it's also where the majority of fatalities are. And and it's because that's where we put speed and conflict together. And then we're always shocked at the result. And you'll you'll go on to NHTSA web page or any state safety page. And a lot of times they'll have guidance like the responsibility of pedestrians and the responsibility of drivers.
00:41:04:08 - 00:41:33:06
Beth Osborne
But at no point do they say what the responsibility of the roadway engineer is or the owner of the roadway. And I think this is what differentiates us from a lot of our peer nations, those governments, when taking money from their constituents, do think about what they owe back to their constituents. We do not. We just blame them for bad behavior.
00:41:33:07 - 00:42:03:26
Beth Osborne
So you'll see things like a American safety officers will often say that distracted driving is a big problem. It is. It is a big problem. But it turns out that the United States of America is not the only place with smartphones. They actually have smartphones. What other? I know, John, can you believe so? Why is it that it's not causing the same problem elsewhere?
00:42:03:28 - 00:42:27:24
Beth Osborne
And the reason is we are adding distraction to our cars here, and other countries aren't allowing it. But it's also true that, you know, Europeans are flawed drivers as well, but it's safer to be a flawed driver at 20mph than it is at 50mph. And I hear, well, what about drunk driving? It's a huge issue in the United States.
00:42:27:25 - 00:43:02:27
Beth Osborne
As if, again, we're the only people who have alcohol. I can speak with great certainty that they have excellent alcohol in Germany and France and and Spain and I mean, all over the world, and yet they don't have the same level of problems with drunk driving. Now, one thing I would point out, in many of those countries, there's a safe way to get home from the bar without getting behind the wheel, and we zone our communities to make that very difficult.
00:43:02:27 - 00:43:24:08
Beth Osborne
But we also build our roads, so the notion of walking home would be very scary. And if you walk home after drinking, will blame you for that too, because you shouldn't be. You can't drive drunk, you can't walk drunk, you can't. You know you can't. It's your fault for drinking. So there's a little bit of purity left in the United States.
00:43:24:10 - 00:44:00:27
Beth Osborne
And so while I know the United States is not like other countries, we do have unique issues and particularly our development patterns, which are inefficient, scattered, and expensive. We we can learn something which is humans across the world with access to alcohol and distraction can be less deadly if we design our roadways to be a little bit safer, which a creates slower speeds, but B makes it so much easier for the driver to see where someone might be crossing the road lights.
00:44:00:27 - 00:44:25:19
Beth Osborne
That crossing well creates infrastructure for people who are walking that is intentional and not like we do in this country, which is, you know, being forced into it. And you can see it in some of our rules. Like, first, a certain number of people have to try to cross illegally someplace before we'll build a legal crossing for them.
00:44:25:19 - 00:44:37:06
Beth Osborne
And if a bunch of people get hit while making the case for a crossing to be put in, it's their fault. But if they don't do it, we'll never give them a legal crossing either, right?
00:44:37:07 - 00:45:11:24
John Simmerman
Right. Let's let me ask you this one question. Then we'll go back to the data in the States and all that and popping over here to this 6% decrease that we saw, you know, from 2022 to 2024. Whenever I see a decrease like that, without putting it into context of and don't hate me for this, but it goes back to this concept of how we were looking at injuries and crashes per mile.
00:45:11:26 - 00:45:19:12
John Simmerman
The one thing that I do think of is, is that a reflection that we had fewer people walking.
00:45:19:14 - 00:45:42:24
Beth Osborne
So we this has been an issue that we've had from our very first report. And we used to have something called a pedestrian danger index, where we try because no one counts pedestrians in this country, which, you know, you count what you value. We don't value pedestrians, so we don't count them. In fairness, we don't actually have a really good reliable numbers on how much people are driving.
00:45:42:24 - 00:46:04:24
Beth Osborne
Those are if you dig under those numbers, they're generally junk as well. But we at one point use the walk to work data as our denominator to give a sense of how many people would be out walking. It's not a great number because it's self-reported, and walk to work is not the majority of trips. Work is not the majority of trips, period.
00:46:04:24 - 00:46:29:15
Beth Osborne
But people tend to walk to non-work destinations more than work with Covid. We couldn't even use that because people were going weren't going to work. So we started just dividing it by population. It's per capita now. Now, a lot of the safety data that people look at in this country, as Wes Marshall talks about and David Zipper has talked about a bunch, looks at you.
00:46:29:15 - 00:46:37:24
Beth Osborne
No fatalities per vehicle, miles traveled. So all you have to do to make things look safer is just have people to drive more.
00:46:37:25 - 00:46:39:03
John Simmerman
Drive more. Yeah.
00:46:39:04 - 00:47:05:26
Beth Osborne
And then you can kill more people, which is really twisted. And I think that's the reason you don't see that in other countries, because that is because it's twisted. But and I think it's a evidence of the fact that safety is not much of a priority in this country. It's really the US approach is, look, everyone's got to drive.
00:47:05:28 - 00:47:23:21
Beth Osborne
We've required by law that everything you need is going to be built really far away from where you live. So we need to let people drive fast to make it a little less inconvenient. Of course, by doing that, we've just clogged everything with traffic. But at least in off peak hours you can go real fast and that feels a little bit better.
00:47:23:21 - 00:47:38:02
Beth Osborne
So we want that to be that arrangement that is inherently unsafe and we won't touch it. We want to make that as safe as possible without giving up on any of those real priorities. And that's how you get to where we are as a country.
00:47:38:03 - 00:48:03:07
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And the reason I asked that and framed it the way that I did was I saw that Alice Ferguson, who was just on the podcast along with Tim Gill a month or so ago, just posted this out on LinkedIn. And and just to remind us that, yes, the child and pedestrian cycle deaths have decreased a lot in Great Britain, but so has the room to roam.
00:48:03:07 - 00:48:40:13
John Simmerman
Basically what we have done is we've cloistered our children and not allowed them outside of their own property, in their own driveway. One of the graphs that we looked at, or visuals that we looked at, was the range that a child had back at the turn of the century in like 1911 or something like that of the range was like a ten kilometer range, and now it's like 200m, if that some, some kids are literally being forced to stay and, you know, inside their house because anything outside their house is so dangerous.
00:48:40:14 - 00:49:04:22
John Simmerman
Again, dangerous by design. And so they're seeing the decline. Oh, this is great. This is wonderful. They plummeted. But really what's happened is we've lost. Yeah, exactly. We can. They've lost that. Yeah. Just lock them up. So that's the reason why I asked that the way that I did is, is just, you know, again, fun with data is what we're really seeing.
00:49:04:25 - 00:49:18:02
John Simmerman
The fact that okay, it's it's gone down a little bit in these two years. But is that just a reflection that okay, we're getting the message across. It's too dangerous out there. Stop walking. Stop rolling.
00:49:18:04 - 00:49:42:16
Beth Osborne
The reason the fatalities have come down is simply a reversion to the mean. We hit a record high, and we are slowly coming back down to a level that was more more normal, but still awful before Covid. And I don't think we can say anything more than that.
00:49:42:18 - 00:50:12:12
John Simmerman
Right? Yeah. All right. Let's get back to our data here. The 20 deadliest metros in the United States topping the list once again. Right. I think this is a return to this infamous area. Is this list is Memphis, Tennessee tough, tough place to be Albuquerque, New Mexico. And if we slide over and we look at the 20 deadliest states, New Mexico's are right there at the top two.
00:50:12:14 - 00:50:38:27
John Simmerman
Again, you had mentioned it earlier when you were talking about the number of fatalities associated with drunk driving, is that many of these other countries have alternatives that people can utilize. Take advantage of what I like to call what the Dutch have done such a wonderful job of is creating redundancies of mobility networks. So there's a safe way for people to walk.
00:50:38:28 - 00:50:58:18
John Simmerman
There's a safe way for people to bike. There's a safe way for people to use transit, not being forced into drive everywhere for everything, including the bar. But take it away. What stands out about these lists to you this time, this go around?
00:50:58:20 - 00:51:35:19
Beth Osborne
That's a good way to ask the question, because when I look at this compared back to Dangerous by Design, you know, 2009, for example, back then the the it was a very different top 20 list. The top ten was totally dominated by folks in Florida, many Floridian cities, which you still see ranking poorly here. And and sometimes, unfortunately, I see people celebrating the fact that they fallen in the ratings.
00:51:35:19 - 00:52:08:10
Beth Osborne
But, you know, for example, you see here that you see that Tampa has seen their fatalities go up and they fell in the list. And that's because little Rock and Fresno and Baton Rouge basically said, hold my beer. I can kill more people faster than you. And so, I mean, God, if you go back to 2009, every single one of these cities, even the the top most dangerous city, was so much safer.
00:52:08:10 - 00:52:33:00
Beth Osborne
It would have been, you know, down in the middle, down in the 50s compared to where they're ranked today. So it's just seeing those overall numbers go up and up and up that catches my attention. It's also seeing particularly Baton Rouge fly up the way it has. I mean, I, I went to school in Baton Rouge. I grew up in New Orleans, seeing New Orleans, tying at ninth with Riverside.
00:52:33:00 - 00:52:47:29
Beth Osborne
San Bernardino really catches my eye. And it's just it's it's so unfortunate to to see so many cities outdoing each other for, for this, you know.
00:52:48:01 - 00:52:57:29
John Simmerman
Of infamy. Yeah, exactly. Beth, what do we do? What do we do?
00:52:58:01 - 00:53:31:22
Beth Osborne
That's a good question. It is the right question. I think that there are two things we need to do. One is in practice and one is in in legislation and policy. So at the federal and state level, we should not be supporting this program. We would do better without spending ever more money to create these results. These we're spending more money to make more dangerous roads.
00:53:31:25 - 00:53:34:16
John Simmerman
So say that again. Say that again.
00:53:34:22 - 00:54:04:26
Beth Osborne
We're spending more money to build more dangerous roads. Why is that okay. And I think folks that recognize that need to be less afraid of just opposing the program, because being there as a good friend to say, okay, okay, yes, we'll spend more, but give me a little program that allows me to fix this. While a much, much, much bigger program is used to undermine everything we're doing.
00:54:04:27 - 00:54:26:28
Beth Osborne
It is not an effective way to fix this. I know that it's not effective because that is the strategy I have seen since I started working in this field in the mid 90s, and it hasn't worked yet, aren't I? That first graph you showed shows that it's the opposite of working. It's getting worse and worse and worse, and we're breaking records and killing more people.
00:54:26:28 - 00:54:41:10
Beth Osborne
So that's one we need to say. No more money and maybe we need to. Maybe we need to take a little break from this program and just stop spending money for a while and think about what we're doing.
00:54:41:13 - 00:54:52:24
John Simmerman
But wait a minute, wait a minute, Beth. You're saying take a little break, but remember, we've got this machine that's money hungry and once even more money.
00:54:52:26 - 00:55:02:24
Beth Osborne
Yeah. And right now they're asking for money. And that that is when the status quo is at its weakest. And I think we need to say no. Yeah. No, we're not getting time out.
00:55:02:26 - 00:55:09:24
John Simmerman
You guys. You guys. Yep. Go to your bedroom. Timeout.
00:55:09:26 - 00:55:30:16
Beth Osborne
Yeah. And just say, you know, either no more money. Maybe we go back to what we're raising in gas taxes for a while. Maybe we just take a full break, but we can get to more funding. But we need to have a conversation about what the obligation of the agencies that are spending that money is to the taxpayer.
00:55:30:16 - 00:56:03:08
Beth Osborne
And we. Until we do that, we should be willing to say no. The second thing is way more productive, and that is we need to help cities and states experiment more and try out different designs and get a better sense for how the way they design the road impacts behavior. And that is quick build safety demonstration projects. We have been doing this for the last about ten years and every time we do it, I love it more.
00:56:03:10 - 00:56:16:21
Beth Osborne
We come in with, you know, ten $15,000 for interventions with temporary materials. A lot of it's paint. Sometimes it's delineated or.
00:56:16:24 - 00:56:21:22
John Simmerman
Don't say the word, don't say, don't say flex posts delineate.
00:56:21:25 - 00:56:24:09
Beth Osborne
Flex posts. Absolutely. Yeah.
00:56:24:12 - 00:56:49:09
John Simmerman
But I'm glad you I'm glad you said or planters, you know something that if you know you've got a hot button issue, a concern that the people are revolting because flex posts are ugly, fine. Invest that money in something a little more beautiful. Plant some plant. Put some planters there. What we're really trying to do with these changes in dimensions is changing driver behavior.
00:56:49:12 - 00:57:01:07
John Simmerman
You can come back and be pretty and and pave and make that a rain garden in the future when you have the money to do so. But let's move quickly. That's the whole point of the quick build.
00:57:01:09 - 00:57:20:24
Beth Osborne
I also understand why people might not like flex posts, but in reality, flex posts are 100 times more beautiful than than crashes. So I think maybe we should put things in perspective just a little bit.
00:57:20:25 - 00:57:37:16
John Simmerman
It's really hard though. I'm noticing that the cities are just I'm watching like a Denver where they just they go apoplectic at and you're like, we're talking about lives here and you're talking about esthetics. But that's the reality. They are freaking out.
00:57:37:19 - 00:57:38:08
Beth Osborne
Yeah.
00:57:38:09 - 00:57:39:14
John Simmerman
I agree with you 100.
00:57:39:14 - 00:58:16:03
Beth Osborne
Percent complaining about the esthetic, because they know that it's embarrassing to complain about the change. And one of the reasons I like these demonstration projects, other than the fact that they are quick and cheap and you can go in like Chuck Marone often says, and make changes really quickly and prove that we could save lives tomorrow is it does engage the public on what they want that permanent change to be, and as opposed to an engineering sketch where we expect people to close their eyes and go into a virtual reality where they can explain how that design will change their lives.
00:58:16:08 - 00:58:40:26
Beth Osborne
This lets them touch and feel and experience it, and they can give real feedback to the engineers about what is working and what isn't. Sometimes they put in all of this infrastructure and they find out that they have an improved visibility. And so you can say, look, I know that you tried to extend this corner for me so that the cars could see me, but they still can't see me because of whatever is is the issue.
00:58:40:27 - 00:59:11:08
Beth Osborne
That is a great meaty conversation. Also, it allows people to experience change in a way that they control so that it isn't overwhelming. It is natural for humans not to like change that is built into our brains. It is the overreaction of the amygdala because historically, it changing environments where you're not familiar is where you're the most at risk for being hurt.
00:59:11:08 - 00:59:37:16
Beth Osborne
So we are hard wired to overreact, to change, and allowing people to play with it and test it. And there are some videos in there where you can go in and see what what really happened in the roadway, so that people can start to develop a vision of what that change could be and what they could gain, as well as what they might lose, is is very powerful.
00:59:37:16 - 01:00:03:07
Beth Osborne
They find out what they're losing is minimal. What they're gaining is extraordinary. And what it does for the state dots and the public works agencies is it allows them to see that they're rules that somehow lead them to believe that they can't slow traffic by narrowing a lane is untrue, or their rule that says that it's unsafe to narrow Elaine to ten feet is inaccurate.
01:00:03:07 - 01:00:31:26
Beth Osborne
That they did it, and it works out just fine. So I think it would be great to build in this kind of experimentation into every roadway design approach and, and teach dots to not rely on standards and beliefs that were written decades ago, but to to test it out today and and and believe the reality they see with their own eyes.
01:00:31:28 - 01:01:06:14
John Simmerman
Talk a little bit about the the control, the span of control that local governments, municipalities have given the context of how funding rolls down from the federal government to the states or the MPOs to the communities. When I look at quick build and being creative, I'm seeing a lot of cities rolling up their sleeves with very, very limited budgets and just being creative, getting stuff out there, sort of the Chuck Marone thing.
01:01:06:21 - 01:01:32:04
John Simmerman
What's the smallest little thing that you can do to to make the greatest impact, and not worrying about applying for these grants and getting these federal dollars? That may be a year or two years, three years in the making. We want to do what we can to change that system, to make that go faster, so that there's abilities to quickly implement that.
01:01:32:04 - 01:02:00:02
John Simmerman
But talk a little bit about that from a from an empowerment perspective. Can we give some cities some some hope that, hey, you can you can control this, you can do some of these quick builds and you know, and do it light or quick or cheaper now and then when you do get the driver behavior change, and when you do get the ability to go after serious money, then you can do the permanent design like I mentioned earlier.
01:02:00:02 - 01:02:03:25
John Simmerman
Then you can debate and put it in that rain garden and do these other things. Talk a little.
01:02:03:26 - 01:02:04:28
Beth Osborne
Bit about that.
01:02:05:01 - 01:02:33:25
Beth Osborne
And look, there are examples. We worked with a, a city in Washington state, a very small town, and they did their temporary project and found out that there was a drainage problem associated with their design, which they found out for $12,000 versus, you know, $1 million in going to the permanent project. So there's a lot of reasons to try things out before you do the big, permanent, expensive project.
01:02:33:25 - 01:03:00:21
Beth Osborne
I think one of the problems that cities and small towns face is their state is the funder, the overwhelming funder, and the overwhelming power in everything. Cities only exist because the states allow them to, and there is no direct funding from the feds for the most part, especially now since a lot of money has been taken away from the cities.
01:03:00:21 - 01:03:33:27
Beth Osborne
And it's even more challenging because in a lot of states, cities can't even raise money from their own constituents unless the states allow them to. So that relationship with the state is incredibly powerful, especially when you consider the fact that it's their roads that are the most unsafe. Now, what is the power? Well, a lot of times city roads cross state roads and you can redesign your roadway and you can show right next to the state road how your design produces better results.
01:03:33:28 - 01:03:54:16
Beth Osborne
A lot of city streets are wide too. They can be shrunk, and you can demonstrate right next to that state road that you don't get a lot of traffic back up. And in fact, a lot of times by slowing down traffic, you have less backup because you brought it down to a steadier, safer speed and you have safer results.
01:03:54:16 - 01:04:15:21
Beth Osborne
So there's a lot that cities can do with the streets that they own and manage. And again, like you said, with very little money, they could do it with a business improvement district. They could do it with local philanthropy. They could do it with a, you know, they could do a go fund me, for heaven's sakes. I mean, these are 10 to $20,000 projects.
01:04:15:25 - 01:04:19:20
Beth Osborne
You can you can do a lot with very little.
01:04:19:22 - 01:04:42:21
John Simmerman
One of the things that you just said there resonates in the sense that a big portion of this is what can we do to to lower the temperature, bring those speeds down to safer levels. We know that if we can bring motor vehicle speeds down to 20mph or less, we see far fewer serious injuries. We see far fewer fatalities.
01:04:42:24 - 01:05:24:21
John Simmerman
The point I try to make is that if you have vehicles that are traveling closer to 20mph or 30km/h. These are crashes that don't even happen because they can be avoided in the first place. And one of the things that I love, and we've talked about a lot on the channel here recently, is this concept of these neighborhood byways and bike boulevards and these quiet, low volume, low speed streets with some very, very inexpensive traffic diversions and modal filters that can be done, that can really open up an environment so that it's safer for people to walk and bike.
01:05:24:24 - 01:05:53:14
John Simmerman
In many communities, there are no sidewalks. And so the street itself is in fact a shared space environment and and becomes an example of, hey, this is one way where we can create mobility and make it even safer. And it seems to be more palatable even for the residents of those streets, because the last thing they want is speeding traffic in their neighborhood in front of their house.
01:05:53:14 - 01:06:31:26
John Simmerman
And so because they don't want rent running, they don't want cut through traffic and things of that nature. I want you to address a little bit of what you talked about with Chuck, though, about the Complete Streets movement, how it's evolved over the years. Chuck and I have both been critics of what we see as complete street disasters, where you have this templated approach of slapping in pedestrian facilities and bike lanes onto strobes, and then step back and say, gee, yeah, we have a complete streets now.
01:06:31:26 - 01:07:03:26
John Simmerman
We did it. And guess what? Nobody's walking or biking there because it's a miserable environment, because we didn't fundamentally change the most dangerous aspect of that street, which is the free, the goal of free flowing, high speed traffic. Talk a little bit about the announcement that you made with Chuck at the Strong Towns national gathering, of how you're tweaking and reevaluating, how you look at complete streets, and how you evaluate these complete streets policies.
01:07:03:26 - 01:07:24:21
John Simmerman
Because it was a success, people glommed onto it and cities went crazy about adopting policies, etc. but you point out the fact that we didn't see stuff actually happening on the ground that really changed behavior, increased the safety because we can see the data, the safety is not there. Go ahead.
01:07:24:22 - 01:07:25:27
Beth Osborne
Yeah, I think the thing.
01:07:25:27 - 01:07:38:14
Beth Osborne
That's really important to keep in mind is if you run a successful movement, everyone will try to take your terminology. Exactly what they do at first is they fight your terminology and they.
01:07:38:18 - 01:07:39:08
Beth Osborne
They like.
01:07:39:09 - 01:07:43:16
Beth Osborne
Smart growth. What are you saying? My growth's dumb, right?
01:07:43:19 - 01:07:44:00
Beth Osborne
Yeah.
01:07:44:01 - 01:07:45:12
Beth Osborne
Kind of.
01:07:45:14 - 01:07:45:27
John Simmerman
Yes.
01:07:45:28 - 01:08:06:15
Beth Osborne
A little bit. Well, you can't do that. That's a bad that's a bad way to go. And. And what? Complete streets. What are you saying? These streets are incomplete. Yes. Yeah, we kind of are. Well, you shouldn't be criticizing people. We should be building coalitions. You always run into that. So first people fight you and they. They tell you you're wrong and they tell you what you're trying to do is wrong and your goals are wrong.
01:08:06:15 - 01:08:29:02
Beth Osborne
And then when it becomes obvious that everybody disagrees with them, then they say, oh, I already have them. I'm already doing complete streets. I'm just doing them over here, and I'm calling what I want to do anyway, a complete street. That is what always, always happens. That is not a floor of the complete streets movement or the concept of a complete street.
01:08:29:02 - 01:08:49:10
Beth Osborne
And what I would like to do is pull us all together to because we're all limited resource organizations, and none of us have the capacity to evaluate every project out there. But if we all keep our eyes out, we can call people out and say, you don't get to use that term. You're a liar. That is not a complete street.
01:08:49:10 - 01:09:19:00
Beth Osborne
It's not the complete streets are wrong, is that people are lying. And so I don't want to turn our fighting in on each other. I want to keep the responsible parties in our sights. And that's the public works agencies and dots that think it's a complete street. If you just tag a three foot bike lane on the side of a 65 mile per hour road, and we should just look at them and say, shame on you.
01:09:19:02 - 01:09:42:14
Beth Osborne
I'm a little frustrated that instead people have looked at us and said, complete streets aren't a thing. That's the wrong reaction. So I will say that we continue to iterate and learn. And when we first started the movement, it started back in the around 2005. 2006 is when we came up with the term complete streets in the first place.
01:09:42:15 - 01:10:10:15
Beth Osborne
2004 and it replaced a term routine accommodation, which is super duper boring and and no one knew what you meant. And we then encouraged people to adopt policies saying, I am in favor of this, I'm going to do this. But then we realized they weren't doing it. So we started evaluating policies, looking for specific actions or commitments like timelines and performance measures and things like that.
01:10:10:15 - 01:10:31:09
Beth Osborne
And now we're going to go another step. We're going to right now we score all kinds of projects or all kinds of policies. But at this point if you score below a 70, we're going to say you can't even call it a complete streets policy. That's a fail. You know, that's that's a D or an F. And you just you failed the class.
01:10:31:09 - 01:11:01:16
Beth Osborne
So we're going to look at things like that. We're going to look at implementation. We're going to start to consider ways to score a project itself or a roadway itself. That's a lot of work. But we are going to learn and modernize and give people more tools on how to apply the Complete Streets concept, which is building a street with every user designed into the project, and make that easier to turn into implementation.
01:11:01:18 - 01:11:36:12
Beth Osborne
I will say, one of the big things we need to do for safety is point out to drivers that they are being hung out to dry. That our auto centric approach to transportation is anti driver. And the sooner people understand that you are one flat tire away from being a pedestrian and you know, an incredible danger, the sooner I think we can come together as all users of the roadway and and get to a better result.
01:11:36:14 - 01:12:02:00
John Simmerman
Yeah. Address sort of your position as an organization on that street that I just described of the low traffic, low speed, delightful side street that is traffic calmed and, you know, traffic diverted. Is there space of calling that a complete street if there's no dedicated infrastructure? I love people walking and biking. Yeah.
01:12:02:01 - 01:12:08:06
Beth Osborne
I love this question. Yes, we can have shared streets. You got them all over Europe. They're beautiful.
01:12:08:07 - 01:12:38:10
John Simmerman
Well, I like to say I like to say, Beth, that the Dutch Cycle Network is 60 to 70% some form of shared space, whether it's a feeds thought or an ETA, which is their local access streets. I mean, paved and brick and red asphalt sends a clear message to the driver that this is a 30km/h zone. It seems like we need to be embracing that much more seriously in our society of this is a slow speed zone, and it should be welcoming to everybody.
01:12:38:15 - 01:12:52:04
Beth Osborne
We also have to admit to the trade offs in this world, which is it's really frustrating that we don't do that. So you live in a community with no sidewalks? Well, I got news for you. That means the roadway is the sidewalk to.
01:12:52:06 - 01:12:52:26
John Simmerman
Exactly.
01:12:52:27 - 01:13:20:24
Beth Osborne
Yeah. If you don't like that, then put the sidewalks in. Here's a freakin trade off there. You don't get both. So I think we need to be much more honest about what you do. And you don't get with different types of approaches. And I think we need to be clear that you don't always need a dedicated bike lane or even a dedicated sidewalk for these very low volume, low speed roadways, so long as you shrink them down so that they are low speed roadways.
01:13:20:24 - 01:13:41:13
Beth Osborne
The problem you run into is when you have super wide, what turn into speedways with no sidewalk, and now the pedestrians are stuck in that space. But absolutely we can do it. And here in Washington DC, if you go down to the waterfront, we have a shared roadway. It's a ten mile per hour roadway, and it's for everybody.
01:13:41:15 - 01:13:49:12
Beth Osborne
And everyone just has to look at each other and communicate. And we humans can do that and we should be doing more of it.
01:13:49:14 - 01:14:14:24
John Simmerman
It's really interesting too, because when you think of it, this is just a matter of reframing our driver behavior out there on the streets and acknowledging the fact that we're all just trying to get to our meaningful destinations or going out for a walk to clear our head. We don't want to feel like we're putting our lives at risk.
01:14:14:25 - 01:14:38:14
John Simmerman
Dangerous by design 2026 Final Thoughts final pitches that you have for this report. Again, folks, you can go to Smart Growth America. You can click on the link for the Dangerous by Design. You can click on Read Report. And that will take you right to the report and you'll get the PDF here of it. Final thoughts before we say goodbye.
01:14:38:21 - 01:15:02:19
Beth Osborne
I just want everybody to remember that our government is taking our tax dollars and pointing the finger back at us and never, ever pointing the finger at them and their role in creating a safe system. And we need to call an end to that. Any government that does not take responsibility for the product they produce should not get our money in the first place.
01:15:02:19 - 01:15:28:18
Beth Osborne
And it's time for us to to state that we should demand results for all of the money they are spending, and it is an extraordinary amount of money. We can, we can and should expect more. And we we should not let them pit us against each other. There is no human who is always a driver. There are humans that drive sometimes and they walk sometimes.
01:15:28:19 - 01:15:55:20
Beth Osborne
There is no human who is always a pedestrian. So we need a system that works for us as we walk to our car or to transit while we're in that vehicle. And when we get off. And I think we can learn to demand more, I will say one more thing. Because of the time that it is right now, the US is one up, one nothing over Australia.
01:15:55:24 - 01:16:01:15
John Simmerman
Oh very good, very good. And this is live streaming. So this is real news, breaking news I hope we.
01:16:01:15 - 01:16:02:07
Beth Osborne
Didn't.
01:16:02:09 - 01:16:17:24
John Simmerman
Hope we didn't hope we didn't spoil anything for spoiler alert on that. Beth this has been so much fun. Live streaming with you Beth Osborne with Smart Growth America. Again, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns Channel.
01:16:18:01 - 01:16:23:20
Beth Osborne
It was so fun to meet you in person, and I hope we get to do this again sometime.
01:16:23:22 - 01:16:40:14
John Simmerman
Yeah, I hope so too. And hey, huge mahalo out to the entire audience tuning in today. I really do appreciate it. Again, if you have any comments or questions for us to address, put them in the comments section. We'll be sure to address them. And again.
01:16:40:16 - 01:16:56:14
Beth Osborne
I would love for people to share examples of real successes in their communities across across the world, not just in the US. It is time that the US learn from others and not think that we have to come up with everything on our own.
01:16:56:16 - 01:17:13:26
John Simmerman
Yeah, no, I hear you and learning from other countries. We've got the Netherlands in the house today. We've got Germany in the house tuning in today. Again. Mahalo to all of you for for tuning in. And again, thank you so much, Beth. This has been an absolute joy and pleasure.
01:17:13:28 - 01:17:18:13
John Simmerman
Yay! All right, let's hit the end button again. Thank you so much, everyone.
01:17:18:13 - 01:17:22:28
John Simmerman
Please come back and join us next week. We'll have more content. Aloha.