The San Francisco Department of Public Health conducted an HIA to predict how anticipated changes to land use and transportation would affect the number of vehicle-pedestrian injury collisions at intersections with traffic signals in San Francisco’s Central Corridor project area. The HIA used an existing model to identify several statistically significant collision predictors, including traffic and bus volumes, the number of streets joining at intersections, trees, employee and resident populations, bus stops, street slope, average household income, and single-resident-occupancy hotels. Further, the model estimated, based on the case study data, that increasing residential and employment density and traffic volume in the Central Corridor neighborhood will result in a greater number of vehicle-pedestrian injury collisions and that those accidents will occur disproportionately at several specific intersections.
The findings illustrate that predicting changes provides an opportunity to proactively incorporate safety considerations into land use and transportation plans. Interventions to improve health might include promoting walkable neighborhood design and reducing traffic volume and speed.
Outcome
The San Francisco Department of Public Health remains engaged in interagency efforts to reduce pedestrian injuries in the city. The methodology used in the HIA is now informing modeling efforts for Vision Zero San Francisco’s work to proactively eliminate severe and fatal traffic injuries in San Francisco.
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This Health Impact Assessment Report first appeared in The Cross-Sector Toolkit for Health. The Cross-Sector Toolkit for Health was originally developed by the Health Impact Project, formerly a collaboration of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The Pew Charitable Trusts. The creation of this resource was supported by a grant from the Health Impact Project. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Pew Charitable Trusts, or the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
