At the corner of Bay and Laura streets downtown, pedestrians run across Bay Street against the traffic light. A policeman across the street blew his whistle for them not to do it, but the pedestrians continued anyway. -- Don Burk/Staff

Jacksonville's dangerous streets
On First Coast, walking is hazardous

By Mark Reynolds
Times-Union staff writer

In the nation's fifth-most-hazardous city to be a pedestrian, the statistics were against 7-year-old Louis Floyd Jr. in March when he decided to scope out a showy motorcycle on a carrier parked in front of his grandparents' Mayport restaurant on Florida A1A.

Though the road offered no sidewalk, about a foot of its pavement gave a vantage point that was far riskier than the child probably ever realized. By merely stepping onto this asphalt, he was doing something analysts say is 36 times more dangerous than driving and 300 times more dangerous than flying.

The exact circumstances of his death, in the wheels of a tractor-trailer on A1A, are unclear. But his case is a poignant reminder of how risky pedestrian life has become on Jacksonville's streets, which were distinguished yesterday as being more dangerous than the streets of nearly every other U.S. metropolitan area, including New York and Los Angeles.

Dubbed Mean Streets 2000, a study by a Washington-based research group used federal census and collision data to rank metropolitan areas by pedestrian deaths and by the amount of walking in the community. Jacksonville was ranked only behind the Tampa Bay area, Atlanta, Miami-Fort Lauderdale and Orlando.

And in the opinion of the boy's grandfather, the report also touches on several points at issue in the death of Louis, including the willingness of police to blame fatal collisions on pedestrians, the role of speed in such incidents and the design of streets that fail to promote awareness about the presence of people on foot.

"They get behind the wheel," said the child's grandfather, Bill McMains, 56, "and they just say, 'Hey, that part of the road is mine and I don't give a damn who's in the way.' "

Bill McMains looks out the window of his Mayport restaurant, Bill and Angie's Seafood. McMains' grandson was killed in March when a tractor-trailer hit him outside the restaurant along Florida A1A where there is no sidewalk. -- Geoff Krieger/Staff

The report was compiled by the Surface Transportation Policy Project, an organization that operates on funding from numerous and often prestigious foundations. It was done in concert with the project's recent studies on quality-of-life issues.

The area's lofty ranking was based on a "pedestrian danger index" that statisticians derived by analyzing the average number of pedestrian deaths in 1997 and 1998 and the amount of walking in the metropolitan area. The report didn't include bicycle deaths.

The amount of general pedestrian traffic was gauged with pedestrian commuting figures tallied by the U.S. Census.

The Jacksonville metropolitan area, which encompasses Duval, Clay, St. Johns and Nassau counties, had 71 fatalities during the period. The percentage of commuters walking to work was 2.57 percent and the danger index was calculated at 64.

"On the face of it, it looks all right to me," said Jayaram Sethuraman, a statistics professor at Florida State University in Tallahassee, in reference to the study's methodology.

"It's pretty sound," Sethuraman said. "The number of people walking, for any reason, is proportional to the number of people walking to work."

The report also suggests that police typically blame most of the deaths on pedestrians when the fault for the collisions "frequently rests with drivers."

John Turner, a spokesman for the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, said a great number of pedestrian deaths in the city stem from intoxicated persons who stray onto the road. The study didn't differentiate between sober pedestrians and those under the influence.

Barbara McCann, a co-author of the report, said authorities need to hold drivers more responsible, especially because pedestrians under the influence are avoiding driving drunk.

"Drivers are responsible for driving a large vehicle that's capable of a lot of damage, and they should be responsible," McCann said.

The report indicts a society where infrastructure spending usually is earmarked for motor vehicle transportation needs.

The report says cities where pedestrians are most at risk are sprawling communities with "streetscapes that ignore the needs of pedestrians."

The leader of the organization, 1000 Friends of Florida, that disseminated the report in the state said he found it interesting that a 1998 report by the Sierra Club listed many of the same Florida metro areas with high pedestrian danger indexes as the country's "most sprawl-threatened cities."

"Building our communities for cars has deadly consequences," said Charles Pattison, executive director of the nonprofit Friends, which is trying to promote responsible planning for the state's population growth.

As a state, Florida spent only 1 percent of its total federal transportation allocations about 71 cents per person -- on pedestrian projects, while it spent $52 per person on highways.

Mike Goldman, a state Department of Transportation spokesman, said the department was reviewing the report.

He noted, however, that the state builds sidewalks "whenever possible." He said the widening of San Jose Boulevard, for example, involves sidewalks.

When young Louis died March 2, police said the boy darted into the path of a tractor-trailer unit's rear wheels.

McCann said she believes Louis would have been much safer if A1A had a sidewalk -- regardless of where he was standing when he was struck.

She said motorists pay closer attention to pedestrians if they see accommodating facilities like sidewalks and the act of stepping off an elevated curb might have boosted the boy's awareness of a traffic danger, she said.

"To see a situation where there is no sidewalk," McCann said, "shows we really need to take care of our vulnerable population, children and the elderly, and everyone who walks."