New map reveals red zones for pedestrian safety risks

“Speed kills” is such a well-known mantra in transportation advocacy circles it’s at risk of becoming trite. So how can activists find new ways to communicate the crucial linkage between speeding drivers and the fatal crashes they cause?

One answer to that question comes from a project by Portland Community College Student Jake Veto. Veto partnered with nonprofit group Oregon Walks to create an interactive map that illustrates pedestrian fatalities in Portland between 2017 and 2020. The 48 locations where people where struck and killed are marked on the map alongside colored street segments. The darker red the color, the higher percentage of speeding on that particular street segment.

The combination of speed data to street segments, combined with the location of the fatality, gives us a new context to understand why people on foot are more likely to be killed in certain places. Veto’s map also allows viewers to click on any marked segment and see the the posted speed limit and the percentage of drivers who disobey it.

The map uses crash data from the Oregon Department of Transportation and speed monitoring data from the Portland Bureau of Transportation.

One speeding hotspot with two “x” marks for deaths is SE Division between SE 122nd and 145th, where PBOT data shows people drive over the speed limit at a shocking rate of 75% to 83% of the time. The dark red intersection of SW Capitol Hwy and SW Terwilliger reveals that 95.5% of drivers speed through that location (according to 2021 data). I’ll remember that next time in biking or walking through. Yikes! (Note: It’s important to keep in mind that the speed monitoring data is often several years old, so it’s likely that speeds are lower today than what the map shows, since PBOT and other agencies redesign and update several roadways each year.)

Here’s an excerpt from Veto’s writeup of his methodology:

ODOT crash points were filtered to identify pedestrian fatalities within the Portland urban area. A case number field was added to the crash points attribute table for better identification. Manual matching of crash points to police reports was performed using date and cross streets to ensure accuracy. Each matched record was updated with its corresponding case number, and matched points were exported as a new dataset.

Finally, the data from the street sections that each crash was on was joined to the data from the crash points. This allows us to make statements about how often drivers tend to speed near where these crashes occured. Manual validation was performed on the points to make sure they were pulling data from the correct street segment. Many of the fatalities occured in intersections with different data for each of the cross streets, so best judgement and cross reference with the police reports was used to make sure that each point was correctly associated with the right street.

In addition to all the speed and fatality location data in the main map, Veto also created a general pedestrian fatality heat map. This map helps visualize which parts of the city’s road network people are most at risk of being hit and killed.

Veto’s work has illuminated what could be considered red zones for pedestrian safety. It should be a useful resource for planners, engineers, advocates, and anyone else who spends time on foot on Portland streets.

See the full map here.