Dangerous by Design: Poor city planning continues to put Austin pedestrian safety at risk
Data shows that people on foot in Austin are still not any safer after decades of planning and millions of tax dollars spent.
With all the growth in a city where top officials want to reduce the number of cars on the road, the city of Austin remains more dangerous for pedestrians than larger cities like Philadelphia, Detroit, San Francisco … and our nation’s capital. That’s according to a recent study uncovered by the KVUE Defenders.
The Defenders first told you five years ago how decades of poor planning put pedestrians in Austin at risk. The City promised changes and has since spent millions of your tax dollars.
So the KVUE Defenders decided to follow up and take a look at where we are now. We dug into the data and found people getting around on foot in Austin are still not any safer.
Designed to fail
Even now, six years after Eric Bauereis lost his son, Alexei, the pain still feels fresh.
“It's little, you know. The simplest little thing. You go through the garage and you come across a hatchet. You know, he's a kid. He liked to hack on things. And, you know, it was helpful. There's an old bush that needs to be gotten rid of. Let him tear into it,” Eric Bauereis said.
Alexei Bauereis died after he was hit by a car on June 7, 2016, shortly after 10 p.m. He and a friend crossed Spicewood Springs Road at Rustic Rock Drive using the crosswalk.
No one realized how poor city planning put him in danger. The area had a pedestrian crossing signal.
But it didn’t work at night. Eric Bauereis said City crews removed the vertical crossing marks shortly before the wreck that killed his son. But it has since been fixed.
“Alexei was one of the most unique individuals one could ever meet. He was a really an old soul. And he loved everybody,” said Anna Bauereis, Alexei's mom. “Alexei impacted so many people.”
In 2017, the KVUE Defenders told you how years of poor planning decisions put pedestrians in Austin at risk and left thousands of miles of Austin streets without sidewalks.
After five and a half years of promises from City leaders to make Austin safer and hundreds of millions of your tax dollars spent, we checked back and found the numbers aren’t trending down.
Austin's auto-pedestrian wreck problem
We obtained data from the Austin Police Department (APD) showing the number of auto-pedestrian wrecks since our 2017 report.
In 2018, there were 443 auto-pedestrian wrecks. The number rose to 480 in 2019. In 2020, the number dropped to 305, with fewer cars on the road and fewer people out in general because of the pandemic.
But the numbers started rising as people got back on the roads. There were 373 auto-pedestrian crashes in 2021 and 406 in 2022.
We took the data to the Austin Transportation Department to ask why the numbers aren’t getting any better than they were during the previous five years.
“It's hard to address 280 square miles of the city of Austin. We've got a region that relies on Austin as the economic center. And so, we've got a lot of folks that have to be in cars. We've got a lot of folks that have to take other forms of transportation because they are not able to afford a car,” said Lewis Leff, a transportation officer for the City.
Leff leads the efforts for the City's Vision Zero plan, intended to reduce the number of people hurt or killed in crashes to zero.
“I think we're on a good track,” Leff said.
Austin’s Vision Zero task force helps decide where money should be spent to make Austin streets safer and judges progress based on its completed projects.
Vision Zero data show “serious and fatal wrecks” are down by nearly a third (31%) and a 15% reduction in pedestrian-involved wrecks at the intersections where safety improvements were made since 2016.
Even though, overall, according to the data we obtained from APD, there is a citywide increase in wrecks involving pedestrians over the last five years compared to the prior five years.
We found 1,984 pedestrian-involved car crashes from 2013 through 2017. From 2018 to 2022, there were 2,007, according to the records – even with a pandemic and fewer cars on the road during that time.
Looking at Vision Zero’s numbers for the same timeframes compared to APD’s data, Vision Zero shows an overall decrease in serious traffic injuries and fatalities at intersections where the City made safety improvements and a 15% decrease in auto-pedestrian wrecks.
“We’ve got a better sense now than ever before of what those needs are, where those long crossing distances are and how do we get a safe crossing in there for people,” Leff said.
We showed Leff our findings.
“What you're seeing is the results of how the built environment was built out over time. And when it doesn't have the lighting, doesn't have frequent safe crossings, we're going to see these types of incidents play out, particularly where there's kind of new developments or shopping centers. A lot of people are reliant on transit and don't have those different ways to get to transit stops safely. Or we see those mid-block transit stops from the past that we're trying to address over time," Leff said. "So, again, a number of systems kind of overlapping and really the historical policy choices and investments that were made over time."
Austin did not have a mobility plan until 2019. That left thousands of miles of streets without sidewalks and intersections without pedestrian crossing beacons for decades.
“How often do you guys take a look at what you're doing and then make a shift around it?” asked Erica Proffer, investigative reporter for the KVUE Defenders.
“Pretty often, you know, we're continually evaluating … We continually evaluate the types of treatments we're doing, compare that to what we expected to see. We compare that to what national standards say. And then from there, we're able to say, ‘Well, you know what? You know with our major intersections, access management was a huge factor in making sure that we reduce those severe crashes.’ So now we're looking at access management more holistically, trying to apply that across more locations, not just at intersections,” Leff said.
Leff said the Vision Zero team pulls crash records daily. You can see the project’s findings on a public dashboard.
The KVUE Defenders dug into which areas currently see the most pedestrian-involved car crashes. The City’s Vision Zero data shows these are the city’s high-injury roadways.
Aligning with our first report, it shows the most pedestrian-involved wrecks happen along North Lamar Boulevard, East Riverside Drive, South Congress Avenue, William Cannon Drive and North Interstate 35.
The City made safety improvements in most of these areas, including pedestrian beacons on East Riverside; extending the curb and median at problem intersections like Cameron Road at US 183; and adding accessible curb ramps for the disabled at the intersection of Barton Springs and South First Street.
“What we're trying to do is make it very clear to both drivers and people walking that these crossings are legal, and we're going to make it safer for the folks that are trying to get across,” Leff said.
But some City leaders say it’s still not enough. Austin Transportation Department Interim Director Richard Mendoza and Austin Police Chief Joe Chacon filed this memo last December. It reads in part, "A growing share of fatal crashes are happening on freeways, frontage roads, and major arterials that are not owned by the City."
The State of Texas shares responsibility with the City of Austin. So, we went to the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT).
Texas response to Austin's auto-pedestrian fatalities
“Most of these are happening not at intersections,” TxDOT Spokesperson Glynda Chu said. “So they're not at a crosswalk, they're walking across. We've seen several recently I-35.”
We told you in 2017 how crossing the interstate on foot without going to an intersection with a crosswalk can not only be fatal but also impact drivers like Mekyala Manning, who hit and killed a driver on 1-35 near Braker Lane. She never saw the woman crossing I-35 on foot at night.
“I did see something beeline across, and I hit it,” Manning told the KVUE Defenders. “And I was like, ‘What is that? A person? What’s going on?'"
"There is that feeling in my stomach, that little pit feeling that I hit somebody and they were not going to be able to recover. This was a person. And for all I know, a good person,” Manning continued through tears. “You feel like it’s all your fault even though it’s not your fault.”
In 2020, TxDOT put an additional barrier on top of the concrete divider on I-35 between north and southbound lanes over a 3.5-mile stretch between 51st Street and Rundberg Lane. The pilot project was to discourage people from darting across these six lanes of traffic.
Last December, a TxDOT engineer told KVUE those barriers worked and reduced pedestrian fatalities by 89%. So, they’re adding 21 more miles of barriers through Austin.
Twenty-one miles worth through Austin – and it’s needed.
According to the APD data, 185 people have been hit by cars on I-35 in Austin since 2018. We asked TxDOT about what more can be done to prevent people from trying to cross I-35 on foot.
“Are there things that we could do for crosswalks?” Erica Proffer asked.
“I think in Austin, we have really great crosswalks, especially downtown, the ones that I've used because they give you a countdown here in Austin. You know, that's not true statewide,” Chu said.
We found some frontage roads still without sidewalks like along northbound I-35 between Braker Lane and Tech Ridge Boulevard.
We followed up with TxDOT. Brad Wheelis, TxDOT’s southwest communications director, told us, “TxDOT will construct more than 18 miles of the new shared-use path (SUP)" in that area.
TxDOT will add sidewalks along the northbound I-35 frontage road. The plan is to install them between Braker Lane and Tech Ridge Boulevard and the southbound I-35 frontage road between Parmer Lane and Braker Lane.
The construction is part of the $606 million I-35 Capital Express North project. TxDOT expects to finish the project in late 2028.
Wheelis said the sidewalks are part of the overall project.
The City of Austin has asked TxDOT for help with funding for sidewalks on streets it manages.
“We just recently put in a grant proposal with TxDOT to try and address gaps in TxDOT Frontages in the sidewalk network,” said John Eastman, division manager of Sidewalks and Special Projects for Austin Public Works.
It’s Eastman’s job to make sure people have a safe way to get to intersections and make sure the city has adequate sidewalks.
“The way I describe it is the sidewalk system is twice as good now as it was five years ago,” Eastman said.
Eastman said 20 crews work on sidewalks each day.
IN 2017, the KVUE Defenders uncovered 2,500 miles of Austin streets without sidewalks. Now it’s closer to 2,000 miles.
“We are trying to get 100% of the very high and high priority sidewalks and shared streets completed within ten years,” Eastman said. “You have to be pragmatic and realistic. These are tax dollars that we're talking about. What's the current condition of the network? Where are we trying to get to? So, of course, we're trying to get to a complete sidewalk network that's in a functionally acceptable condition citywide. The goal that set forth in the plan is, 'What can we do in the next 10 years?' And so, it's a really ambitious goal to try and get to 80% functionally acceptable. And, you know, within the next 10 years.”
The “very high and high” priority sidewalks total 800 of the 2,000 miles with missing sidewalks, like the problem area of North Lamar Boulevard between Rundberg and Braker lanes.
“It doesn't happen overnight,” Leff said. “But we know that we can make a difference by some targeted investments and continue to scale up what we're seeing work within Austin."
Three times in the last decade, Austin voters chose to pay more in property taxes in order to make streets safer. Voters passed a $720 million mobility bond in 2016, then a $925 million bond in 2018 and another $460 million in 2020.
That’s more than $2 billion in total. All of that money … and still not all priority safety gaps will be fixed, Eastman said.
“In a few years, we'll have to identify additional funding sources. But the City has been innovative in terms of looking for their funding sources,” Eastman said.
Those innovations, he said, include sidewalk improvements around The University of Texas. The area uses a parking benefit district to give the City extra money for improvements.
“We go after grants. Bonds are a big part of it as well. So all of those different funding sources. We're basically trying to tap everything we can to complete the sidewalk network,” Eastman said.
“We continue to have a lot of conversation and hopefully finding solutions together with our partners at TxDOT to try to identify those locations where we can make some City investments, where we can go after grants, federal funds to try to address some of those problematic intersections," Leff said.
If you see something the KVUE Defenders should investigate, send us an email at defenders@kvue.com.