Pedestrian Summit

Safe Streets Louisville thanks Jewish Hospital Health Network and Frazier Rehab Institute for the generous offer to host the Safe Streets Louisville Conference at the Rudd Heart and Lung Center.

With great reservation, we subrogated our Conference to coordinate efforts with those of Metro Louisville's Pedestrian Summit. The Pedestrian Summit was a great dissappointment. Jefferson County Public Schools did not even send a representative to the day-long session on Safe Routes to School.

Our experience with the Pedestrian Summit was a mirror of the 2005 Metro Louisville sponsored Bike Summit. At the "unveiling" of the Bike Summit plans the leadership immediately buried the most powerful concept of the event. The buried concept? Give de juro and de facto right-of-way to pedestrians first, people on human powered vehicles second, public transit third, and other motorized vehicles last. This concept reverses the balance of power on our streets and sidewalks. Currently, local motorists can, with impunity, hit and kill pedestrian and cycling children and adults. The Pedestrian Right-of-Way holds drivers responsible for controlling their vehicles.

The grassroots origin of the Pedestrian Right-of-Way is noteworthy. The concept came from the public participation portion (the Policy breakout sessions) of the Bike Summit. About ninety (90) cyclists in two different groups brainstormed thirty (30) to forty (40) policy concepts of their own making. The two independent groups were then asked to choose only three (3) of the dozens of ideas. Of the dozens of concepts discussed, one of the groups prioritized this concept as Item #1, the other group prioritized the concept as Item #3.