Tucson's streets have become a perilous gauntlet for pedestrians and cyclists, with a spike in deaths that has the community and advocates demanding action. According to the City of Tucson, the year 2023 ended with a concerning tally of 12 pedestrian and 3 bicycle fatalities. However, barely halfway through 2024, the city has already witnessed a distressing increase to 17 pedestrian and 6 bicycle fatalities.
Against this backdrop of escalating roadway casualties, Living Streets Alliance, a Tucson-based nonprofit, is calling on city leaders to take a stand. Their recent news release highlighted the harrowing elevation of Tucson to the third-deadliest city for pedestrians, according to a Smart Growth America report—which is no small feat, given it stood at the 13th position just two years back. As stated in a news release obtained by AZPM, there was more than a doubling in pedestrian deaths with 105 recorded between 2013-2017 and an alarming leap to 217 from 2018-2022. Living Streets Alliance argues that the transformation of streets into safe, navigable spaces must be prioritized.
Emily Yetman, the Executive Director of Living Streets, sheds light on the gravity of the situation in Tucson. "What the pressures been is to treat a lot of our surface streets as hybrid freeways and those are also places where there’s destinations, so you have people turning off and on to those streets, you’ve got people needing to cross those streets to get from one place to another, you’ve got those serving as really important bus corridors where people need to access those destinations. So there is just a lot going on in those corridors and a lot of conflict," Yetman told AZPM.
The suggested remedies from Living Streets Alliance are far from complex. They include a city-wide reduction of traffic speeds, reinstating radar enforcement, and the creation of more accessible pathways. These measures are aimed at mitigating the devastating effects of high-speed urban thoroughfares that double as community spaces. As roads have morphed into hybrid freeways, the casualties have mounted—a fact which Yetman has drawn attention to in the Tucson leadership's ears, making it clear that action is overdue.
