Lights mounted on the tops of Tucson Police cruisers in a parking lot outside of the department's headquarters.
According to the City of Tucson, there were 12 pedestrian and 3 bicycle fatalities in 2023. In 2024, so far, the numbers are up to 17 pedestrian and 6 bicycle fatalities.
Living Streets Alliance is a nonprofit based in Tucson that advocates for the transformation of streets into safe public spaces with increased transportation options. In a recent news release, Living Streets Alliance said the city needs to take more action to prevent pedestrian and bicycle fatalities.
The news release cited a report from Smart Growth America, which ranked Tucson third among the deadliest cities for pedestrians. This is an increase from its previous position of 13th two years ago.
“There were 105 pedestrian deaths between 2013-2017 in the greater Tucson area, with an increase to 217 between 2018-2022—more than doubling over those two five-year periods. Tucson nonprofit, Living Streets Alliance, is calling on Tucson leadership to take immediate action to change this trend,” the news release said.
Emily Yetman the Executive Director of Living Streets Alliance says, “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 added that there are easy solutions the city should take like city-wide reduction of traffic speeds, bringing back radar enforcement, and creating more accessible pathways.
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