By Nathalia Teixeira / Broadcast version by Farah Siddiqi reporting for the Kent State-Ohio News Connection Collaboration.

According to the Ohio State Highway Patrol, there were 752 pedestrian-involved crashes reported as of May 19 — an average of 5.4 per day. Of those, 43 resulted in a fatality and 149 resulted in a serious injury.

In 2022, there were 2,417 pedestrian-related crashes reported in Ohio, an average of 6.6 per day. Of those, 164 resulted in a fatality and 515 resulted in a serious injury.

Lack of access to safe places for pedestrians to cross, drivers traveling at higher speeds and impaired and distracted driving are some of the reasons those crashes occurred. Pedestrian safety agencies are working to prevent them.

“We recognize that pedestrians are vulnerable road users,” said Maria Cantrell, the Vision Zero Columbus coordinator.

Faster speeds and larger vehicles are more likely to cause fatal crashes. 

Bridget Matt, an Ohio State Highway Patrol Sergeant, said that when vehicles are traveling faster, drivers’ reaction times decrease. If a pedestrian steps out into the street, the driver has less time to brake or swerve. 

Cantrell said when struck by a car going 20 miles per hour, a pedestrian has a better chance of surviving that crash compared to 40 miles per hour, which is usually the most realistic speed on Ohio roads. 

 “Just a few miles an hour difference makes a really significant change in outcome between life and death for a pedestrian,” Cantrell said. 

Larger vehicles also take longer to stop. 

“The weight of a vehicle determines how long it takes for that vehicle to stop or how easy that vehicle is to maneuver,” said Nathan Dennis, an Ohio State Highway Patrol Lieutenant. “The larger the vehicle, the larger the stopping distance, or the distance it takes to slow that vehicle down when a situation occurs up ahead of you.”

Judy Converse, the public information officer at the Ohio Traffic Safety Office, said that speeding has increased since the COVID-19 pandemic because there were fewer cars on the roads and police enforcement also dropped. 

“Roads kind of became more open for drivers, and drivers just felt more comfortable with traveling at a faster speed,” Converse said.

Ohio Traffic Safety Office grants come from the federal government. They distribute those grants to partners who live and work on traffic safety in their local communities.

“It's kind of a combination of using data and then responding to crashes after they happen,” Converse said. “The goal is just to prevent crashes by changing driver behavior and then just putting safety in the hands of each individual road user.”

Vision Zero advocates for pedestrian safety and has focused on making sidewalks and crosswalks better.

“In the last two years, we just improved, added and upgraded 189 crosswalks in the city of Columbus,” Cantrell said. “We're looking as we move forward to add at least 25 more miles of sidewalks or shared-use paths where pedestrians can walk safely along the road, but we have much more work to go.”

Vision Zero Columbus launched their first action plan two years ago.

“We haven't yet seen a reduction in pedestrian fatal crashes across the city [of Columbus],” Cantrell said. “It's going to take a little more time to see the data or the outcomes to catch up with the work we're trying to do, but good work is being done towards that effort.”

Vision Zero’s goal is to eliminate crash-related fatalities and serious injuries while promoting fair, safe, and healthy mobility for all.

“We all need to do our part,” Cantrell said. “Whether you're walking, biking [or] driving a car, everyone has a shared responsibility to help yourself and each other get where they need to go safely.”

Ohio recently made distracted driving a primary offense for all drivers. Infrastructure improvements, like adding sidewalks and crosswalks, also help keep pedestrians safer.

“I really think if you can encourage safe speeds by people driving cars and better infrastructure and access, so separated safe spaces for people walking, whether they're walking along the street or good places for them to cross the street, that will make a huge difference in the outcomes that we're trying to achieve,” Cantrell said. 

Where sidewalks exist, pedestrians should always try to use them. 

“Whenever there is a sidewalk that’s available to be used by pedestrians, that should be utilized in all cases,” Matt said. 

“If you're going to be out just for a leisurely walk, it is suggested that you utilize an area that does have a sidewalk so that you can safely do that without having to worry about being out in the travel lane of a roadway,” Dennis added. 

Most pedestrian crashes occur at night because of the lack of visibility that drivers have. For that, Dennis gave some advice on what to do if you are walking on a road at night: 

1. Ensure you're wearing bright colors or reflectors;


2. Carry a flashlight, or use the one on your smartphone;


3. Try to be visible to drivers as they approach;


4. Try to be alert of your surroundings;


5. Ensure you're next to the edge of the roadway and you can remove yourself from the roadway quickly if you need to.

“As we come into the summer months, we see an increase not only in the roadway traffic of motorists but also an increase in pedestrians when the weather is nicer and people are outside more,” Matt said. “So we just need to be vigilant, be aware of our surroundings and be respectful of all those using the roadways to travel.”


Lastly, Cantrell says calling “accidents” “crashes” instead can help us remember that these crashes are preventable.


“The word ‘accident’ has a connotation that there lacks accountability,” Cantrell said. “We want to assign accountability to these outcomes because most of these incidents, these collisions, are preventable.”



This collaboration is produced in association with Media in the Public Interest and funded in part by the George Gund Foundation.


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A new report has found some progress has been made to improve the nation's aging infrastructure, but a lot more needs to be done.

This week, the American Society of Civil Engineers released its 2025 Report Card for America's Infrastructure. It gives the nation an overall grade of "C," up from a "C-minus" in 2021.

Kristina Swallow, assistant city manager for the City of Tucson, credited the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, even as both have been targeted by the Trump administration. She said more improvements will require more funding.

"We feel it," Swallow pointed out. "If you get stuck in traffic or if you have somebody who is injured while they're riding their bike or walking to work, you know that the system isn't necessarily working the way it should be. We want to help make sure that when industry, local, state and federal governments invest in infrastructure, that they're doing it wisely."

The report showed just over half of Arizona roads are in either poor or fair condition. It noted $12 billion is needed to improve drinking water systems and $4 billion to upgrade wastewater systems in the state.

Swallow pointed out bridges are among the brighter spots in Arizona's scores, with fewer than 2% of the more than 8,500 bridges in the state in poor condition. She stressed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was essential to support maintenance.

"While Arizona has generally, I think, some of the better bridges in the nation, that additional bridge investment on a national level really helped some of the other states address some of their poor and failing bridges," Swallow observed. "As well as start to look at some of the 'fair' bridges and bring them back up into good repair."

Community expansion and climate change have increased demand for repairs. Swallow added some voters have noticed and supported initiatives at the ballot box in recent years.

"In Tucson, they've voted three times to invest in roadway infrastructure, in connections and greenways and in parks," Swallow reported. "Because they recognize that the community members in Tucson need to have roads that meet their needs."

And even if current federal infrastructure funding were to remain the same, the report added there would still be a $3.7 trillion gap over the next decade.


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By Kathiann M. Kowalski for Canary Media.
Broadcast version by Mark Richardson for Ohio News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

One of the nation’s largest hydrogen-powered transit fleets is seeking to switch to a cleaner — and local — fuel source as part of a federally funded clean hydrogen hub.

The Stark Area Regional Transit Authority, or SARTA, provides about 5,000 daily rides to commuters in the Canton, Ohio, area. A decade after federal grants helped it purchase its first hydrogen fuel-cell buses, the authority now has 22 such vehicles, making it the country’s fourth-largest hydrogen-powered transit fleet.

The vehicles emit only water vapor and warm air as exhaust, reducing air pollution in the neighborhoods where they run. But producing and transporting hydrogen for the fuel cells can be a significant source of climate emissions, which is why SARTA is partnering with energy company Enbridge and the Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub, or ARCH2, on a plan to make the fuel on-site with solar power.

“So it will be green,” said Kirt Conrad, SARTA’s CEO, referring to the use of renewable energy to power the production of hydrogen by splitting water.

Currently, the transit agency imports hydrogen — made from natural gas without carbon capture — by truck from Canada. Such “gray” hydrogen emits about 11 tons of carbon dioxide per ton of hydrogen produced. President Donald Trump’s threatened tariffs against Canada could also affect the cost and supply of hydrogen available to SARTA, although specific impacts are still unclear.

SARTA had already worked with Dominion Energy on a compressed natural gas fueling station before Dominion’s Ohio utility company was acquired by Enbridge. When the Biden administration announced its regional clean hydrogen hub program in 2023, SARTA and the company joined others in Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania to pitch the ARCH2 hub. The hub was among seven selected by the Department of Energy in late 2023 and was awarded up to $925 million in funding last summer.

The plan is to install roughly 1,000 solar panels on about 10 acres of recently acquired land next to SARTA’s existing hydrogen fueling facility, said Conrad. That would generate up to 1 megawatt of electricity, powering an electrolysis facility that splits water into oxygen and hydrogen. Under the project’s current scope, the equipment would produce roughly 1 ton of hydrogen per day, enough to fuel 40 SARTA buses, Conrad added.

Details could change as the project progresses, according to Enbridge spokesperson Stephanie Moore. Enbridge would own the hydrogen production and storage equipment.

Conrad estimated that the whole project will cost around $15 million, about 70% of which would come from federal funding under the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law and other grants. It’s unclear, though, whether the Trump administration will renege on those commitments, even those which have already been formally obligated under contract.

“ARCH2 receives funding for this project through a contract issued through the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations,” Moore said. “We have received no information outlining any modifications to that contract and therefore will continue moving forward on this project as planned.”

If the project can be completed, it will double SARTA’s supply of hydrogen, lower costs and emissions, and improve the transit system’s resiliency, Conrad said, noting that the agency has experienced occasional fuel delivery problems. Plus, domestic hydrogen production can support U.S. energy independence goals, he said.

A desire to switch to cleaner fuels and the costs per mile compared with diesel buses convinced SARTA to start buying fuel-cell buses in 2014. Today, it has 17 large buses and 5 smaller paratransit vehicles that run on fuel cells, which split hydrogen into protons and electrons and send them along separate paths. The electrons provide an electric current, while the protons wind up combining with oxygen to make water.

California has had fuel-cell buses on the road for more than two decades, and other places that have embraced the vehicles in recent years include Philadelphia’s Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority and Maryland’s Montgomery County.

Sean O’Leary, a senior researcher for the Ohio River Valley Institute, said the planned project by SARTA and Enbridge would cut greenhouse gas emissions compared with current practices.

“Green hydrogen is … a lot better than gray,” O’Leary said. However, he’s skeptical whether fuel-cell buses are the vehicles he would choose today for transit systems to reduce emissions. “I would personally rather see them go to electric buses or even biodiesel, both of which would reduce emissions more and cost a … lot less.”

Conrad said SARTA would have liked to have started out using green hydrogen, but it wasn’t available in the marketplace a decade ago. Now that the technology has advanced, he thinks it’s time to make the switch to a cleaner source of hydrogen.

“Sometimes an industry just needs time to evolve. And I think that’s what we’re starting to see now,” Conrad said.

If all proceeds well, SARTA anticipates on-site hydrogen production could start as soon as 2028.


Kathiann M. Kowalski wrote this article for Canary Media.

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As the U.S. Department of Transportation tries to end New York City's congestion pricing program, the move is getting some pushback from people who say the program is working.

In a letter rescinding federal support, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy called congestion pricing "a slap in the face" to working-class Americans and small business owners.

But Renae Reynolds, executive director of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, said congestion pricing has been successful, despite a delayed launch.

"A 50% reduction in traffic entering into the Central Business District, which translates to a reduction in people's commute times," said Reynolds. "That is measurable. We have seen so much time saved in folks entering though the Lincoln Tunnel."

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority filed a lawsuit against the DOT to keep congestion pricing around. Other experts have said they can't see a legal reason for the DOT to prevail, but it remains to be seen.

The program is also designed to improve air quality around the city, since less car and truck traffic leaves cleaner air to breathe. And it's generating income.

Eric A. Goldstein, senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said those funds will be spent on improving public transportation - which can further improve air quality.

"When you have an effective public transportation program, you are reducing pollution," said Goldstein, "because you're getting people out of cars and motor vehicles, and you're keeping them out of those vehicles for their daily commutes."

Not having the money from congestion pricing would mean New York State has to fully fund the MTA's next capital project plan.

That's another reason Rachael Fauss, senior policy analyst with Reinvent Albany, said ending the program would affect the entire state.

"There are vendors that contract with the MTA in every single congressional district in New York State," said Fauss. "There's massive rail car manufacturing, bus manufacturing in upstate New York, and those businesses would be also losing out on contracts they would get with the MTA for its capital program."

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