The Pedestrian Program Tucson Bicycle

Tucson Bicycle and Pedestrian Program

Introduction

Tucson's Bicycle and Pedestrian Program is part of the Tucson Department of Transportation, and the Sentinel Peak Road Review is one of its notable projects. Sentinel Peak Park, often known as "A" Mountain, is a park near Tucson, Arizona, featuring a single major road loop that loops up and over a low mountain. From a parking area at the summit of the mountain, it offers multiple lookout spots over Tucson, making it a popular spot for walkers and bicyclists (City of Tucson, 2020). There have been reports by users of the park and residents neighboring the park of unruly behavior, particularly concerns about speeding and crime in and near the park, and confrontations and accidents involving cars and cyclists or pedestrians. As a result, this paper evaluates the program's goals and performance, including the goals' quality and performance measures.

Program goals and their quality

The program has four goals; network, trips, safety, and equity. The program sought to establish extensive bicycle and pedestrian networks to connect people to their destinations through networks. The second goal was to increase trips for cyclists and persons walking. All this was to be done to reduce the number and severity of collisions involving pedestrians and bicyclists. The program would also be done to prioritize high-need, underserved, and vulnerable populations in public engagement and infrastructure development (City of Tucson, 2020). These goals form the Tucson Bicycle and Pedestrian program's primary endeavors. They could be considered the deliverables that should be experienced by the people of Tucson and the general users of the Sentinel Peak Park.

To determine the quality of these goals, they are considered under the SMART goals setting criteria. The SMART criteria require that quality goals be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (Bjerke & Renger, 2017). As indicated in Table 1 below, it is clear that the goals fit the SMART criteria. Thus, they are considered high quality (there are various assumptions, for example, that time for the safety goals is continuous while time for the equality goal is when the program is completed).

Table 1: SMART analysis of the program goals

Goals

SMART Criteria

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Relevant

Time-bound

Network

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Trips

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Safety

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Equality

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Performance measurements and their quality

To determine the performance of the Sentinel Peak Park, the Mayor and the Council of the City of Tucson undertook extensive data collection exercises. The data collection initiative was done by officials and staff from the city working with neighborhood and community groups concerned about traffic safety and user behavior at the monument (City of Tucson, 2020). The specific performance measures include road safety assessment and collection of public opinions about the park through public outreach survey. For these performance measurements to be considered quality, they should be a true reflection of the program's situation. In this case, the measurements should indicate the situation surrounding the usage of the Sentinel Peak Park and the experiences of the people of the City of Tucson.

Performance measurement is an ongoing procedure that uses pre-selected performance metrics to track and report on a program's progress and results. For performance measurements to be considered high quality, they should be meaningful, credible, and practical (Miller, 2005). Meaningful measurement should be comparable and consistent to help with sustained learning. Credible measurement should withstand reasonability scrutiny, and a practical measurement is within the program's needs and the budgetary limitations of the program financier. Specifically, the measurements included road safety, traffic counts, speed study, traffic crashes on the sentinel peak road, incidents reported by the Tucson Police, and a public survey. As analyzed in table 2 below, it is considered that the performance measures for the program are of good quality.

Table 2: Quality of performance measures

Measurements

Quality criteria

Meaningful

Credible

Practical

Road safety

Yes

Yes

Yes

Traffic counts

Yes

Yes

Yes

Speed study

Yes

Yes

Yes

Traffic crashes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Reported incidents

Yes

Yes

Yes

Public survey

Yes

Yes

Yes

Relationship between goals and performance

It is to be noted that the target audience/users for Sentinel Peak Park are the people of Tucson. Thus, any measurements to determine the park's performance should involve these people, in addition to statistical data. Therefore, it is considered that the involvement of a public survey indicates the relationship between the program and the residents of the city of Tucson (National State Auditors Association, 2004). Second, for some of the goals, especially safety, the most credible data would involve reviewing official police records on reported traffic crashes, speed counts, and other related security incidences. This data would then be computed and compared with data from a period before the Sentinel Peak Park was launched to determine whether the park's opening led to a change in the number of security and traffic-related incidences. Therefore, there is a statistically healthy relationship between the goals of the program and the performance measurements, as they have the potential to collect data that is credible and relevant for the determination of whether the goals are being realized or otherwise.