Spotlight Interview: Kyler Blodgett

I'm about to finish UC Berkeley's Master of City and Regional Planning program with concentrations in transportation and housing. It's been fun but a grind, in part because I used this program to transition from transportation to affordable housing, given that there's such a huge connection between transportation systems, the places that people live, and how safe they feel on roads.

Before grad school, I was a bike lobbyist for two years with a national trade association called PeopleForBikes, where we worked to advance biking safety across the country by passing sensible bike safety laws and bike-safe infrastructure. When I was there, a major focus of the work was on e-bikes and how they should be regulated.

Biking has been a big part of my life; it's how I get around town, but I've lived in some places that are really unsafe to bike. Eventually, I became more interested in other things that affect how people feel safe where they live. It seemed that the field of city planning had some of the answers.

This is the second spring semester that I've worked at SafeTREC as a graduate student researcher (GSR), and I do two things. The first — I administer a survey and write up reports about the Community Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Program (CPBSP), where SafeTREC staff trains local governments and advocates on pedestrian and bicyclist safety. The surveys are important for our staff to know what participants like about the program, how they're using the workshop content, and where the program could better meet their needs.

The second thing I do is an original research report relating to active transportation safety, where the topic gets decided by me and my supervisor Katherine Chen. It's an opportunity for graduate students to delve into a research area they're interested in. Last spring, I wrote a report about roadway safety for affordable housing residents in Alameda County. Right now I'm writing a report on automated speed enforcement camera programs that are currently being rolled out as pilot programs in six cities in California.

Your emphasis changed from biking to city planning — can you expand more on how that happened for you?

I wanted to work in less of a silo, and I felt a persistent struggle in my advocacy work where a lot of us were middle-class, white, and advocating for bike infrastructure without deeply asking ourselves if it would come at the expense of other issues. For example, we would go all-in for taxes that go towards biking infrastructure, but we wouldn't consider whether those taxes are disproportionately hurting low-income communities, which they sometimes are.

I realized that I need to be with people who are going to push my thinking on what "good" and safe transportation should look like. Whose voices are currently at the table and how do we expand that? How can bikes connect other topics that a more diverse spread of people care about? These questions led me to city planning.

The other part of your work at SafeTREC is creating research briefs; what drew you to your research topics of choice, and what are the high-level findings of your first brief?

A year ago, I was excited to make the bridge between active transportation safety and affordable housing. The most pressing question to me was, "Where does affordable housing get located, and are those safe places to move around without a car?"

I took data on Alameda County's pedestrian high injury networks and overlaid it with data on where government-subsidized tax-credit housing has been built in the county. I found that about 40% of affordable housing in Alameda County is within 100 feet of a high injury network, which is a shocking amount. A lot of affordable housing is built along big arterial roads like San Pablo Avenue and International Boulevard, where many crashes occur and pedestrians and bicyclists are particularly vulnerable. Developers of affordable housing typically build on cheaper land because it is easier to acquire, but this means that it often overlaps with the most dangerous places to walk in the county.

I found that about 60% of affordable housing in Alameda County is built for vulnerable road user groups like seniors, families, people with special needs, and people formerly unhoused. These people need extra support to be able to walk and roll safely in their neighborhoods, and they're getting the short end of the stick.

I provided a few suggestions in the brief. What if we gave developers more money to build housing in safer areas and do larger Vision Zero improvements? Developers are building with the perspective that it's nice to have a bus stop, bike lane, and enhanced crosswalk near their housing units, but that those are not priorities over building the much-needed housing itself.

I also suggested creating a new standard for transit-oriented housing developments. Right now, it focuses a lot on housing units' proximity to major bus stops and the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), rather than prioritizing the walkability of the area.

And the second brief?

Katherine and I landed on speed cameras because of California rolling them out this spring as an unprecedented pilot. It was "strike while the iron is hot" energy. Cities and program managers are actively answering tricky questions about how to implement these cameras. 

On one hand, speeding is a really bad problem that is killing and hurting a lot of people, especially vulnerable road users like children and elderly people. On the other hand, we don't want to live in a surveillance state, so how do we bridge these two things?

California recently passed AB-645, which launched a five-year pilot for six cities to install speed cameras with a ton of guardrails. The legislation detailed the structure for monetary fines, how to give "second chances" to people who can't afford fines, where the cameras should be placed, and so on. It was very prescriptive, which I think was a good idea. It gave cities a tight box to move in so that they could implement a pre-baked program and not have to answer thorny questions such as, "Do we share data with the police about license plates and speeding?" because state law says that you can't.

My work has been to summarize the state of research and to interview program managers on where they would like more room to make their own decisions, what they would advise to smaller cities that have less resources but also want to implement speed cameras, and how to build on best practices. I've been documenting this so that cities can have a playbook when they decide to install speed cameras, and it's been fulfilling for me to learn about this hot-button issue right now.

Honestly, I'm excited to reclaim several hobbies after grad school. I love getting outside, hiking, and doing multi-day biking adventures. I didn't grow up in the Bay Area, so living here for the past four years has been wonderful as someone who loves nature. I love Latin dancing and have been learning Spanish for the past several years. I've travelled to a couple Spanish-speaking countries and have been lucky to use it during some volunteering activities.

Finally, I love gathering people, especially over good food or a fun theme. I used to live in New Orleans, and one thing that time left me with was a love of festivals, community, and neighborliness. I want to contribute to this same culture in the Bay.

This Spotlight interview was conducted in collaboration with UC Berkeley SafeTREC. The opinions and perspectives expressed are those of the interviewee and not necessarily those of SafeTREC or the Office of Traffic Safety.

Funding is provided by a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).