Safe Streets Research & Consulting, LLC
Safe Streets Research & Consulting, LLC (Safe Streets) is a certified DBE specializing in rigorous crash and survey data analysis to provide insights into pedestrian, bicycle, e-scooter, and motorist safety, behavior, and mobility. Safe Streets is owned and operated by Rebecca Sanders, PhD, RSP-2B and Jessica Schoner, PhD, and builds on their combined nearly 30 years of academic and consulting experience, including studies of perceived and empirical safety for pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists, and e-scooter users; bicycle and pedestrian network analysis & exposure estimation; trends in e-scooter use; data science methods and software tools for safety and transportation analyses; and roadway user design preferences.
Safe Streets’ approach is informed both by public health and transportation theory and years of practice leading research, Vision Zero, and data science projects across sectors. Drs. Sanders and Schoner have authored dozens of academic journal articles and professional reports, including for multiple NCHRP projects to improve pedestrian, bicyclist, and motorist safety, and they have helped cities such as Seattle, Denver, Portland, Oakland, Minneapolis—St. Paul, New Orleans, and Boston to understand and address bicycle, pedestrian, and motorist safety through Vision Zero and systemic safety efforts. Additionally, Dr. Schoner recently led the development of the Safer Streets Priority Finder, a free and open-source web tool that brings advanced safety analyses to transportation planners and engineers nationwide.
Safe Streets’ current work includes research on pedestrian safety in darkness, pedestrian hotspots, and race-related trends in pedestrian fatalities; county-wide systemic safety analysis; several NCHRP and BTSCRP projects conducting research and developing guidance regarding roadway reallocation and pedestrian, e-scooter, and bicyclist safety; and systemic safety guidance for the FHWA.
Safe Streets offers services in the following areas:
Crash analysis, Vision Zero, & Safe System Approach
Safety & planning policy, strategy, and insights
Research reports & literature reviews
Research project design
National guidance & best practices
Data science & quantitative analysis
Surveys, interviews, & focus groups
Task & project management
Safe Streets seeks to bring an equity lens to all projects, in collaboration with community partners and building on the principles of Dignity-Infused Community Engagement, in which Dr. Sanders is trained.
We look forward to helping you improve safety and quality of life in your community.
Meet the Safe Streets Team
Rebecca Sanders, PhD, RSP-2B
Dr. Rebecca Sanders (she/her) is the Founder and Principal Investigator of Safe Streets Research & Consulting, LLC. She brings 17 years of academic and consulting experience analyzing and addressing pedestrian, bicyclist, e-scooter, and motorist safety, behavior, and mobility through crash analysis, survey research, and design. Her current research focuses on pedestrian safety in darkness and pedestrian fatality hotspots; safe practices for e-scooter use; national guidance for bicycle facility design; systemic safety analysis and guidance related to pedestrians and bicyclists; and principles and guidance for roadway reallocation. As the Chair of the TRB Bicycle Committee and an appointed member of Portland’s Pedestrian Advisory Committee, she works with people across the country and locally to improve safety, mobility, and transportation equity for people walking, rolling, bicycling, and scooting. Dr. Sanders has held research positions at multiple Tier 1 universities and built Research and Vision Zero practices at industry partners. During her career, she has helped cities and counties across the country understand and address multi-modal safety through Vision Zero and systemic safety efforts and led and co-led multiple national design guidance efforts.
Dr. Sanders graduated magna cum laude as a University Scholar (foci: Spanish/French/Music/Religion) from Baylor University and received her Master and PhD in City & Regional Planning from the University of California at Berkeley. Having grown up in Texas and lived abroad, she has experienced the extremes in transportation access and mobility. Rebecca is passionate about increasing access to safe, equitable, sustainable transportation options. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband, children, and dog. In her spare time, she enjoys singing and playing guitar, gardening, jogging, and spending quality time with family and friends.
Jessica Schoner, PhD
Dr. Jessica Schoner (she/they) is the Co-Owner and Data Science Lead of Safe Streets Research & Consulting, LLC. She brings 13 years of academic and consulting experience as a transportation researcher, planner, and data scientist, including translating original research and cutting-edge studies into actionable outcomes and interactive data-driven tools for her clients. Dr. Schoner uses GIS and statistics to help federal, state, regional, and local agencies answer critical questions about the effects of infrastructure and the built environment on travel behavior, physical activity, health, and safety outcomes. She is well-versed in qualitative and quantitative research methods, including literature review, survey design, survey data analysis and modeling, geospatial data analysis and modeling, Frequentist and Bayesian statistical modeling, and machine learning techniques. Dr. Schoner’s latest work has focused on research and applications of systemic safety analysis for vulnerable road users. She is particularly proud to have led the development of the Safer Streets Priority Finder, a free and open-source tool for practitioners to proactively screen their network for pedestrian and bicycle crash risk.
Dr. Schoner earned her PhD and MS in Civil Engineering and Master of Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Minnesota. She graduated from the University of California San Diego with a BA in Political Science and a minor in Mathematics. She is a member of Transportation Research Board’s Bicycle Committee. She lives in Minneapolis, MN with her husband, children, and cat. In her spare time, she enjoys gardening, knitting, hiking, watching trains, and answering her six year old’s persistent questions about why that car just turned right on a red light.
Brian Almdale, MUPP
Brian Almdale (he/him) is a Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety Planner and Analyst III at Safe Streets Research and Consulting, LLC. He brings nine years of consulting experience using GIS, data science, and multimodal traffic safety analysis to help clients at the local, regional, and statewide levels address traffic safety issues through Vision Zero Action Plans, systemic safety analyses, and active transportation master plans. Through his work as a consultant and personal research, Brian has developed a strong understanding of the complexities, nuances, and shortcomings related to crash and contextual data to better understand crashes, transportation systems, and populations who are disproportionately affected by the design of the transportation system. Brian strongly believes in the power of information sharing and consistently seeks opportunities to learn from others and share his experiences to better serve communities and work towards a transportation system in which people do not have to risk death or serious injury to meet their mobility needs.
Brian received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Urban Planning and Policy with a concentration in Urban Transportation Planning at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Urban Planning and Policy. Brian currently lives in Seattle, WA, with his wife and daughter. Brian consistently experiences the impacts of our transportation system by traveling primarily by bicycle, walking, and public transit. Outside of work, he spends much of his time riding around Seattle with his daughter on their family cargo bike, developing and printing with 35mm film in his home darkroom, learning about data science and systemic safety, and enjoying being out in the Puget Sound and Cascade Mountains.
Rachael Panik, MCRP
Rachael Panik (she/her) is a Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety Planner and Researcher II at Safe Streets Research and Consulting, LLC. She brings seven years of planning and engineering research and consulting experience to the Safe Streets team. Her skills in GIS, data analysis, statistical modeling, and multimodal safety analysis help clients at the local, regional, and state levels address traffic safety. As a consultant, Rachael has developed active transportation master plans, conducted safety analyses and roadway safety audits, and led public engagement efforts. Rachael has also conducted research on several transportation and safety topics, including travel behavior, attitudes towards safety, volume estimation, and multimodal safety analyses. Rachael believes that way people move through space unequivocally shapes their lives, and as a transportation engineer and researcher, she makes it her responsibility to change the inequitable safety outcomes for people biking and walking. Throughout her career, she has developed a passion for creative problem solving applied to transportation problems to address these inequities and improve the lives of all travelers.
Rachael is currently a Doctoral Candidate in Civil Engineering at Georgia Tech University. She earned her Master in City and Regional Planning from Clemson University and her BS in Civil Engineering from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She currently lives with her husband and two cats in Atlanta, GA. Outside of work, she enjoys daily walks in her neighborhood, hosting dinners, and encouraging her friends to walk and bike with her throughout the city.
Affiliates
Dr. Frank Proulx is a Safe Streets Research & Consulting affiliate with nine years of safety analysis, data science, and research experience. He has worked closely with Safe Streets staff on research and analysis for years, and he is brought onto projects when his particular expertise or experience is needed to provide superb service for clients. His areas of expertise include crash analysis, bicycle and pedestrian traffic volume data, geospatial analysis, computer programming, statistics, and machine learning. Dr. Proulx particularly enjoys working on research-oriented projects that support the goal of improving multimodal traffic safety. He is a member of the Transportation Research Board’s Pedestrian Committee and helps lead the Bicycle and Pedestrian Data Subcommittee.
