Crosswalks

December 29, 2009

Not PBOT Issue

Some entrepreneur has painted their own crosswalk on E Burnside at 8th. It happened on or around Christmas, according to the reader who tipped us to this.

The straight-line-challenged person responsible has not stepped forward to take credit yet.

City Traffic Engineer Rob Burchfield is quoted on Bike Portland about what will happen to this improvement in the future...

Personally I did not feel any safer crossing the street there. Four lanes of fast-moving traffic is still four lanes of fast-moving traffic.

Posted by Chris Smith at 8:27 AM | Comments (14) | Permalink

May 9, 2007

Grim Crosswalks

Via the Shift list, video of some highly provocative street art.

Posted by Chris Smith at 6:51 AM | Comments (8) | Permalink

April 27, 2007

Feeling Empowered

I must say I am pleasantly surprised by the personal impact (on me) of the new crosswalks on NW 23rd.

Now I'm a fairly assertive pedestrian. I'll walk out into a crosswalk if there is a reasonable gap and hold out my hand to stop the cars (as is my right under Oregon law if they are more than 50 feet from the intersection). Interestingly that gesture is now in the process of being encapsulated in Oregon law.

Anyway, what I find with the new crosswalks is that I'm doing this more frequently, and with the cars perhaps a little closer. It's as though the crosswalks have shifted the balance of power between me and the cars.

Posted by Chris Smith at 12:00 AM | Comments (10) | Permalink

April 3, 2007

Updated: Watching Paint Dry

Update: 4/3/07

This is now rescheduled for 10:30am on Thursday, 4/5.

Original Post: 3/23/07

Actually, thermoplastic.

Sam Adams has scheduled a press opportunity for the striping of new crosswalks on NW 21st and 23rd (weather permitting).

Actually, this is pretty cool. It's part of the overall set of safety improvements for main streets being piloted in NW, following neighborhood activism driven by a pedestrian fatality.

TENTATIVE MEDIA EVENT FOR CROSSWALK INSTALLATIONS ON NW 23RD & 21ST AVENUES

To: Community Partners
From: City of Portland Office of Transportation
Re: Media Event for Crosswalk installations on NW 23rd and 21st Avenues
Date: Saturday, March 24, 2007
Time: 9:00 a.m.
Place: outside Pastini Pastaria, 1506 NW 23rd (at Quimby)

If weather permits, our Transportation Maintenance crews will be marking new crosswalks up and down NW 23rd and 21st Avenues on Saturday. You and your organizations have been key community partners in developing this corridor crosswalk treatment project. Thank you for your commitment to help us improve pedestrian safety in Northwest Portland and other parts of the city where the new marked crosswalk criteria will be applied.

Given the current weather forecast, it doesn't look hopeful that our crews will have the conditions necessary on Saturday to make a successful application of the hot plastic we use to mark these crosswalks. Our crew leader will make the decision by noon tomorrow, Friday. We are going ahead with a tentative media plan just in case the weather surprises us and enables us to work.

Our media plan is simple -- to provide media the opportunity to video our crews at work and interview community partners, and to provide community partners the opportunity to gather in celebration of this pedestrian safety improvement project. Our objectives are to demonstrate and raise awareness of the City's and the community's commitment to pedestrian safety.

We invite you to join us on Saturday at 9:00 a.m. outside Pastini Pastaria to talk with the media. We will not hold a formal press conference with a predetermined list of speakers. We simply invite you to come on out on a Saturday morning, watch our crews at work, visit with each other, and talk to the media if you would like to. Feel free to forward this invitation to others you think might be interested.

I will send a notice tomorrow afternoon if this event is on or off. If off, I will continue to keep you informed of the work schedule and media events.

Committed Attendees:
Kim Carlson, NWDA
Frank Bird, NWDA
Peggy Anderson, NHBA
Sabrina Kao, Traffic Engineer, Portland Office of Transportation
Beth Erlendson, Public Information Manager, Portland Office of Transportation
Cheryl Kuck, Public Information Officer, Portland Office of Transportation

Tentative Attendees:
Commissioner Sam Adams

Thank you again for your continued commitment to pedestrian safety and neighborhood livability in our community. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Cheryl

Posted by Chris Smith at 12:00 AM | Comments (4) | Permalink

November 16, 2006

Drilling for Safety

I ran across the scene yesterday. I was pretty sure they were drilling a hole to anchor a center-line sign, as part of the pedestrian safety pilot program.

Then this morning, there it was, a thing of beauty!

[Location is the Streetcar platform at NW 23rd and Marshall.]

Posted by Chris Smith at 8:28 AM | Comments (8) | Permalink

September 11, 2006

Crosswalks: It's Culture, not Engineering

Finishing up a visit to the East Coast, I'm reminded again about my strong feelings about the way we treat crosswalks in Portland.

We're told by the engineers that adding crosswalks gives pedestrians a false sense of security. As an engineering principle, that may have some validity (although new studies question it).

But it's simply the wrong frame. This is not about engineering. It's about instilling a culture among drivers that you stop as soon as a pedestrian puts a foot in the crosswalk.

It's not hard. You just have to keep reinforcing the point. This series of photos from New Hampshire makes it clear:

Tell drivers a crosswalk is coming
Make the crosswalks distinctive, using either different materials or clear color differences. White stripes are not enough
Popup signs are a great additional element. I'm SURE we could talk the business districts in any number of Portland neighborhoods to fund these.

And it works! Drivers really do behave differently around these crosswalks.

Posted by Chris Smith at 8:10 AM | Comments (29) | Permalink

May 3, 2006

PDOT Devalues Crosswalks

Following a tragic pedestrian death in January, the NW District Association asked PDOT to implement a number of safety improvements, including striping crosswalks at all intersections on NW 21st and NW 23rd.

PDOT has issued a draft report in response to this request. While the report does recommend a number of safety improvements, most importantly posting the streets for 20 miles-per-hour, it recommends against marking additional crosswalks.

While it's clear to me that the speed limit is going to have much more impact on safety than the crosswalks, I am nonetheless extraordinarily frustrated by the crosswalk recommendation. NWDA had a fallback request, to just stripe the intersections where curb extensions have been installed to make pedestrian (and bicycle) crossings easier. PDOT also recommends against this. In essence PDOT's position seems to be that crosswalks are a nice tool to show the pedestrians where to walk, but we don't want to train drivers to respond to them, since we'd be training drivers to ignore their duty to yield to pedestrians at all intersections.

The are several very good reasons to maintain the status quo practice of marking uncontrolled intersections only when special circumstances exist. First, drivers must recognize that pedestrians can legally cross (and will) at unmarked crosswalks. No matter how aggressive a practice we pursue for marking crosswalks in high activity areas, there will still be thousands of unmarked crosswalks in the City. We do not want drivers to infer that marked crossings are the only locations where they need to be alert for pedestrians crossing the street.

Even more infuriating is a cost argument:

Secondly, our maintenance resources are very constrained and service levels have already been reduced as system growth has outpaced maintenance resources. Without an increase in resources for pavement marking maintenance, a more aggressive practice for marking crosswalks is not sustainable. It is questionable to consider expanding our pavement marking assets significantly if the resources are not available to maintain these assets in acceptable condition. Finally, the safety benefits of the alternatives are very marginal and the benefits would probably fall short of break-even in a benefit/cost test.

The estimate to stripe crosswalks in business districts similar to NW 23rd across the city is $300K, with $85K in annual maintenance. Having just served on the PDOT Budget Advisory Committee, where we found more than $6M in savings, I am confident that finding $85K annually is not beyond the ingenuity of PDOT's management team.

What frustrates me is that we're creating a culture of ignoring pedestrians. I've collected photos around the country and around the world of pedestrian crossing treatments. Other jurisdictions don't appear to be afraid to call out pedestrian crossing sites, and I think we're absolutely blowing it by failing to emphasis places where we want pedestrians to have priority.

Commissioner Adams is meeting with the neighborhood next week, and I hope our Commissioner of Transportation can start changing this culture.

On the upside the report does point out that new signage has recently been approved that can be placed on the center-line in pedestrian crossings. I hope we'll start seeing these pop up all over the city. It would be a good step in changing the culture.

Posted by Chris Smith at 6:33 AM | Comments (12) | Permalink

April 12, 2006

Safety vs. Convenience

A few months ago, a pedestrian was tragically killed on NW 23rd not far from my home. The immediate response from the neighborhood was to ask for lower speed limits and striped crosswalks at all intersections.

The Tribune reported yesterday that the business association has withdrawn their support for the crosswalks. Apparently they are concerned that this would force parking removal at the corners.

There are a couple of aspects of this that I want to explore:

1) I think we could figure out how to provide crosswalks without changing the parking, and we should separate the issues.

2) There is a real safety problem at the corners because of the visibility issues created by the parked cars. I'm teaching my 16-year-old step-daughter to drive, and skill #1 to get off our block is to learn to look between and through the windows of parked cars to see if it's safe to turn out onto NW 23rd. Removing parking is one solution, but probably not a popular one to any group in the neighborhood. Another option would be to enforce the existing regulations that prohibit tall vehicles within a certain distance of the corner (kudos to anyone who can find the code section for me).

How do other neighborhoods feel about this problem and potential solutions?

Posted by Chris Smith at 6:50 AM | Comments (21) | Permalink

January 11, 2006

Updated: Crosswalk Enforcement Action Tomorrow

Update 11 January 2006:

Over at Commissioner Sam they're reporting that 25 citations were issued, 10 of them to bikes and peds.

The Commissioner reportedly survived the exercise.

Commissioner Sam Adams will be the decoy tomorrow for a pedestrian crossing enforcement action at the downtown YWCA (1111 SW 10th). The location was selected because of the number of seniors that use the crossing.

The press event is at 9:30am and the ticketing begins in earnest at 10am.

I wonder what the fine is for running over a City Council member? Let's hope Sam is nimble.

We'll post the ticket stats here as an update when they're out.

Posted by Chris Smith at 8:50 PM | Comments (1) | Permalink

December 16, 2005

From our Readers

Cate points us to an editorial she heard on KINK about crosswalk safety.

And Ron wants to remind us of the UN-HABITAT World Urban Forum in Vancouver, BC:

http://www.wuf3-fum3.ca/
http://www.unhabitat.org/wuf/2006/default.asp
http://www.unhabitat.org/

Posted by Chris Smith at 11:06 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink