News In Other Neighborhoods
posted by on November 9 at 16:05 PM
Fremont In a safety campaign that has many neighbors puzzled, the Seattle Department of Transportation has removed 24 crosswalks since 2002 and has designs on removing 10 more. Several local businesses have taken issue with the city’s plan, saying it bows to drivers’ need for speed by using the excuse of safety. Charles Hadrann, who owns the Wright Brothers Cycle Works on North 36th Street near Greenwood Avenue, says removing the crosswalk by his store will decrease safety. He invoked the tradition of Gandhi in a letter of complaint to the Seattle City Council, making not-so-veiled threats about “the right of citizens to nonviolent protests, which includes the right for large numbers of pedestrians to march across crosswalks, blocking traffic for 20 or 30 minutes, two or three days a week, including rush hour.” The city department of transportation says their plans to remove the crosswalks are based on a 2002 study by the Federal Highway Administration that showed some unsignaled crosswalks can actually increase the risk of accidents. Fremont Pete Hanning at the Red Door in Fremont is installing a six-foot Rainier Beer R on his bar’s patio. This is not THE R, the one that once topped the plant near Georgetown where a Tully’s T now perches. But it is still a historic R, Hanning says. Over the last year, it traveled around the city in the back of a pickup truck, coming to rest occasionally at bars like the Summit Public House, before Pabst, which now owns Rainier, donated the giant neon consonant to the History House in Fremont. Rainier brewing was sold in 1999 to Pabst, which closed the Seattle plant. The Museum of History and Industry holds the original R. Hanning is lighting the sign at an event at his bar Friday, November 10, at 6:00 p.m. U-District The October 29 shooting on frat row at the University of Washington prompted increased policing and such extraordinary measures as a 2:00 a.m. curfew at Delta Upsilon. According to senior Anthony Shears, it also drew a protest by members of the black student union, who felt reports in the student paper describing the suspects as black males in their 20s cast a net so wide as to include all black male students. Members of the union, Shears said, have collected photographs of students who fit that description, each holding a placard that says “suspect.” Organizers have yet to decide how to display the protest mug shots.
Fremont Rules!
So, are you EVER going to cover the Space In Fremont artwork, seeing as the 40 foot tall steel support for the hanging solar system will be welded this weekend and will make Lenin look small?
I've thought of going out some night and repainting the crosswalk just because.
As we all know, in Fremont, Pedestrians Rule.
After seeing a picture of hunky Pete Hanning in last week's paper, I support regular coverage of his every move.
These stupid fucks have been going on about this magic study that proves that marked crosswalks are dangerous for some time now. It's a load of hooey. Yes, it can be dangerous if a pedestrian thinks he or she doesn't have to look out. But unmarked crosswalks -- and every single intersection in the city is an crosswalk unless specifically signed -- is like a thruway for drivers. I just this minute crossed 45th in Wallingford, and a half-dozen cars zoomed by without stopping, and the one that finally did stop did so unwillingly.
In my odder moments I actually fantasize about being (non-fatally) mowed down by some millionaire's kid, and suing the shit out of the bastard as a result.
Remember, kids: at an intersection the pedestrian has the absolute uncontested no-doubt-about-it immediate right of way. If ONE CAR goes past without stopping, that driver is in violation of the law. If that driver is zooming past me, he or she is likely to catch a blob of warm sputum on the windshield. Fuckers.
Marked crosswalks are imperfect but necessary when faced with drivers who have no other interest besides their own travel.
Even if you believe that 2002 study, the solution proposed was not to remove crosswalks, but rather to add more traffic control devices, like stoplights for drivers.
Who works at the city transportation department? They are consistently hostile to anyone but SOV drivers, forcing through policies outright hazardous and hateful towards bicyclists and pedestrians.
Good god, 36th and Greenwood is the last place to take out a marked crosswalk, with all the late night drunks in that area. Putting one in at Evanston and 36th has probably saved a half dozen lives in the last ½ year.
How about leaving all of the crosswalks and putting in strategically placed stop signs and lights to slow traffic down? Oh right. No one fucking matters except drivers. Silly me.
How about leaving all of the crosswalks and putting in strategically placed stop signs and lights to slow traffic down? Oh right. No one fucking matters except drivers. Silly me.
It won't matter. Seattle pedestrians either think they're wearing a Cloak of Invincibility or believe that cars can go from 25 mph to 0 in a distance of six feet.
Legalize jaywalking.
I like cameras with lasers to shoot cars that get too close to pedestrian crosswalks when there are pedestrians in them.
That would work.
Or IEDs.
Different take on the same stupid phenomena. On Stone Way, they want to remove two lanes of traffic on an arterial (which, I would add, doesn't exactly have a ton of bike or ped traffic, near as I can tell), and they are using the removal of crosswalks as a threat/rationale for a project that is actually hostile to drivers.
While I think this is (at least in some instances) a stalking horse for attempts to impose traffic calming on arterials, I fully agree with the posters above that it is an incredibly wrongheaded way to go about making streets more pedestrian-friently.
Stone Way is the reason I don't ride my bike to work. Murderous.
I hope Orv realizes that if he hits a ped in an intersection, it won't matter to the cop one bit whether he had time to stop or not. The ped has the right of way.
They don't have to legalize jaywalking; they just need to extend the right of way to pedestrians all the way: any part of the block, at any time, no exceptions whatsoever. Like in Boston. Hit a ped, go to jail, even if he leaps up out from between two parked cars.
Yep, nothing will settle the ped-driver problem better than good old fashiooned mud-slinging hate from both sides! Because that totally isn't the reason the problem exists in the first place!
Anyway, the U District story is of note to me, as I walk along that very Frat Row, where the shooting took place, to get home to my apartment, which is near frat row. Fortunately I don't go out Sunday nights, and I'm even home most Saturday nights, so I wasn't anywhere near 45th or 47th Streets at the time.
If you can't tell until six feet from the intersection that there is someone trying to cross, then 25mph is too fast for you to be driving.
Seattle is more a death-penalty-for-jaywalking sort of town. A bunch of frustrated ex-SoCal folk.
People for whom a half-block walk in a light drizzle is an unthinkable act. People who believe a proportional response to a tiny delay is mangling.
Even Manhattan is safer for peds and cyclists.
Re #14: Well, you would think so, but I've had some close calls where people ran out in front of me or dashed across on bicycles and I had very little time to react. One guy on a bike shot across a residential crosswalk at about 15 mph, from one sidewalk to the other, and my view of him was blocked by a hedge until he was on the roadway. I'm sure you're right, though, if I'd hit him it would have been considered my fault even though he was acting in a way that I'd consider clearly unsafe.
I'm not too happy with passive-aggressive Seattleite pedestrians who can't make their intentions clear. If you're crossing, cross; if you're not, stand the motherfucking hell away from the curb. At least face the street; every day I pass people who are just sort of hanging around the corner, who as I pass make it apparent that they really were intent on crossing. It's all about communication (that goes for assholes who signal after they turn too).
Amen to that. I will stop for people who actually look like they are going to cross, and maybe try to make eye contact to show they are trying to cross, but I hate the ones who stand by the curb, looking away from the street, acting like they aren't planning to cross at all, then suddenly step into the street without even looking your way first. Morons!
I think some lucky jag-off recently got run over in Capitol hill for j-walking - ha - serves em right.
I think that everyone could probably be more safe in our area. However, i have a beef with both sides. The bikes need to stop driving in the middle of the road like a car going 5 mph at rush hour and expect people to be happy about it, then when they feel like it they just change direction and turn into a pedestrian so that they can go wherever they want. Pedestrians seem super smart too when they're wearing dark jeans and a black shirt then expect us to see them when it's raining and dark by 3:30 pm now.
However, cars do go entirely too fast (and i fall into that) on smaller streets (like there are any other kind in seattle) because we all just want to get where we are headed.
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