Crosswalk located within parallel travel lane
I started this month talking about how Lisi Bansen was struck by a car as she traveled on Delmar using her manual wheelchair (post). There she had no sidewalk available. The city finally came through with sidewalks connecting accessible apartments and a store two blocks away – four years after she died.
At the intersection of Truman Parkway & Chouteau (map) the situation is both different and the same.
- Different: sidewalks, curb cuts, crosswalks and signals are all in place.
- Same: a person is likely to get hit by a car when using these facilities as designed and built.
Most of us understand that as pedestrians you cross a street parallel with vehicular traffic. But the problem is, at this intersection, is the crosswalk in placed within the parallel travel lane. Who as the right-of-way? The motorist driving in the lane or the pedestrian within the crosswalk? Both can’t have the right to the same space. I know who would lose in a conflict!
After seeing the situation from my car and grabbing images from Google’s Street View I knew I had to see if the situation was different than it appeared. It is different than it first appears. Not any better, just different.
Driving Southbound on Truman Parkway I pulled over out of the way just before Chouteau to observe the signals. Traffic on Truman Parkway got the green but the pedestrian signal never got the okay to cross signal. Then I spotted a button for pedestrians to activate the crosswalk signal. So a person activates the signal when needed. Problem solved, right? Not quite!
I parked a block away and walked to the SW corner of the intersection to see how the signals functioned. Approaching the corner I see the button on the signal post.
This is an old type button that a blind person wouldn’t know if it was working. New buttons give you an audible feedback to to let you know they have been pressed. Using the button you are facing away from the intersection. But guess what? The button doesn’t do anything!
In the above image is another button at the same corner. The first is in the shadow line of this poll. If you look you can see the don’t walk on the pedestrian signal across Chouteau. This button does actually work, sorta.
Above I’m standing at the ramp — the place where you’d stand if you wanted to cross. The walk signal is activated in the above. Don’t see it? Look behind the light poll and it is on for a few seconds. Yes, the signal to walk is blocked by a pole. The don’t walk begins to flash almost immediately.
I’d say 98% of the intersections in the city do not require a pedestrian to press a button to get the okay to walk signal. The other crossings at the intersection to not require the pedestrian to activate the signal. Why is this so different from others?
It goes back to that curb ramp. After the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 the City of St. Louis was faced with thousands of intersections that needed curb ramps. When designing from scratch each intersection would ideally get 8 ramps – two per corner to handle each direction of travel. To save money and get more intersections in compliance the city opted for only four curb ramps per intersection.  This This meant that crossing either street you’d use the same ramp. In your typical residential intersection this was a reasonable compromise. Often it was the only physical way because of sewer drains or other infrastructure in the way.
The problem is that since those early days even when new intersections are created (such as the above), when curbs are replaced, the engineers seem to incorrectly think the compromise of a single curb cut per corner is adequate. Because they only used a single curb ramp on the SW corner of this intersection they had to do the pedestrian activated signal. But the button is to far away from the point where you’d cross and as mentioned when you are at the crossing point you can’t see the signal!
On this corner there is nothing to prevent a curb ramp in a better location. Rather than have the pedestrian activated signal that you can’t see it would have been cheaper and better to have a second ramp to pull the crosswalk out of the Southbound travel lane.
Engineers do a great job of planning for motorists but they do a lousy job for pedestrians. Projects involving pedestrian routes should be reviewed while on paper.
– Steve Patterson
