How one ABQ student got the city’s attention over pedestrian safety

Sometimes it may seem that public concerns brought to city officials go willfully unheard. But one University of New Mexico student’s persistence and determination on pedestrian safety got her a scheduled meeting with city development heads.

Like most students with busy schedules, Jackie Davis risks jaywalking across Central Avenue near UNM. After noticing hundreds of people crossing the same “dangerous” street, Davis decided to take action. One morning she counted over 60 people crossing in a little over an hour.

Davis, a geography student at UNM, said she crosses the street at Buena Vista Drive and Central to get to class despite the “no pedestrian crossing” signs. Pedestrians are instead directed to use the crosswalks at Yale Boulevard or University Boulevard more than 500 feet away.

“I cross there every single day that I go to class,” Davis said. “For a while, I really tried not to because I perceived it as being pretty dangerous to cross there. I ended up going about six minutes out of the way, going up to Yale and crossing there but as the semester goes on, schedules get a little tighter, and crossing there became a necessity.”

In February, Davis went to an Albuquerque City Council meeting and told councilors and the administration that they “might not be aware that there needs to be a crosswalk here.”

Davis said she was told by a Department of Municipal Development (DMD) employee that a crosswalk could not be installed without a crosswalk signal.

“A signal, from what I know, would require a lot of crossing, so that’s where I got the idea to show that this is not just me,” Davis said. “I went and set up for about four hours back in April and collected some data on how many people were crossing there. It’s not just a few people every day, it’s hundreds of people on a daily basis.”

Davis attended another council meeting in May and presented the data she collected — showing more than 40 people crossing there every hour in the morning.

The data also showed the crosswalks at Yale and University Boulevards are more than 1,300 feet apart. Davis found that before the installation of the Albuquerque Rapid Transit (ART) lane, there were no signs prohibiting pedestrians from crossing and it “appeared to be allowed, although it was not protected by a crosswalk or large median refuge.”

The ART bus lane is in the westbound traffic lane, but buses use it to travel both east and west. Davis said with the bus going in both directions in one lane, “people are not looking both ways and there’s some close calls with the bus pretty frequently.”

Davis raised her concerns about the issue for the third time at a council meeting on Aug. 19 and presented new data she collected that day. Her data showed 65 people crossing in that area from 8:45 to 10 a.m.

After the meeting, Davis spoke with Jennifer Turner, director of the DMD, and scheduled a meeting with the department to discuss the potential of a crosswalk at the intersection.

Timothy Brown, traffic engineering division manager for the DMD, confirmed a meeting on Sept. 4 and said there is a process for determining where to put crosswalks but did not specify which locations take priority.

“DMD is in the process of prioritizing the many locations in the City where our infrastructure does not meet current best practices,” Brown said. “Number of crashes and usage volume are two of the key components of that prioritization.”

Davis said she feels confident about the DMD looking into the issue.

“I think this is a more complicated intersection than a lot they’re probably dealing with, obviously because of the transit overlap,” Davis said. “I think it may take a little while, but I’m hoping to see some progress on it relatively soon.”

The post How one ABQ student got the city’s attention over pedestrian safety appeared first on City Desk ABQ .