Given your expertise in this area, I hope you will advocate for a professional engineer with the qualifications to recommend solutions that honor our local pedestrian-friendly culture and desire for a robust mass transit system while achieving the safest possible community for all.

And please, let’s not rely solely on the expertise of traffic engineers. Those are the people who gave us the four-second walk signal, which is now all to common in Ann Arbor. And traffic lights that never turn green for bicycles. And a 45 mph speed limit on the residential portion of Washtenaw Ave. And pedestrian crossing buttons that don’t do anything.

I prefer to live in the safest possible community. We need physical, engineering solutions, not an ordinance that is little more than an inexpensive social policy for pedestrian rights. Traffic engineers have solutions for 10-minute waits and it starts with a gap analysis, followed by expensive, at least relative to an ordinance, physical changes to the roadway and traffic control devices.

We need an independent, professional engineer who can evaluate the crosswalk conditions and pedestrian crash statistics, and make recommendations to improve safety. Next we need to advocate for immediate funding for the physical improvements, an effective, safety-based educational campaign and adequate enforcement.

In addition, state reps, including Adam Zemke, are looking into a state crosswalk law consistent with the MUTC. Greater uniformity across the state will reduce ambiguity and improve safety at crosswalks.

I am not suggesting that repeal of the ordinance would change the kind of place Ann Arbor is or might become. I am suggesting that changing our ordinance did not resolve the problem that led to its adoption. Our ordinance was changed in response to complaints from the Biking and Walking Coalition about the difficulty residents have crossing the street.

The fatality accident on Plymouth Road would have happened under either the uniform code or the Ann Arbor ordinance. That indicates we need to try something other than tinkering with the text of the law.

I believe the problem would be better addressed through enforcement and education. But the current ordinance is difficult to enforce (ask a police officer) and the current “educational” effort is, at best, misleading. Thus, I would start by returning to the uniform code used in other communities, accompanied by increased enforcement and appropriate education.

As for crosswalks that pose long waits to cross the street, I believe we must address those on a case by case basis using the expertise of traffic engineers (not transportation planners). I would hope for consistency in signals and signs for our crosswalks. Let’s not use white or yellow flashing lights when we wish to indicate the need to stop. Red means stop.

The uniform traffic code gives pedestrians the right of way. Drivers were not obeying that law. Making the law more demanding does not affect the rate of compliance. Enforcement of the law addresses the rate of compliance.

The kind of place I would like to live is a town where a pedestrian can actually cross the street safely. That will take more than our current ordinance provides.

Identify the problem. Try a response. Measure the results. If the response to the problem doesn’t resolve the problem, try something else. If we return to the uniform code and try engineering, education, and enforcement and that does not work, I would be willing to try something else.

I did not (and do not) pretend to know much about Mr. Williams. My comments were strictly about potty mouth from would-be and public officials.

Civility in our public discourse, and in our political spaces, has and continues to degrade. The reasons for this are varied, and not my topic here. Self-censorship is the larger part of public civility; forbearing references to sexual intercourse, feces, and “Sunday words not used in the Sunday Manner”, when none of these are the topic of conversation, strikes me as an encouragement to civility, as well as an indicator of the judgement of a person using these references.

@10 & 13

Encouraging pedestrians to cross mid-block (sans crosswalk) on heavily traveled streets defeats the purpose of having crosswalks, which is to make clear to motorists where to expect pedestrians, thus increasing the chance that they will see (and therefore avoid) pedestrians. In California, crossing outside of a crosswalk gets you a ticket, and motorists stop for pedestrians at the crosswalk.

Increasing the alertness of motorists to pedestrians makes both driving and street-crossing safer for everyone. This is why, at Safety Town, kindergarteners are taught to cross at crosswalks after looking both ways. I don’t think you really mean that we should teach kids to cross mid-block without looking, but that seems to be the sort of place where your argument leads.

Dave, I wonder if you are conflating distracted drivers (even those simply lost in their thoughts, or obsessed with what is to happen at their destination) with willful intent to run over pedestrians. Do you truly know people who would chose to hit a pedestrian, whether in or out of a crosswalk?

Sharing the road implies that all users yield to each other in one way or another. If it’s reasonable to require cars to stop at marked crosswalks, its also reasonable for require pedestrians to cross only at crosswalks.

That was not an analysis. It was rhetoric.

The recent pedestrian death is not attributable to the crosswalk law, since it occurred at a signalized crosswalk. However, it is illustrative of the problem we have with motorists who are not sufficiently observant or law-abiding to make this law work.

I believe (note, not a statement supported by data analysis) that anything that creates a sense of over-confidence on the part of pedestrians does put them at greater hazard.

My comment was inspired in large part by your belief statement, “when chief Seto describes the police staffing levels as adequate for reactive but not as much proactive policing as he’d like, I don’t think it follows from that statement that there’s not enough police staffing to enforce the crosswalk ordinance.”

My point is that we should not promise more safety than we can deliver. And especially with what I have observed of drivers here, that means enforcement. Which needs police staffing. Which is at the core of this debate.

No reasonable person would disagree with this statement. But I think the associated implication – that Ann Arbor’s crosswalk law has led to injury and death for pedestrians – should include a supporting argument. If you’d like to make a case for that implication, then I think you should lay out that case – in the kind of detail you would demand of someone who asserted that the new crosswalk law has improved mobility and the quality of life for pedestrians by improving motorist behavior at mid-block crosswalks. A persuasive case should include more than a citation of trends for total number of ped-vehicle crashes (that’s shown somewhat of an increase in the last two years, as The Chronicle has reported.) It would necessarily include an analysis of just the crashes at mid-block crosswalks, and how they have trended, as well as an examination of the crash reports and perhaps even interviewing the peds involved to determine if they were aware of any laws regarding pedestrian and motorist behavior at mid-block crosswalks. That’s a hard, if not impossible project for a rank-and-file citizen to complete. But the topic deserves more, I think, than an unsupported implication that Ann Arbor’s crosswalk ordinance has led to pedestrian injury and death.

“Believing what you fear makes it true for you, and that doesn’t make it true.”

Apropos for whom? How would I know? If the shoe doesn’t fit, don’t wear it.

I’m against any ordinance that leads to injury and death for pedestrians. Until we have a behavior modification program (sometimes called enforcement or maybe radio waves would work) for many motorists in our town, it is pointless to insist that pedestrians expect obedience to this ordinance.

I’ve written to my council members asking for more enforcement for traffic laws, including running red lights. I see a lot of that, which puts pedestrians, cyclists, and other motorists at risk. At the intersection of Fourth and Catherine, I have frequently found that motorists enter the intersection even when I am part way across the crosswalk. The other day I was deciding whether to enter and (against stereotype) the driver of a red pickup waved me through, at which point a car came toward me from the other side, so I scurried back onto the curb. The pickup driver said “he should have stopped”.

Yeah, right.