Illustration by The Chronicle.

In broad strokes, the Ann Arbor city council first enacted a local crosswalk ordinance in 2008. The law was supposed to explain how motorists and pedestrians should interact at crosswalks. In 2010 the council modified the law, and in 2011 gave it a further tweak. After those revisions, for the last two years, Ann Arbor local law has differed from the Uniform Traffic Code (UTC) rule in two ways.

First, under current local law, motorists in Ann Arbor are supposed to yield the right-of-way to those pedestrians not just “within a crosswalk” but also to those who are “stopped at the curb, curb line or ramp leading to a crosswalk.” Second, when driving toward a crosswalk, motorists in Ann Arbor don’t have the option to yield to a pedestrian by merely slowing down; instead they’re required to yield by stopping.

The proposal the council will consider for final approval would scrap the whole section of the city code, reverting to a reliance on the UTC – which allows slowing for pedestrians, stopping only when necessary, and does not apply to any pedestrians other than those within a crosswalk.

A council majority of six members is currently supporting the repeal – Sumi Kailasapathy (Ward 1), Jane Lumm (Ward 2), Sally Petersen (Ward 2), Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3), Jack Eaton (Ward 4) and Mike Anglin (Ward 5) – with five of them sponsoring it. According to sources from both groups, backchannel discussion has included the possibility of a compromise on Dec. 2 that would leave in place the requirement to stop, but would still confine the motorist’s responsibility to yield to just those pedestrians within the crosswalk. The regular city council Sunday caucus has been shifted from 7 p.m. to 1 p.m. to allow for better attendance to discuss the crosswalk ordinance.

Given the historical background of the 2010 change, I’m not sure that the compromise solution makes much logical sense. And I think that the current words on the page – which extend the right-of-way to pedestrians at the curb – more nearly reflect the kind of community to which we should aspire.

But that sort of compromise might offer a chance for us as a community to stop (not just slow down) fighting about words on the page and to give full gas to education and enforcement. And I’m for that, especially in the context of the pedestrian safety task force that the council established on Nov. 18. Members of the task force will be appointed at the Dec. 16 meeting based on applications received by Dec. 2.

This sort of “compromise” could serve the same function as gravy at a Thanksgiving dinner: You load up a plate of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cornbread, and then, when the green bean casserole is passed your way, you take some of that too, because Aunt Dorothy (rest in peace) is looking right at you and it’d be impolite to refuse, even though green bean casserole is flat-out gross, so you ladle that “compromise gravy” over that heap of food, you clean your plate, and everybody can focus on the task at hand – which includes talking about how good everything tastes.

With or without a compromise, and with or without a repeal, the pedestrian safety task force work is going to be informed by a veritable Thanksgiving feast of data on pedestrian crashes. In response to city council requests, staff have compiled all manner of charts, graphs and maps. And that’s the main purpose of this column: to serve up the compilation of all that data. [.pdf of all charts, graphs and maps]

Based on those reports, I don’t think it’s possible to draw conclusions about any impact the current ordinance might have had on safety – good, bad or indifferent. But a lot of insight from these reports can be gained that might help inform the task force’s activity as they work toward a February 2015 deadline for delivering recommendations to the council.

For readers who are not familiar with the joke answer to the question posed in the headline of this column, it’s provided below. That punchline follows a more detailed history of the local ordinance since 2008, several colorful charts and graphs, and a photograph of former Ward 4 councilmember Marcia Higgins wearing a tiara.

What Does/Did the Law Say?

Here’s what the current law says (as a result of amendment on Dec. 19, 2011):

10:148. Pedestrians crossing streets

(a) When traffic-control signals are not in place or are not in operation, the driver of a vehicle shall stop before entering a crosswalk and yield the right-of-way to any pedestrian stopped at the curb, curb line or ramp leading to a crosswalk and to every pedestrian within a crosswalk when the pedestrian is on the half of the roadway on which the vehicle is traveling or when the pedestrian is approaching so closely from the opposite half of the roadway as to be in danger.

(b) A pedestrian shall not suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety and walk or run into a path of a vehicle that is so close that it is impossible for the driver to yield.

(c) Every pedestrian crossing a roadway at any point other than within a marked crosswalk or within an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection shall yield the right-of-way to all vehicles upon the roadway. (Corresponds to UTC rule 706)

Here’s how the law read for a year and a half before that change (as a result of amendment on July 19, 2010):

10:148.  Pedestrians crossing streets.

(a) When traffic-control signals are not in place or are not in operation, the driver of a vehicle shall stop and yield the right-of-way to every pedestrian approaching or within a crosswalk.

(b) A pedestrian shall not suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety and walk or run into a path of a vehicle that is so close that it is impossible for the driver to yield.

(c) Every pedestrian crossing a roadway at any point other than within a marked crosswalk or within an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection shall yield the right-of-way to all vehicles upon the roadway.

The section was first added to the city code on May 5, 2008, and read as follows:

10:148. Pedestrians crossing streets.

(a) No pedestrian shall cross a street at a location other than at a crosswalk into which vehicle traffic is then restricted by a traffic control device unless such crossing may be done safely and without interfering with motor vehicle and bicycle traffic on that street.

(b) No operator of a motor vehicle or bicycle shall interfere with pedestrian or bicycle traffic in a crosswalk into which vehicle traffic is then restricted by a traffic control device.

(c) When traffic-control signals are not in place or are not in operation, the driver of a vehicle shall yield the right-of-way, slowing down or stopping if need be to so yield, to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within a crosswalk when the pedestrian is on the half of the roadway on which the vehicle is traveling or when the pedestrian is approaching so closely from the opposite half of the roadway as to be in danger, but a pedestrian shall not suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety and walk or run into a path of a vehicle that is so close that it is impossible for the driver to yield.

If the city’s ordinance were repealed, the city could still rely on UTC Rules 702 and 706, because the city has adopted the UTC:

UTC Rule 702
When traffic-control signals are not in place or are not in operation, the driver of a vehicle shall yield the right-of-way, slowing down or stopping if need be to so yield, to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within a crosswalk when the pedestrian is on the half of the roadway on which the vehicle is traveling or when the pedestrian is approaching so closely from the opposite half of the roadway as to be in danger, but a pedestrian shall not suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety and walk or run into a path of a vehicle that is so close that it is impossible for the driver to yield.
…

UTC Rule 706
Every pedestrian who crosses a roadway at any point other than within a marked crosswalk at an intersection shall yield the right-of-way to all vehicles on the roadway.

Why Is “Stop” Included?

In the summer of 2010, when the council was asked to contemplate revising the ordinance, the focus was not on the manner in which a motorist was supposed to yield to a pedestrian (slowing versus stopping). The focus was entirely on which pedestrians should trigger the yielding behavior. One of the differences between the 2010 version and the 2011 version was that in 2011, the set of pedestrians that motorists were required to accommodate was reduced – to just those on the half of the roadway where the motorists are traveling.

The council wasn’t initially asked in 2010 to adopt a requirement that motorists stop. Here’s the wording in the original language the council was asked to approve back then:

(a) When traffic-control signals are not in place or are not in operation, the driver of a vehicle shall yield the right-of-way to every pedestrian approaching or within a crosswalk.

So how did that wind up getting changed to “stop and yield”?

On Nov. 7, 2013 – at her final meeting representing Ward 4 after 14  years serving on the Ann Arbor city council – Marcia Higgins donned the tiara presented to her by her colleagues.

The change came during council deliberations on July 19, 2010 about the interpretation of the word “yield.” Barnett Jones, who was then Ann Arbor police chief, told the council that he actually preferred language that was more blunt than “yield” – like “stop.”

And so Marcia Higgins, who at that time represented Ward 4 on the city council, moved to amend the revisions by changing the wording to “stop and yield.”

The UTC language includes the word stop, but with a hedge: “…  slowing down or stopping if need be to so yield.” So if the compromise is to retain the requirement to stop – but remove the language that extends the right-of-way to pedestrians other than those who are within the crosswalk – then the compromise wouldn’t address the main concern that pedestrian advocates had back in 2010. They had not objected to the inclusion of a requirement to stop, but that’s not what they’d advocated for. They had mainly wanted motorists to yield the right-of-way to pedestrians before pedestrians enter the roadway – no matter what side of the road a pedestrian is standing.

A point of contention in the current debate is whether extending the right-of-way to a broader range of pedestrians is “unique” to Ann Arbor. At the Nov. 18 council meeting, Chuck Warpehoski (Ward 5) offered the results of an Internet search, which he appeared to have done on the fly during the meeting. That search turned up the ordinance language used in Boulder, Colorado, which reads: “A driver shall yield the right of way to every pedestrian on a sidewalk or approaching or within a crosswalk.”

And in Seattle, a similar effect is achieved by defining the crosswalk to extend from the roadway through the curb to the opposite edge of the sidewalk: “‘Crosswalk’ means the portion of the roadway between the intersection area and a prolongation or connection of the farthest sidewalk line or in the event there are no sidewalks then between the intersection area and a line ten feet therefrom, except as modified by a marked crosswalk.”

No Stomach for a Food Fight

I get around town exclusively by bicycle or on foot. And my perception is that motorists are more likely to yield to me as a pedestrian nowadays than they were a few years ago. The Washtenaw Bicycling and Walking Coalition has made a more systematic effort to measure this difference. As part of that effort, WBWC volunteers measured a 1.7% stop rate for one crosswalk on Plymouth Road in the spring of 2011 – after enactment of the ordinance, but before an enforcement campaign by the Ann Arbor police department. In the fall of 2011 that rate rose to 9.5%, and by the spring of 2012 it was up to 63.5%. [.pdf of WBWC slides]

A recent study on the effect of rapid flashing beacons and HAWK signals, conducted by Western Michigan University, documents that motorists dramatically increase their compliance when some type of flashing beacon is activated. So I think it would be useful to move ahead with judiciously placed flashing beacons at additional locations in Ann Arbor.

But that same WMU study documents the generally abysmal stopping rates in several locations across the state, including Ann Arbor. And the study documents that Ann Arbor motorists are somewhat more befuddled by some of the pedestrian safety signals than motorists in other places. For example, when confronted by the solid yellow phase of a HAWK signal, 31.13% of motorists in Ann Arbor were “unsure” what to do, compared to just 8.62% of motorists near Wayne State University who were unsure. [.pdf of WMU study] So we certainly have room for improvement on the educational front.

I think some kind of compromise on the repeal might be the most efficient path forward toward additional flashing-beacon type infrastructure and a unified educational and enforcement campaign that we can all support.

So even though the possible compromise does not make logical sense to me – and even though I think that since the limited enforcement campaign associated with the ordinance change has already led to more frequent accommodation of pedestrians by motorists (making it easier to get around town by foot) – at this point I’m not inclined to participate in a food fight. Instead I say: Pass the compromise gravy.

And I’d invite you to check out the charts that city staff have compiled, in many cases pulling data from Michigan Crash Facts.

Charts, Maps

One general caveat is that unless indicated explicitly otherwise, a pedestrian crash is just a traffic crash that involves a pedestrian – which includes those crashes at a crosswalk, not at a crosswalk, at an intersection, or not at an intersection.

To me, the most interesting chart in the bunch was one that looked at risk factors for pedestrians – a way of measuring how safe a community is for pedestrians. The risk factor is computed by taking the number of pedestrian crashes and dividing by the population. [It's not clear to me over what period of time this calculation is done; a query is out.]

When that factor is plotted against the percentage of “walking commuters” based on census data, the descriptive generalization that emerges is this: Pedestrians in cities with a higher percentage of walking commuters are less likely as individuals to be involved in a crash. Ann Arbor, with a computed risk factor of 0.2 and a percentage of walking commuters of nearly 16, shows up toward the lower right in the chart. [.csv file including names of cities corresponding to all the purple squares on the left of the plot]

Chart 1: Risk Factor to Individual Pedestrian Plotted Against Percentage of Walking Commuters. (Chart by the city of Ann Arbor.)

It’s not surprising to learn that the distribution of pedestrian crashes skews toward the late afternoon and evening hours, when people are out and about, and traffic is heavy. That’s the plot reflected in the overall height of the bars in Chart 2 below. What is possibly a little surprising is the proportion of those bars between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. that’s accounted for in November (yellow) and December (red). It’s possible that might be related to the change in light levels and the transition from Daylight Saving Time.

Chart 2: Ann Arbor Pedestrian Crashes by Time of Day. (Chart by the city of Ann Arbor.)

Also not a surprise, but still nice to have documented statistically, is the fact that pedestrian crashes take place on weekdays as compared to weekend days. That’s Chart 3 below:

Chart 3: Ann Arbor Pedestrian Crashes by Weekday. (Chart by the city of Ann Arbor.)

Michigan college cities, shown in Chart 4, show a lot of variability. But from 2011 to 2012, all cities included in the chart – with the exception of Dearborn (which showed a dramatic decrease from 2011 to 2012) and Ann Arbor – show an increase in numbers of pedestrian crashes. For the longer period, East Lansing and Ann Arbor show a similar, somewhat upward trend.

Chart 4: Pedestrian Crashes in Michigan College Cities. (Chart by the city of Ann Arbor.)

As a percentage of all crashes, pedestrian crashes in Ann Arbor show an upward trend – starting in 2003 (Chart 5 below). Data from other college cities nationwide appears to be gappy, but a similar upward trend over the same period doesn’t seem to be attested. Madison, Wisc., for example, shows a slightly downward trend over that period.

Chart 5: College Cities – Pedestrian Crashes as Percentage of All Crashes. (Chart by the city of Ann Arbor.)

As a percentage of all crashes, pedestrian crashes are trending upward. And that’s due to the fact that the raw numbers of total crashes (blue in Chart 6 below) are trending down, while raw numbers of pedestrian crashes (red in Chart 6 below) are trending only slightly down, over a 20-year period.

Chart 6: Raw Numbers of Non-Motorized Crashes versus All Crashes. (Chart by the city of Ann Arbor.)

Geographically, pedestrian crashes are concentrated in the downtown area, as illustrated in Map 7:

Map 7: Plot of Pedestrian Crashes. (Map by the city of Ann Arbor.)

Those crashes can be separated out pre-ordinance change, mid-ordinance change, and post-ordinance change. In Map 8, I’ve combined the city’s maps into a single animated .gif (which required some reshuffling of the color key and some resizing but did not affect the location of the dots on the map):

Map 8: Animation of Pedestrian Plots by Year. (Maps by the city of Ann Arbor, animation and sizing by The Chronicle.)

Tracking Ann Arbor pedestrian crashes by month (Chart 9 below) reveals that in the last two years, the increase includes a clear spike in November of both years (14 pedestrian crashes in each of those Novembers), exceeding the monthly total of any other month in the last eight years.

Chart 9: Ann Arbor Pedestrian Crashes by Month. (Chart by the city of Ann Arbor.)

Comparing pedestrian crashes in Ann Arbor at intersections to pedestrian crashes at other locations shows a clear upward trend for crashes at intersections (red in Chart 10 below), but only a slight upward trend for pedestrian crashes at other locations (blue in Chart 10 below).

Chart 10: Ann Arbor Pedestrian Crash Locations at Intersections versus Other Locations. (Chart by the city of Ann Arbor.)

Comparing the pedestrian crashes at signalized versus non-signalized locations (Chart 11 below), it looks like a wash to me: A somewhat upward trend over the last eight years for total pedestrian crashes appears to be reflected in similar trends for signalized locations compared to non-signalized locations.

Chart 11: Ann Arbor Pedestrian Crashes at Signalized Crashes versus Non-Signalized Locations. (Chart by the city of Ann Arbor.)

Punchline: Because he wasn’t chicken.

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The city’s ordinance, enacted in 2010 and then revised in 2011, differs from the state’s Uniform Traffic Code (UTC) in two respects: (1) requiring motorists to stop for pedestrians, not just to slow as to yield; and (2) requiring motorists explicitly to take action to accommodate pedestrians standing at the curb at a crosswalk, not just those pedestrians who have already entered the crosswalk.

The council gave initial approval to the law, so that slowing (not necessarily stopping) would be a legal way to yield to pedestrians within crosswalks. And only pedestrians “within crosswalks” (not those standing at the curb, depending on the interpretation of the UTC) would need to be accommodated by motorists.

Whether the UTC itself extends the right-of-way to a pedestrian standing at the curb, and not just one who has already entered the street, has been part of the recent debate, as it was back in 2011. Members of the Washtenaw Bicycling and Walking Coalition contend the UTC is already interpreted in other communities to mean that a pedestrian standing at the curb where a crosswalk is marked is “within a crosswalk.”

But in Ann Arbor, they contend that this interpretation is not the prevailing one, based on a 15th District Court ruling in 2000, in a case where judge Libby Hines ruled that a pedestrian standing on the curb had not established the right of way in the crosswalk until she actually steps off the curb into the street. That’s why WBWC members contend that the interpretation should be made explicit – that a pedestrian standing at the curb should be treated by motorists as within the crosswalk under the UTC.

However, it’s not clear if Hines was interpreting the UTC in making that ruling. And that would not necessarily be binding, even on the 15th District Court, according to assistant city attorney Bob West. [Nov. 10, 2011 email by assistant city attorney Bob West]

This brief was filed from the city council’s chambers on the second floor of city hall, located at 301 E. Huron. A more detailed report will follow: [link]