That's a good idea, Don. But many companies who employ these drivers already have dispatchers that are supposed to tell them best routes. The truck in the pic is an air freight company, and I know they have a dispatcher.
I used to work for a moving company and our dispatcher always made sure the truckers knew what route to travel.
Signage always makes things easier, though.

I don't know about trying to get truckers to take a safe route. I'm not sure it would work. Some of those trucks are delivering to grocery stores and restaurants/bars in Ballard and have no other access except Market or Leary. Also, the two people I know who were truckers made their living snorting coke and driving for 72 hours straight before crashing for a few hours then starting the whole thing up again. I know that is not ALL truckers (a cousin of mine was a trucker and didn't do that) but I imagine it's not all that unusual considering the job description of "get it a long ways and fast".

The problem is that a lot of truckers are not residents of the area and so are unfamiliar with what the best and easiest routes are for oversize vehicles. We've had multiple scrapes on this corner and others. About 20 years ago, a semi looking for an exit off of Queen Anne Hill barreled down the north side and plowed into the barrier at Florentia. I recall a large semi heading out of Ballard to I-5 stopped just before the Aurora underpass when he realized he was too tall, a truck even took out the Pergola in Pioneer Square.

I think that the city should institute a program of signage and maps for trucks, letting them know where the approved truck routes are.

There is a Truck Routes map online and made available to the freight community. It shows major routes and arterials.

http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/freight.h...

Balancing the needs of freight vs the needs pedestrians is complicated as those needs are so often at opposite ends of the spectrum.

The trucks should be smaller.

Excellent point Kim, this is the major fly in the ointment of taking care of the obvious issues.Why is the first step towards solving a clear issue always to get the thing good and cloudy first, whatever the cost? Is a more complicated approach required?
How do we benefit from this?
Ooops, I just called for another million dollar study. Sorry folks ;-)

@ Anneliese -- Oddly enough, the only time the SPD left an officer at the intersection of 15th & Market was when they were rubbing there greedy fat hands together counting all the revenue they would be earning after installing the red-light cameras.

My guess is that that officer was there (lurking in front of the Walgreen's at the bus stop) for a solid month--perhaps even six weeks.

And perhaps the City will do better to have a communications or PR person respond rather than set their engineers up for (additional) failure.

Also a good point, Ironymaiden. I'm a fast walker most of the time, and actually scamper across at crosswalks, but that particular timer is very short for such a long crossing.
The city officials will do what they want to do with it, no matter what we say. But it would be nice if they could find a solution (for once) that doesn't mess things up more for pedestrians. And Ballard has a lot of us.

Yes SDOT has lots of knowledge of all our
faulty infrastructure problems,....I am
sorry but this is a broken dept of our government. REMEMBER our taxes pay them,...they work for us Residents and Business owners. If I had my chance I would clean house bigtime!!!!

it's a tough intersection as a pedestrian. the walk sign goes into countdown before you're halfway across. i'm healthy and walk at a brisk pace. i don't know how the seniors heading for Walgreens do it.

15th & Market is a tough intersection for more than the trucks-driving-up-on-the-curb issue... I've heard/seen some scary incidents in that area like bums going up to peoples' cars, people jaywalking and nearly getting hit, etc. Maybe SPD can leave a traffic patrol there to help sort things out?

so you'd prefer that they just rip up & redesign the intersection at random without taking a little time to think about the ramificaitons? I'd rather wait an extra month or so while they consider the pros & cons of the various options.

As a pedestrian I can tell you that making the crossing light longer will cause more people to attempt to jaywalk. My fellow walkers have no patience and rarely go all the way (ten whole feet) to a crosswalk to begin with.
Some may just call that Darwin's selective process but an ambulance crew can cause a big traffic mess.
And reducing sidewalk space would make it a lot more difficult for wheelchairs and strollers than the cracked sidewalks on 15th already do.
Can't they come up with a solution that won't make things worse?

the city KNOWS a lot. but do they ever do anything???? knowledge and action are two totally separate things. the city will need to spend 1.5 million dollars on a study first before anything will happen.

And Widstrand does not think that huge rigs having to drive up onto the existing sidewalk does not make pedastrian crossing more challenging? Aaaaagh. Our city government drives me nuts.