Each day parents, kids and staff at the Ballard Boys and Girls Club (1767 NW 64th St) cross 20th Ave NW at NW 64th St. The problem, according to Executive Director Mark Hendricks, there is no crosswalk.
“To help with parking the club rents the parking lot from the Baptist church,” Executive Director Mark Hendricks tells us. “For our young members and families that means they have to cross 20th Ave which I have been told for years from the city staff that they cannot put in a crosswalk.”
In order to make the families and staff more visible, Hendricks says they’ve come up with somewhat of a solution. “We have placed our own little plywood kids that hold the orange flags for people to use when they cross the street currently,” he says. (Pictured above.)
Now the Seattle Department of Transportation is planning to do a study at this intersection. As part of the changes coming to 20th Ave NW, which includes removing the center lane and adding bike lanes, SDOT is also going to make some pedestrian improvements.
Besides the crosswalk study, pedestrian improvements on 20th Ave NW include:
• Add stop bars to the four-way stop at 20th Ave NW & NW 56th St
• Remark crosswalks at 20th Ave NW & NW 65th St
• Maintain visibility at cross streets by checking parking set-backs at intersections
Marybeth Turner with SDOT tells us that the final decision on the crosswalk at NW 64th St will be made after the study is complete.
Hendricks believes a crosswalk is a step in the right direction. “Anything we can do to minimize the chance of any children being hurt is our highest priority,” Hendricks says. “A crosswalk will not guarantee that no one is hurt crossing a street but I would hope that drivers are just a little more careful and slow down when pedestrians are present.”
I’m all for pedestrian safety, and every intersection is by default a pedestrian crosswalk. But if you don’t feel like you can safely cross the street at 64th, just take the extra couple of minutes to walk up to 65th and cross at the light, lazy ass driver.
I think there should be a crosswalk here of all places.
I’ve walked and biked with small kids to their baseball games and crossing 20th was not always easy with fast vehicle traffic.
why can’t they put one in? I’ve got some white paint…I’ll do it for free.
I’m always in favor of more crosswalks in Ballard. The moderately busy streets have far to few (e.g., Leary, 24th, and of course 20th).
Ballard Boys and Girls Club could also help the situation immeasurably by parking their vans elsewhere, though I suppose that would also pose a challenge. The vans are lined up along that eastside curb and obscure anyone who might be crossing from the building side of the street . . . heads just suddenly pop around the corner of the front van on the corner.
I think it’s a good idea, but the Boys and Girls Club parks all of their vans along the east side of 20th, blocking the view of both cars and pedestrians.
Maybe if they left a little more space between the intersection and their cars this wouldn’t be as big of an issue?
A Modest Proposal: Most drivers never do anything safe unless they see a cop or they see their present behavior will harm their car. Since our police funding is so low, it is unlikely to have police presence here. However, at the club there are plenty of kids that would be more than happy to use their BB guns for some impromptu target practice on cars whose drivers deem their text messaging more important than children.
Win-win: As word gets out that running cross walks results in a trip to the body shop it gets safer. And our children get quality practice time in!
(Disclaimer for the uppity among us: this is a spoof of Jonathan Swift’s Modest Proposal that also dealt with solving a problem in a win-win manner.)
This sort of thing is just going to shove more traffic onto 15th Ave.
Which is an arterial.
Which is where traffic is really supposed to go, rather than on weenie little 20th, which happens to be wide but is effectively just 10 blocks long.
So, this is great!
Everyone back east j-walks and, honestly, I think it’s a lot safer. Some paint on the road, a bike lane, a stop sign, a traffic light or even a cop is not going to help a pedestrian win over a car in a collision. You might win in court, but only if you survive.
In Boston, NYC, etc. we assume cars don’t see us (or, often times, are actively trying to hit us). As long as you enter the road with that attitude things go pretty smoothly. But out here people just waltz into the street. The idiots with the flags out in Kirkland are the worst.
Crossing the street just isn’t that hard. It’s really sad to see some drone waiting for the white-walk signal at 3am in the rain with empty streets as far as the eye can see. Learn to think for yourselves people.
This city of human individuals will never adapt to reduce the use of our ‘seemingly safe’ vehicles and start walking/busing; until the city starts to recognize that crosswalks are mandatory to that effort.
To even HAVE to discuss whether to have one put in at the main intersection of a facility dedicated to children and their families is LUDICRIOUS. Moreover, it results in most of us ‘common folk’ considering them as money wasting pansy’s who aren’t brave/bold enough to be the first to state a definitive opinion and be known by it.
I like that you stated an opinion, I wish that rather than “lazy ass driver” you had stood for what you said by actually signing it. Or is this the latest school of ‘quip”?,I also wish/dare you to be the one to explain to the 12 year old’s your logic.
BTW: Did you see that clip of the kid who ran into the street when being chased? The crosswalk wouldn’t have saved either the kid or the driver from that; but the kid who ran in front of that car is exactly who and what we are talking about, and their impulse control is not so great.
Sure ” Hey kid, just walk another block”. Jeez, half the drivers don’t notice anything that isn’t blinking, flashing, AND making noise these days anyway. Let alone trust a kiddo to be patient and walk up to the crosswalk and wait. W(!)
i agree with your last paragraph but you definitely are an east coast transplant. and aren’t afraid to show it. good luck with the jaywalking cops in this town. you may go broke.
What the hell? SDOT first says there is so little traffic on 20th there should be no adverse affects from removing the center turn lane and installing bike lanes, and now they have to study the street for a crosswalk? Why can’t they use the study they did for the bike lane idea? Oh, right–they didn’t do a study for the bike lanes. Just another crackpot idea, like redoing the 24th and Market intersection to “improve” the efficiency of Metro’s Route 43. Your tax dollars at…well, not work.
Ludicrous? Maybe it’s also ludicrous to think about the money spent for a crosswalk, when one already exists one block north (a short block at that). I think some level of discussion is certainly warranted.
And to an earlier comment, I don’t consider 20th to be “weenie” . . . it might not be an arterial per se, but it’s certainly a busy street with a high volume of traffic.
Agree completely. However, there is one BIG difference: the cops here in Mayberry have nothing better to do and will write you a ticket for jaywalking. Cops back east never do that.
Crossing at the corner isn’t jay-walking even if it’s not a marked crosswalk. Unless it’s specifically marked as not a pedestrian crossing (like on the South side of 24th and 70th – crossing at the corner is legal.