By Ron Hayes
DELRAY BEACH — What if they built a crosswalk and nobody came?
Last November, workers from the state Department of Transportation resurfaced State Road A1A by Atlantic Dunes Park.
They added new sidewalks, new bike paths, and a new crosswalk between the parking lot on the west side of the highway and the beachfront park on the east.
Nine months later, the new road is being driven on; the bike paths are being biked.
But the crosswalk? Not so much.
“What you see is pedestrians crossing anywhere to get over,” says Jim Smith. “They cross at the southern end and use the entrance road, and they’re crossing where the old crosswalk used to be.”
A resident of the Banyan House condo just north of the park, Smith is also the chairman and co-founder of a group called Safety As Floridians Expect. Founded in 2003, SAFE takes credit for a petition drive that brought bike lanes and sidewalks to stretches of A1A, as well as an ongoing effort to monitor traffic accidents and reduce flooding.
Now he wants something done about that new crosswalk.
Before the resurfacing, two crosswalks helped beachgoers move from the parking lot to the park. When the state said one must go, both the city and DOT agreed to put the new crosswalk about 100 feet north of the parking lot, at a point where it would deliver users directly to the bottom of a wheelchair ramp into the park.
A second crosswalk from the parking lot to steps rising into the park was removed. However, two short, city-owned cement paths on either side of the road, leading from the parking lot to the road on the west side and the road to the steps on the east, remain.
“Delray Beach needs to take out those pathways and put a hedge in,” Smith insists.
In other words, he wants the city to remove the old concrete paths, which he says encourage jaywalking, and install some sort of barrier — a bamboo fence, a tall hedge — to steer people north from the parking lot to the new crosswalk.
On one point, Smith is clearly correct: Beachgoers aren’t using the crosswalk.
On a recent weekday afternoon, he and a reporter spent about 45 minutes watching the foot traffic. Perhaps one in 10 people crossing A1A actually used the crosswalk. The rest looked both ways, and then crossed wherever they found it most convenient, usually at the site of the former crosswalk.
Among them was a fellow named Richard, who declined to give his last name.
“I'm smart enough not to jump in the street if something’s coming,” Richard said. “I don’t have to worry because I’m a grown person. I know how to cross.”
Smith also complains that few drivers slow for the new, pedestrian-operated yellow blinkers by the crosswalk, and he’s right again. Indeed, most cars didn’t even pause to watch for pedestrians, including a Broward County sheriff’s cruiser.
“I want a red light installed,” says Smith.
But the city and state say, “Wait a minute.”
“On the one hand, people are crossing where they shouldn’t cross,” concedes City Engineer Randal Krejcarek. “But on the other hand, it hasn’t been a safety issue. It’s a jaywalking violation, but does that mean that everywhere along A1A where someone is jaywalking we’re supposed to put a barrier?”
To be effective, Krejcarek says, any barrier would have to be installed on the swale between the sidewalk and the road, and that would require DOT approval. But while the city has devised a landscaping plan for the swale, it hasn’t been submitted for the state’s OK.
“I have no problem with a barrier on the west side,” Krejcarek said, “but no, it’s not a big priority.”
As for a red light to replace the yellow blinker, Jonathan Overton, DOT’s assistant traffic operations engineer for the district, points out that the stretch of A1A south of Atlantic Avenue already has several yellow blinkers. Replacing them with red blinkers, which require all vehicles to stop, would hamper traffic flow unnecessarily.
“We’re trying for a balance between safety and mobility,” Overton says. "We don’t want a proliferation of traffic signals that at the end of the day aren’t used.”
But he does offer a possible compromise.
If the city is willing to meet a few conditions, which he declined to describe, Overton said the state might approve a flexible yield sign, a 3-foot reminder to be placed on the double-line in the middle of the crosswalk. But, Overton said, he’s waiting for the results of an independent study, expected shortly, that monitored crosswalks with flashing yellow lights.
“My personal opinion,” Overton said, “is that in-road signs are relatively effective. They remind the drivers who has the right-of-way. But the big problem will be maintaining them, and I want to be able to say it’s worth the maintenance.”
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