City crashes into course of action for pedestrian safety

With the number of fatal pedestrian accidents rising in New Jersey, the city is coming up with new ways to ensure pedestrian safety.
“Pedestrian safety is a major issue lately because traffic fatalities have come down on a statewide level, motorcycle and bicycle fatalities are about the same and pedestrian fatalities are spiked way up,” said Bill Neary, executive director of Keep Middlesex Moving, a non-profit transportation management association.
In New Jersey alone, more than 135 people were killed last year in pedestrian accidents, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System.
This number will remain high in 2009.
A national study by Transportation for America reports 121 pedestrians have been killed in traffic collisions alone this year, a 33 percent increase over the same period in 2008.
Because of these figures, Neary said Gov. Jon S. Corzine’s administration has invested millions of dollars in pedestrian safety programs.
New Brunswick has been a beneficiary of this increase in funding.
More than a year ago, the city was awarded $476,000 in grants from the New Jersey Department of Transportation to help fund improvements to pedestrian crossing areas and police enforcement efforts surrounding the New Brunswick train station and the Robeson, Lincoln, Roosevelt and Lord Sterling schools, City Spokesman Bill Bray said.
With the funding, the city has installed radar-activated speed limit signs and a number of in-street traffic safety signs with messages like “slow down for pedestrians,” which will help ensure drivers are doing the speed limit and yielding to pedestrians, Bray said.
The city is using the grant money to stripe crosswalks and make curb improvements, replacing some less visible, antiquated slate curbing and painting them to keep drivers from parking too close to an intersection, he said.
“This opens up the intersection and opens up the lines of sight [for drivers],” Bray said.
He is unsure of what construction has taken place already.
Once all the construction is done, targeted enforcement will be placed in the areas by police officers to make sure traffic rules are followed, he said.
“[They will be] hitting drivers with tickets and violations when they fail to yield to pedestrians, fail to stop at stop signs or are speeding,” Bray said.
Projects are also planned around the train station area, including a kiss and ride facility in front of the train station, where motorists can drop off and pick people up, Bray said.
But these projects have been delayed because the city is prioritizing the construction of the Gateway Center, and the question of reengineering where taxi stands and bike racks needs to be addressed, he said.
As for the intersection of Route 18 North and Commercial Avenue, where George Coleman Jr. died about a month ago when he tried to cross the intersection, Bray said the intersection is a safe crossing and refuted reports that people can’t see traffic signs until it is too close to stop.
He said there are signal warnings well before the intersection that flash when the approaching light is red.
With the intersection serving as the main entrance to the newly renovated Boyd Park, pedestrian safety was a top priority when designing that particular section of Route 18 and the entire highway, which connects the furthest reaches of the city to downtown by footpath, Bray said.
“The accident was a tragic accident, and the city is going to ask the [Department of Transportation] to look at the intersection to determine if anything can be done or should be done to alter the signalization or the timing of the signalization,” Bray said.
This particular tragedy highlights the fact that people still need to be careful, Neary said.
Keep Middlesex Moving promotes different programs to help improve pedestrian safety in the state.
“We are not teaching things people don’t already know,” Neary said. “We learn in second grade how to cross a street, but people forget, they get lazy and traffic is crazier.”
Neary instructs students to obey traffic signs, look left, right and left again and try to make eye contact with drivers before crossing the street. Although pedestrians legally have the right of way in New Jersey, many drivers still do not stop.
Students at the University believe pedestrian safety is good on campus, but some said there is room for improvement.
Niala Samnarine, a Rutgers College fifth-year student, said many students think they are entitled to cross anywhere they want in the city, something she did not mind when she lived on campus.
But now as a commuter, with students crossing almost anywhere and everywhere, she has to be careful driving around campus.
“It definitely gets pretty annoying,” Samnarine said.
Andrew Stroffolino, a sociology graduate student, said if people cross at the crosswalks, they should be safe most of the time.
But the intersection of Hamilton Street and Easton Avenue is potentially dangerous for pedestrians because of its angled sightlines, Stroffolino said. He is never sure when to cross at that intersection.
“It is always kind of a crapshoot,” Stroffolino said.

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