Berkeley Takes Small Steps for Traffic Safety

An unusual pedestrian safety program here boasts the kind of civic activism that Berkeley is known for, but it has received less than a banner response from residents.

Last December, the City Council bought 3,000 6-by-8-inch flags and installed them, a few at a time, in canisters at four busy intersections. Council members hoped that, as pedestrians prepared to cross the street, they would pick up a flag and wave it to alert approaching drivers. Once safely on the other side, they would return the flag to another canister.

The program got off to a rocky start: Two days after the flags were unfurled, a Jeep struck and injured a woman carrying one of the orange pennants as she crossed the street. Then, by summer, all the flags had disappeared, presumably stolen.

But Berkeley officials refused to give up. Last month, the council bought another 3,000 flags, placed them at the same four locations, and vowed to expand the program in coming weeks to three more intersections, with and without stoplights, where many cars and pedestrians converge.

These flags are yellow, to keep them from being confused with construction zone signage.

“This time it won’t be so new, so hopefully we won’t see people stealing them,” said Councilwoman Polly Armstrong, who proposed the program after hearing a friend rave about a similar one in Salt Lake City. The flag-usage rate there: 14%, according to a formal study. “But I always wonder if there weren’t some grown-ups who stole the flags to sabotage the [Berkeley] program,” Armstrong said.

Recently, Chuck Betz, an employee at a local cooperative bicycle shop, crossed the road without one of the new flags. “I used one once for the novelty of it,” he said, “but that wore off quickly.” Betz said the flag concept emerged after a concrete-mixing truck killed a woman at the intersection.

A few minutes later, a man in a brown fedora with a waist-length blond ponytail jaywalked across the intersection. Half-running, half-darting, he didn’t bother with the flags.

“I think they’re the biggest joke we’ve ever seen. They’ll last another week,” said Tom Bruce, a Berkeley resident and retiree. “If we want to do something about protecting pedestrians, we ought to enforce traffic laws, like the one I just violated.”

At another intersection supplied with flags, a woman with a black backpack attached to her wheelchair motored across on a recent afternoon without a flag.

A Berkeley resident, Flavio DaSilva, walked the crosswalk three times empty-handed. When a reporter asked why, he responded: “Oh, is that what they’re for?” When told the city had spent more than $6,000 on them, the student at the University of Creation Spirituality shook his head and said, “That’s crazy. It’s ridiculous.”

Still, he approves of other city actions, such as the sign it installed down the road telling people they have entered the city: “Nuclear Free Zone, established by City of Berkeley ordinance, 1986.”

An hour and a half later, the flags found some use at last. Two young girls plucked some from a canister and slowly crossed the street, each holding a mother’s hand. The flags’ yellow hue blended with the double yellow line in the center of the road and a spray of sunflowers at a nearby florist’s booth.

Safely on the other side, Wendy Boals, hugging her daughter Morgan, said, “It makes them more aware of cars and safety. It makes you feel very entitled to cross the street.”

Boals estimated that she has used the flags more than 30 times.

“They said these are a lot cheaper. But they’ve only been lasting how long, six months?”