Cities Getting in Step With New Crosswalk Trend

Marked crosswalks, which had lost favor with transportation engineers, are making a flashy comeback.

For decades, painted crosswalks have been disappearing from streets all over the country. Cities purposely paved them over or let them fade away, ever since a 1970 San Diego study found that having visible lines can lull pedestrians into a false sense of security and increase accidents. Later studies reached the same conclusion.

But these days, designated crosswalks are regaining respect as a new generation of high-tech devices catches on from coast to coast. With blinking yellow lights embedded in the pavement, these crosswalks illuminate the pedestrian’s rightful path over roadways like miniature airport runways.

Introduced as an experiment in Northern California about a decade ago, lighted crosswalks are used now to help protect pedestrians in more than 100 U.S. cities, including Glendale, Santa Monica and Irvine.

Nationwide, pedestrian deaths have been declining. From 1991 to 2001, pedestrian fatalities dropped by 16%, from 5,801 to 4,882, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Since 1975, the pedestrian death rate -- measured in terms of fatalities per 100,000 people -- has fallen by more than 40%.

Experts say it is difficult to pinpoint why. It could be because fewer people walk than before. But such safety-enhancing devices as more prominent warning signs, medians and lighted crosswalks also could play a role, said James Corless, California director of the Surface Transportation Policy Project, a nationwide group that promotes walker safety.

Pedestrians are generally enthusiastic about flashing crosswalks, saying drivers seem more mindful of their presence.

“Before, it was harder to cross,” said Roman Graciano, 27, as he approached flashing Glendale Avenue with his 6-year-old daughter, Ashly. But some motorists have mixed feelings.

A few blocks away, Jonathan Branch simmered as he encountered seven lighted crosswalks while driving on a one-mile stretch of Brand Boulevard. The 40-year-old engineer grew especially annoyed when the flashing lights caused traffic to stop when he saw no one crossing. “This is a mess, a total mess,” he sighed after braking for a “phantom pedestrian.”

On Brand Boulevard, a thoroughfare lined with shops and car dealerships, crosswalks flash for 27 seconds to give even slow walkers enough time to make it across the four lanes. “Phantom pedestrians” interrupt traffic only when someone presses a button -- which activates the lights -- and chooses not to cross or reaches the other side before the flashing stops, said Jano Baghdanian, Glendale’s traffic and transportation administrator.

Overall, Glendale has been so delighted with its 20 flashing crosswalks that it plans to add 10 more by year’s end. In Santa Monica, which has four, eight more are under construction. Irvine has one, installed last fall.

“We would like to have more, but funding is an issue because they’re so expensive,” said Jim Lizzi, Irvine’s senior transportation engineer.

Because the technology is relatively new, experts are still evaluating its effectiveness in reducing accidents and deciding when the devices, which cost from $25,000 to $40,000 each, are warranted.

Research so far suggests that lighted crosswalks work much better than conventional stripes -- or no lines at all -- in protecting pedestrians at crossings without traffic signals.

A 1999 Kirkland, Wash., study sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration found that drivers who see a flashing crosswalk braked sooner and yielded to pedestrians more often than those who didn’t.

A 2000 survey of 30 communities by the Tustin transportation-safety consulting firm Katz, Okitzu & Associates found that lighted crosswalks appear to reduce accidents by 80%.

“What we don’t know very much about is whether they’re appropriate” for high-speed roads, said Charles Zegeer, director of the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center at the University of North Carolina.

Glendale’s studies of Brand Boulevard showed that before lighted crosswalks were installed, only 16% of drivers braked for pedestrians. Afterward, 76% stopped.

The remaining scofflaws should give pedestrians pause, because accidents can still happen in a flashing crosswalk.

At the intersection of Glendale Avenue and Cypress Street, three pedestrians have been injured in two accidents since Glendale installed a lighted crosswalk 2 1/2 years ago, according to police.

Eranio D. Bombane, a 50-year-old crossing guard, said he is not surprised that pedestrians still face risks, because he often sees drivers flouting traffic laws.

Moments later, as if to prove his point, a white minivan zoomed down Glendale Avenue as the neon-orange-clad guard holding up a red stop sign accompanied three children across the flashing road. The little ones had already made it to the other side, but the minivan whooshed so close to Bombane that it made him leap backward.

“You see that? He don’t stop!” he cried.

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