Grant Neighborhood Talks Crosswalks Thursday

Grant Neighborhood Association meets on Thursday the 6th, and crossing busy streets is on the agenda.

If the sign is not safe, how are people safe?
Less than a year old, this chewed up sign
is an accurate emblem for our lack of progress.

The association will talk about the proposed crossing on Fairgrounds Road at Norway and also about difficulty crossing Market Street.

February agenda

The crossing on Fairgrounds is especially interesting. Here is what I think is the last published plan for it.

Between Cottage and Fairgrounds a median blocks car travel
March 2018 drawings

The little parking strip off Norway will disappear, and it happens the owner of the business right there is running for City Council.

Crossing Fairgrounds on Norway would be closed to cars

It will not be surprising if it gets politicized in the upcoming election for City Council.

Back in 2017 (See previous notes on outreach here and here) this had seemed like a potential problem.

This is likely not going to be enough for everything (April)

It has also seemed like the funding for the bundle of "multi-modal safety crossings" will be insufficient for all of them and a full build on them. It would not, then, be surprising to see "value engineering" pare down the median on Norway.

The crossing at Norway and Fairgrounds as well as larger bundle of crossings just does not seem optimally positioned for success. Maybe the City will pull them off, but there are warning signs.

So something to watch.

People keep hitting stop sign on Market at Winter
(end of January and the installation last July)

Separately, there is a little more on the crosswalk for school and greenway on Market at Winter. From the January minutes:

[a resident] mentioned the fact that one of the street centerline pedestrian signs at the Market and Winter crosswalk has been removed.

It may be that the "flag" item on the agenda is for this crosswalk, but it could be for another. However that may be, we should not engineer crosswalks and streets so that people have to use flags to wave while crossing. It's also concerning that the sign on the centerline at Market Street keeps getting hit.

Also in the January minutes, a few more notes on the 990 Broadway project (previous notes here and on potential archeology here):

the development at 990 Broadway is on track. However, the property has been identified as the location of a house owned by Jason Lee. Kimberli Fitzgerald is exploring grants that would finance a dig at the site, prior to the commencement of any excavation or construction.

The Grant Neighborhood Association meeting is on Thursday the 6th at 6:15pm, at Grant Community School, 725 Market St NE.