[B]URLINGTON — The death of a pedestrian on North Avenue in Burlington’s New North End Thursday is raising questions about delays in the city’s plans to add more crosswalks to the street.
A car struck and killed 61-year old Jonathan Jerome, of Winooski, around 5:05 p.m. Thursday evening as he was walking his dog and crossing North Avenue near Poirier Place.
The city has been planning to install more crosswalks on North Avenue, the major thoroughfare in the New North End, including one near the scene of the accident. Construction was expected to be completed during the 2018 construction season but that work has not been done.
Chapin Spencer, director of the Department of Public Works, said the department will put the crosswalk project to bid in January, with the goal of starting construction in spring and completing it by the start of school in August.
“We got a lot done this year, and of course, given what happened, my heart is heavy and I wish we could have gotten this project done in the fall of 2018,” he said. “But we are going out to bid next month in January for a spring start of construction.”
Police said Jerome was crossing the intersection in low light conditions, and police do not believe that the driver was distracted, speeding or disobeying any traffic laws at the time of the accident.
Along with Poirier Place, crosswalks are planned for North Avenue at Ward Street, Killarney Drive/Village Green Drive, Gosse Court, and Green Acres Drive/Cayuga Court.
The crosswalks will include pavement markings, warning signs with downward arrows at the crosswalk, yield to pedestrian signs ahead of them, concrete ramps and additional lighting.
Residents have been concerned about pedestrian safety on North Avenue for years, Jim Holway, a steering committee member in the Ward 4 Neighborhood Planning Assembly, said.
Spencer said that while the goal was to complete installing the crosswalks this year, challenges arose that lead to delays.
Projects using federal funds take a substantial amount of time, Spencer said, with complicated environmental permitting processes and state review. This crosswalk project also ran into challenges as the department had to secure temporary rights-of-way on three private parcels and have a utility pole placed.
“We have been pushing this project as best we can and we will get it across the finish line this spring and summer,” he said.
The project is being funded in a state grant program that uses federal funds, the Vermont Agency of Transportation’s Transportation Alternative program. The five crosswalks will cost an estimated $320,000.
The city and the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission completed an extensive study of the North Avenue corridor in 2015, which recommended substantial changes to the street.
DPW put into place a number of modifications as a result of the study, including changing the number of lanes in nearly a mile of the street from four to three and adding bike lanes.
The report also noted safety concerns caused by the lack of crosswalks.
“The lack of pedestrian accommodations across North Avenue may pose a safety risk to pedestrians, particularly if pedestrians jaywalk in locations where convenient crosswalks are not provided,” the report says.
A firm, Lamoureux & Dickinson, was selected in March 2016 to provide the engineering design for the crosswalks project. The conceptual designs were discussed in public meetings in 2016, and the design process has been ongoing since then, according the the DPW website.
Spencer said after Thursday’s fatality, he checked how long other federally funded projects have taken and found that this crosswalks project was on track to be the fastest in recent memory. The Cliff Street sidewalk project took eight years from the start of planning to completion, and a project on Flynn Avenue took seven.
The neighborhood planning assemblies in the New North End have been pressuring DPW to follow through on the creation of the crosswalks faster to no avail, Holway said.
“It is a darker area, it is a high frequency crossing area, it’s far enough away from the signalized intersection, we identified it as a high-risk area,” he said.
He said the conditions lead residents to be concerned about the possibility of a pedestrian death on North Avenue near Poirier Place.
“It’s always been a matter of when will it happen, not a matter of, someday, this could happen,” he said.
Spencer said the department is constantly working to improve pedestrian safety in the city.
For example, Spencer said that the city has tripled sidewalk reconstruction, added four sidewalks on roads that didn’t have them, added flashing beacons to 11 crosswalks and did its first-ever pedestrian-focused master plan, among other efforts.
Holway said New North Enders feel the city’s lack of action on the crosswalks reflects its prioritization of downtown residents at their expense. He said North Avenue safety is frequently discussed at NPA meetings and conversations with neighbors.
Spencer pushed back on the notion that the New North End receives less attention than the rest of the city, noting that DPW had worked this year on improvements to a large section of curb in the New North End, paving a section of North Avenue and replacing a water line on the Ethan Allen Parkway.
“The New North End, like the rest of the city, has received the attention when the assets are in the worst state,” he said. “We are bullish about reinvesting in this city’s aging assets, and the New North End is as important as any other part of the city.”
Neighbor Alden Finnie was at the scene of the accident Thursday evening after seeing the police lights from his house. He said he thought the city should install a well-lighted crosswalk.
“It’s a major crossing right here,” he said.
New North End resident Liam Griffin lives off North Avenue and has been following discussions about safety improvements to North Avenue closely. He said the combination of high car speeds on North Avenue — often exceeding the 30 mph speed limit — and long distances between crosswalks makes the street particularly unsafe.
“You have people living and working on both sides of the avenue, and it’s completely unreasonable to expect people to walk half a mile to cross the street legally,” he said.
He said he wished the issue could have been resolved before a tragedy occured.
“It’s upsetting that it had to come to this, someone dying on the avenue, to really bring these issues to light,” he said.