[B]URLINGTON — The UVM student government is calling on city officials to make changes to a key intersection that the students have deemed “clearly unsafe.”
Students last week spent nine hours at the busy intersection that bisects the campus — where Main Street meets University Heights, near the Davis Center.
As they counted the more than 14,000 cars and 6,000 pedestrians that went by, the students identified three key safety concerns: drivers using their cell phones, running red lights, and turning right on red into pedestrian traffic. They reported that at peak times, there was a driver on their phone every 30 seconds (about 5% of the total drivers), and about one driver a minute running a red light. They also recorded more than 500 drivers over the course of the day turning right on red into the crosswalk.
Between 2012 and 2018, the intersection saw 105 crashes, designating it as a “high crash location,” according to Resource Systems Group, a consulting firm that studied the intersection last year. Three of the crashes involved pedestrians, seven were heavy vehicle crashes, and 20 crashes over the five-year period resulted in injuries.
“In my time here at UVM over the past three years, I have seen dozens of people almost hit,” said Jillian Scannell, president of the Student Government Association. “I’ve almost been hit myself. The city and UVM cannot wait to take action until something tragic does happen and someone does get hit. We need to take action now.”
The students are planning to call on their city councilors, Jack Hanson and Adam Roof, as well as Mayor Miro Weinberger, to work with the university in addressing the issue.
Proposed solutions include synchronizing all red lights so that pedestrians can walk any direction, including diagonally; putting in a sidewalk on the west side of U-Heights to allow for a second crossing point for pedestrians; widening the crosswalk; bumping out curbs; and widening the traffic median in the center of Main Street.
The students acknowledged that the problems stem both from distracted drivers and from pedestrians not waiting for the walk signal to cross the road.
They noted that there is a tunnel about a block down the road allowing students to cross directly into the Davis Center underground, but they said it’s impractical for students to stop using the intersection and students shouldn’t have to take detours just to feel safe crossing the road.
“I was shocked and horrified by the number of distracted drivers I saw,” said Cassie Crawford, one of the student researchers. “I even saw a man driving through that intersection plucking his eyebrows in the rearview mirror.”
Though the intersection already has a number of safety features — like a seven-second head start for pedestrians when a corresponding green light is given to drivers exiting University Heights, a move that has been shown to reduce collisions as much as 60% — there are still a number of unaddressed issues, according to the students.
The 30 student researchers who studied the intersection as a part of their Vermont Studies Media and Politics class, taught by Center for Research on Vermont director Richard Watts, noted that at midnight, the traffic lights switch to flashing yellow, leaving no way to ensure that vehicles stop for the pedestrians still crossing the street.
“This is a car-centric intersection that prioritizes cars over pedestrians at one of the busiest intersections in Vermont,” said student researcher Zack Flaherty. “It would be better to see less cars and more safety.”