For years, students at the University of Vermont have complained that the intersection of Main Street and University Heights Road is unsafe.Â
But the Burlington city government has yet to make numerous changes that advocates recommend to decrease the likelihood of injuries.
In a given hour, the intersection serves as a crossroads for thousands of pedestrians and cars, according to new research by a group of UVM students. The pedestrian lane crossing Main Street connects the school’s Redstone Campus to its Central Campus, while Main Street itself — which at that point is also U.S. Route 2 — is a busy link for people traveling between Interstate 89 and downtown Burlington.
The high volume of pedestrians and vehicles results in frequent close calls, according to the students’ observations.
“It is rare to witness a red light cycle without seeing one or two cars run the light, or drivers turning right-on-red while pedestrians are still crossing,” the researchers wrote in their study, attaching 20 images of different cars running a red light at the intersection.
On one afternoon last month, researchers said they observed 133 “dangerous interactions” between cars and pedestrians in the span of an hour.
The university’s Active Transportation Plan says the intersection “needs modification to minimize conflicts between vehicles, bikes and [pedestrians].”
In addition, a 2018 memo from consulting firm RSG to UVM labeled the site a “high crash location,” with 105 crashes between 2012 and 2018.
Three of those crashes involved pedestrians, and 20 of them resulted in injuries, according to the memo.
Chapin Spencer, Burlington’s director of public works, said the city has made some recent changes to the intersection, after a report published in 2020 identified multiple areas for improvement.
The completed changes include widening and repairing the Main Street crosswalk, adding a new sidewalk to encourage more students to cross Main on either side of University Heights Road and installing a “no right turn” signal for drivers turning from University Heights on to Main, Spencer said.
“The surrounding campus area has been a focus and will be a focus for future pedestrian and transportation improvements,” Spencer said in an email. “We appreciate hearing from the UVM student community and commend them for the time and research they’ve put into traffic safety around UVM.”
In addition to the student researchers, a group of student advocates called Sustainable Transportation Vermont listed several flaws that they say make the intersection dangerous for pedestrians.
One aspect of the intersection the group hopes to change is the roughly 11-second period when signals indicate that both the cars exiting University Heights and the pedestrians crossing Main can proceed.
To make the situation safer, the students want a pattern that wouldn’t allow pedestrians and cars to move at the same time.
Sustainable Transportation Vermont also says the city should extend the allotted time for pedestrians to cross Main Street. The current period of 18 seconds doesn’t accommodate some pedestrians with physical disabilities, they say, or the crowds of students who regularly traverse the four-lane road.
“There are just so many students crossing that intersection,” said Zoe Kennedy, a senior at UVM and member of Sustainable Transportation Vermont.
Kennedy recently joined the city’s Public Works Commission, where she says commissioners agreed at a meeting on Wednesday to take a deeper look at the intersection.Â
Kennedy recommended raised sidewalks, which could prompt drivers to travel at the posted speed of 25 mph and “assert that pedestrians belong in the intersection.”
Richard Watts, a UVM professor who advised the students researching the intersection, suggested narrowing vehicle lanes around the intersection and updating paint patterns to make drivers feel as if they’re in a “pedestrian environment.”
While there’s an underground tunnel nearby that pedestrians can use to walk between the south side of Main and UVM’s Dudley H. Davis Center across the street, Watts said it’s more time-consuming, and expecting students to change their habits toward a slower route is unrealistic, according to sociological research.
“I think the tunnel has certain functions, but as far as moving people out of this intersection goes, it is not the solution,” Watts said.
In Watts’s view, Burlington has neglected to make significant changes at the intersection because it would slow down drivers on the busy road.
“I think the priority has been to move cars through the intersection,” he said, “and the challenge has been for the city to make it a little less convenient for cars to get through.”