This time last year—We are inundated with so much information and news that much of it gets lost after a few days. In the spirit of recapping old events, I plan to revist some of my old posts and provide an update. This time last year I was leaning toward supporting Kerry for president, ranting about rude motorists, and basking in the heat of a high speed Internet connection.

I'm still ranting; today I conducted my own mini pedestrian survey at a location where we are trying to get the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) to improve safety for pedestrians walking to a nearby Park and Ride lot to catch a bus. When the main lot is full, bus passengers must park on the opposite side of the 4-lane road, then cross over to get to the stop. An earlier survey had shown only 25 pedestrians crossing, which doesn't warrant a change in the intersection. I knew that number was too low.

I arrived at the intersection at 7:45 a.m. and proceeded to count. Two hours later I had counted 42 crossing in the crosswalk in question. It turns out that this number nearly matches the count for one of the other crosswalks, which might make a difference in getting some action from VDOT; probably not. VDOT staff are very good at finding reasons why they can't do something rather than finding ways to make suggestions work. I also counted red-light runners: around 20 in the 2 hours, one of which almost wiped out 2 pedestrians starting to cross in the crosswalk. I also noticed that nearly as many pedestrians didn't cross in the crosswalk and took their chances further down the road, where they only had to contend with traffic from two directions instead of four at the intersection. They didn't get counted by VDOT.
posted by Bruce Wright at 11:16 PM #