This has nothing to do with trails. It is a shocking example of a dangerous crosswalk design close to home.
The press, including the Washington Post, have widely reported on the death of a pedestrian who was struck by a motorist while crossing northbound lanes of 16th Street north of the traffic circle at Colesville Road. The police investigation is still ongoing and it is not clear yet exactly where the pedestrian was struck.
The local blog Silver Spring Singular posted under the title “Jaywalking claims another victim”. But subsequent comments to the blog post addressed the issue that the pedestrian may have been in a legal, though unmarked, crosswalk when he was struck. Silver Spring Singular responded and updated the post title to “Pedestrian struck & killed @ 16th and Colesville.” Just up the Pike also posted on the story, and also drew comments that were mixed on whether the pedestrian was at fault.
The aerial photo below illustrates the path the pedestrian might have attempted to follow:
across 16th Street at Colesville Road
(See gmap-pedometer for an interactive view)
I’ve biked through this circle many times on the Colesville/North Portal route between Silver Spring and Rock Creek Park. I never had any idea there was a crosswalk between the circle and the median on the north side, or across 16th Street from the median to Colesville Road. There are no pavement markings and no pedestrian warning signs. I’m always so busy watching out for traffic that I never noticed the clues that a crosswalk is there and that there may be pedestrians.
Yet clearly a legal crosswalk is there. There is a sidewalk in the circle itself, along the curb around the northwest quadrant of the circle. There is a sidewalk in the median north of the circle. And there are curb cuts at every curb along the path illustrated by the red line in the photo above, making this route ADA compliant. I can’t imagine crossing here in running shoes, even less in a wheelchair!
Under the law in both Maryland and D.C. when the sidewalks from intersecting streets (Colesville Road, North Portal Drive) extend to the street a legal crosswalk is presumed to exist, even if it is not marked. In this case the curb cuts should remove any doubt that pedestrians can legally cross here.
Again, we do not yet know exactly where or how the pedestrian was struck. Perhaps he was jaywalking further up the street. But with the crosswalks in the area designed like this, can you blame anyone for jaywalking?? This crosswalk leads directly into a very chaotic circle with the traffic that is coming around the circle hidden from view by trees. Westbound traffic from Colesville Road only has a Yield sign, so at no time is all traffic stopped from entering the circle by traffic lights. There are no signs and no pavement markings to warn motorists that pedestrians can be here.
This crosswalk is an amazing display of reckless stupidity in crosswalk design. And sad.
I think it’s more of an overall bad road and sidewalk design. It isn’t just that the crosswalks aren’t marked (and are in strange places), but look also at how the sidewalk begins and ends and begins again. A person walking on the left (west?) side of the street loses the sidewalk at the first “crosswalk” at the circle. Assuming they make it to the other side following the route marked on your map, they’ll have a sidewalk on the other side of the street. Great. Once they go up a ways, there’s another point where they’re invited to cross back over, right in the middle of traffic on a road which is engineered as if it were a highway. And then further up there’s another place where it looks like peds are invited to cross, again right in the middle of traffic. So if you live on (or are going to) the left side of the street, what are your choices? Stay on the left and walk in the road till the sidewalk picks up again? Or follow the haphazard crosswalks and sidewalks, crisscrossing a street designed by a lunatic.
I posted this at Just up the Pike so I figured I’d mention it here too. That intersection is even worse than you show. If you go about 20 ft north of that intersection you see another path. There is a staircase down a hill on once side, a sidewalk in the median, and then a sidewalk entry on the other side. If it weren’t for such a clear path, this would be considered Jay-walking, but it is a legal crosswalk. Needless to say, I rarely see cars looking for pedestrians at this location.
Here’s the arial view
Here’s the street view where you can see the very nice stair care and the clear existence of an intended pedestrian path.
Nope, the police stated the man crossed through a “grassy median”. There’s no more reason to believe that he would go out of his way to cross at those “unmarked crosswalks” than to believe he would’ve gone out of his way to cross at a *marked* crosswalk at 16th and East-West Hwy. Point is, if you cross where there is NO marking or stoplight whatsoever, you’re taking your life into your own hands. The smartest thing to do would have been to cross at 16th and E-W Hwy. However, this man being a longtime resident, he probably felt comfortable jaywalking across 16th Street. This is something I have rarely seen anyone do simply because it is well known that there are cars going 30-40mph across the District line up to E-W Hwy–cars that have little incentive to slow down because of pedestrians jaywalking, and cars that have poor sightlines because of the circle.
Moral of the story: DO NOT CROSS WHERE THERE IS NO MARKED CROSSWALK. IF YOU DO, YOU’RE AT FAULT.
Eric:
I don’t dispute that it is too dangerous to cross 16th Street anyplace below the East-West Highway crosswalk, regardless of whether you are in one of the unmarked crosswalks created by the roadway designers.
But I do think the roadway designers need to be held to account for designing sidewalks and curb cuts that create unmarked crosswalks that are much too dangerous to use. They should be warning pedestrians against crossing where it is too dangerous, instead of luring pedestrians into a trap. When we put all of the responsibility on the pedestrian, we give the roadway designers a “free pass” to do anything they like.
If you were walking up toward E-W Highway and you were starting from the south side of the circle, exactly how would you make that walk? Go up the west side, where you have to walk in the road because the sidewalk isn’t continuous? Or go up the east side, where you will have to cross at an unmarked crosswalk in order to get past Colesville?
All of the unmarked crosswalks at Colesville and 16th and between 16th and E-W cross over the grassy median, so it’s entirely possible the ped was using one of them and, therefore, legally had the right of way. Was it stupid to cross? Maybe, but he may have made the least stupid choice available to him at the time. It’s also stupid to walk down dark alleys with expensive jewelry. One person’s stupidity doesn’t give another the right to break the law, though. Rather than blaming pedestrians who were handed an unnecessary mess by traffic engineers, the better questions to ask are: When is this mess going to be fixed? And how seriously are pedestrian rights enforced by the police? Are drivers facing significant fines? Are repeat offenders charged criminally rather than with a civil fine?