This letter was sent to the City Council on Sept. 2
A friend and I were walking her dog when we arrived at the Holly/Manor intersection. We were confronted with a maze that we had been avoiding recently; it’s instinctive, when perceiving a hazard along your way, you avoid it, jaywalking if necessary. This time, though, we tried crossing at the intersection and, after a series of ups and downs and wobbles, made it to the sidewalk.
Why, you may be asking yourself, didn’t they use the yellow curb cut area? I thought about this later. It just didn’t occur to us to walk on that passageway. There were two of us, and a dog. It seems narrow. At the time we never even thought of using it. I wondered, later how easily people with walkers, or even walking sticks, could navigate it.
There’s an old saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” These four corners weren’t broken, just in need, legally, of yellow plastic curb breaks. Please, simplify this mess, return it as much as possible to a clear, clean design, and restore the entries of the houses unfortunate enough to be located at the corners that were “improved” without even a contact from Public Works.
As I understand it, these crosswalk upgrades are done automatically when a street is repaved – upgrading the crosswalks to the latest ADA standards is probably required to use county transportation funds. That said, staff seemed to indicate they had some discretion in the design of ramps. There’s two types C (Manor and Cambridge) and F (Manor and Holly) and if your street is to be repaved you might want to confer with the Public Works department about the crosswalk design well in advance.
Staff also has discretion to implement Green Infrastructure with crosswalk upgrades. Residents facing traffic/pedestrian projects in their neighborhood should inquire about this program with staff. Crosswalks are common sites for Green Infrastructure.