Seen this afternoon: city work crew re-painting no parking zone lines on the street along curb of 12th Ave. Last Thursday night, a woman in her 30s was struck by a car at the intersection of 12th and E. Denny while crossing the street. Fortunately, her injuries were reported as minor. Even with fresh paint keeping sightlines clear by more clearly designating no parking zones, 12th’s crosswalks remain an iffy proposition. No advocates of removing crosswalks, for now we’d advise caution. For later, time to think of some traffic slowing mechanisms like some of the good ideas raised in the comments here.
How about one of these?
http://www.streetfilms.org/archives/seattle-crosswalk-tap-fo
They’ve already installed a few here in Seattle.
Extending the sidewalks to the traffic lanes in bulges makes the crossing shorter for the pedestrians and keeps the cars channeled where they are supposed to be.
In London neighborhoods I noticed they did a great job of using these bulges, plus special jagged painted lines on the road as you approach the crosswalk when driving (see http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wavy_lines_before_pedestrian_crossing.jpg), PLUS they have special blue circular signs with a white arrow pointing down at the crosswalk area. It’s pretty much impossible to miss…. wish I could find a good photo on the web somewhere.
I am a big advocate of walking, and have found that my beloved neighborhood Capitol Hill is not so safe for us Peds. So up in the far northlands of the roosevelt District they have been adding small plastic buckets to street sign posts & telephone poles. In these they place small “Traffic Orange” flags for pedestrians to carry as they walk across the street. (Buckets on each side so that you place one in after crossing and another person takes it out going the other way, in theory keeping a bunch on both sides). Also : Wear visible Clothing people, esp @ nite, black is not the only colour!