Description

taken from an email to Ward 1 city council:

We are writing you today to make you aware of an extremely dangerous pedestrian crossing on East Ave, which employees must cross if they need to go across East Ave to the pedestrian walkway up the hill to the university and medical center.

Almost every time people attempt to cross this crosswalk, cars do not stop or come close to hitting the pedestrians. We have personally have had cars beep at us, drivers flip us off, or just speed by dangerously fast while we attempt to cross the crosswalk.

We have also been on the other side of the problem as drivers. It is somewhat difficult to see a pedestrian when they are attempting to cross from the side of the street UVM is on over to the opposite side of the street, unless they step out onto the street, so sometimes it is hard for a car to anticipate a pedestrian waiting to cross.

We are sure hundreds of employees at UVM and UVMMC have experienced this, and we can assure you there will be an incident of some kind if this isn't fixed.

East Ave, in general, is a pretty dangerous street, many cars speed down it after they come off the highway, and we've seen many cars blow through the three-way stop by Centennial Field's entrance.

Something needs to be done about this before something happens. We would suggest installing a blinking pedestrian crossing light, much like what we have on Pine Street currently, to protect everyone crossing the street. On a larger scale, we think East Ave should install speed bumps, but I think it would be easier to first tackle the crosswalk. I also think that increased police presence on Bilodeau Ct. would be helpful to stop speeding drivers as well as drivers that fail to yield to pedestrians.

We would invite you to visit the crosswalk yourself and try to cross the street when cars are in the area. You'll quickly experience how few cars actually stop for pedestrians in the crosswalk.