Called Dangerous : Crosswalks--a Fading Landmark

“Here Lies

John McRae;

He died defending

His Right-of-Way. “

--Inscription on tombstone

paperweight at Los Angeles

Department of Transportation

When city officials refused last June to repaint a crosswalk outside an Alhambra convalescent home for the elderly, the hospital’s director was furious.

“It’s a total hazard,” Cheryl Brykman, director of the Brykirk Extended Care Hospital, said of the unmarked intersection at the corner of Valley Boulevard and Primrose Avenue. “We considered going out with a marker and putting in our own, but the city would get mad at us.”

Brykman joins a growing class of pedestrians who have been alternately surprised and upset by the disappearance of that misunderstood passageway of pedestrian life, the crosswalk. Once considered essential to safety, crosswalks have been quietly vanishing by the thousands throughout Southern California since the publication of a study that says death or injury is twice as likely in marked crosswalks as at unmarked locations.

False Sense of Security

“When crosswalks are marked, the pedestrian boldly charges out into oncoming traffic,” said David C. Royer, principal engineer for the Los Angeles Transportation Department, summing up the prevailing view. In the process, he or she runs the risk of either getting struck by a vehicle or causing an accident by forcing the motorist to swerve into another lane.

Yet, although 13 years have passed since the study by traffic engineers in San Diego was published, disagreements among national traffic experts persist. And although many cities in Southern California are in the midst of massive crosswalk-removal programs, some have ignored or rejected the findings and others have resorted to other tools--such as “zebra stripes”--that are considered even more dangerous.

Accident Rates

The study, published in 1972 by San Diego’s Public Works Department, found that two accidents took place in painted crosswalks for every one in unmarked intersections. The most dangerous crosswalks, it found, are those painted at mid-block without the protection of traffic signals or stop signs. These findings have since been confirmed by studies in Britain and West Germany and by less comprehensive ones in other U.S. cities.

“The study dramatically affected the way the traffic profession looks at crosswalks in the entire country, but especially in Southern California,” Royer said. “Crosswalks cause more problems than they cure.”

Royer said that of the roughly 4,000 mid-block crosswalks that existed in Los Angeles in the early 1970s, about half have been removed. About 15,000 crosswalks remain, but the vast majority are protected by traffic signals, he said. Major streets in Los Angeles are resurfaced about every 10 years, Royer noted, and most of the old crosswalks are not replaced. A few of the more dangerous crosswalks have been sandblasted out.

Other traffic engineers expressed similar sentiments, saying they routinely discourage the creation of new crosswalks because the markings give the pedestrian what several engineers called a “false sense of security.”

Chet Howard, director of public works in Arcadia, goes so far as to say, “People are sometimes better off to jaywalk” bcause they are more careful when breaking the law.

One of the boldest efforts to excise crosswalks is taking place in Santa Barbara, where the City Council has adopted a policy that is expected to eventually erase up to 95% of the city’s crosswalks, said the city’s former transportation engineer, Leif Ourston. Ourston still believes school crosswalks are useful but sees virtually no need for any others.

An informal survey of city engineers throughout Los Angeles County turned up a number of studies, including those by Long Beach and the Los Angeles County Road Department, that support San Diego’s findings and that have led to an overall reduction in crosswalks.

“In the past, any time a mother would scream, we put one in,” said Scott Klar, director of public works in Glendora, which has been eliminating mid-block crosswalks. “Now we realize the problems.”

But the engineers acknowledge that the public is used to crosswalks and often objects to their elimination. Such protests are understandable considering the age and ubiquity of the byways.

The existence of crosswalks has been traced to ancient Rome, where stepping-stones for pedestrians were laid across heavily traveled roads. The modern crosswalk, according to one authority, was invented by E. P. Goodrich, who painted the first crosswalk lines on New York City streets in 1911. Most of Southern California’s crosswalks, according to Royer, were painted in the 1940s and ‘50s.

Deaths Prompt Action

Although most pedestrians have probably never given them a second thought, the crosswalks can inspire passions. In Alhambra, an outcry developed in December when the city resurfaced Valley Boulevard, a major artery, and traffic aides recommended that the city not restripe 16 crosswalks at intersections where there were no traffic lights.

The City Council subsequently ordered four of the crosswalks restriped and directed the staff to compile statistics for a minimum of two years on both the marked and unmarked intersections.

Terry L. James, director of public services, said eight pedestrian deaths in five years in Alhambra, and 19 pedestrian accidents on Valley Boulevard alone, prompted his recommendation that the boulevard intersections not be restriped with crosswalks.

But some members of the City Council disagreed. “It simply doesn’t make sense to me that crosswalks are a deterrent to safety,” said Mayor Talmage V. Burke, who led the drive to have four of the crosswalks repainted. “I believe you can do anything with statistics.”

Walter A. Wirth, 74, said he had been using the same crosswalk outside his home on Valley Boulevard almost every day for the last 25 years only to find that it had been wiped out by road resurfacing in August.

“A city engineer read some study about something someplace, and I think that’s a lot of hogwash,” Wirth said. “If people have to stand there and tremble and wonder whether to cross the street or not, then they’re at the mercy of the traffic.”

Wirth said he told a councilman that the city was “heading for an accident” without the crosswalks and hinted that he would consider approaching the councilman’s opponents in upcoming November elections if the crosswalk was not replaced. The crosswalk was re-striped in December.

In nearby San Gabriel, no crosswalks have been removed in recent years, city officials said. Instead, crosswalks on heavily traveled streets have diagonal lines--known as cross-hatches or zebra stripes--running between the parallel boundaries of crosswalks, Public Works Director Frank Forbes said.

“We repaint them all the time,” he said. “Cross-hatching makes it easier for the motorist to see.”

Danger of Zebra Stripes

But zebra stripes are considered especially dangerous by James and other engineers because they are more attractive to pedestrians while being no more apparent to motorists than conventional parallel stripes.

The San Diego study was based in part on some elementary physics that compared the pedestrian’s view of crosswalks to that of the motorist.

Because the driver is closer to the ground and is traveling faster than the pedestrian, it found, the crosswalk appears different to him. Instead of two broad bands of paint 10 feet apart, the driver sees a pair of stripes each a fraction of an inch wide and a few inches apart. The faster the car is moving, the smaller the stripes appear. The report analyzed 400 crosswalks over a five-year period.

Negative attitudes toward crosswalks have found their way into handbooks and manuals on traffic safety published by the California Department of Transportation, and the San Diego study’s conclusions are considered valid by the American Automobile Assn. Gary Foxen, a traffic engineer for the Auto Club, said that although the organization has no official policy on the issue, it has on occasion made recommendations concerning crosswalks based on San Diego’s findings.

The National Safety Council, on the other hand, considers all forms of marked crosswalks to be safe, said Al Lauersdorf, administrator of traffic safety programs. Lauersdorf said this has been the Safety Council’s position since 1970, and was formed after extensive meetings with pedestrian safety committees across the nation. Lauersdorf said he had not heard of San Diego’s or any other city’s study suggesting that crosswalks can be dangerous.

In San Diego, meanwhile, Bruce F. Herms, an associate engineer and principal author of the 1972 report, said that about 50% of the city’s crosswalks that were not located at signalized intersections or at school crossings have been retired.

“A lot of criticism of the study came from Europe and the East Coast,” Herms said. “They said, ‘After all, that study was made in Southern California, and everybody knows the people in California are a bunch of kooks.’ ”

But Herms said the statistics speak for themselves.

“The crosswalk still has its place,” Herms said. “We just have to be careful where we install them.”