SANTA MONICA – Just walk around the city and you can see that everyone is on the move. Santa Monicans live a healthy lifestyle that means more often than not, we are outdoors enjoying the sunshine, beach, mountains, or just walking around the City. In 2016, the city council enacted the Pedestrian Action Plan that had the lofty goal of zero pedestrian deaths. Unfortunately, in 2017, there were a total of 9 pedestrian fatalities – the most since 2006.
For those of us who live in the Mid City area, we are very familiar with the intersection of 22nd Street and Arizona Avenue. It just so happens that the emergency exit of St. John’s Hospital is collocated at this intersection as well. If you drive by this intersection around 8:30 am you will see the hospital staff jaywalking across Arizona Avenue without any regard for pedestrian or vehicle traffic. Moreover, hospital patients also cross Arizona at 22nd Street as they return to their cars parked on 22nd Street or on Wilshire Boulevard.
The problem is the lack of crosswalks at this intersection. There simply isn’t a safe crosswalk for pedestrian to cross between 22nd and Arizona. Since there isn’t a crosswalk, it begs the question, if the City Council truly cared about the safety of the tax paying citizens and really wanted to make pedestrian traffic fatalities a “thing of the past” in SAMO, shouldn’t the city install crosswalks at this dangerous intersection?
Images courtesy of Google.
https://livestream.com/IMSINC/events/8576741
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