Tuesday, September 4, 2012
The City of Evanston and District 65 are partnering to encourage kids to walk and bike to school safely.
Evanston police and firefighters were out in force Tuesday morning for the first day of school. Job No. 1: handing out stickers to kids on foot or on their bicycles, encouraging them to follow safe walk routes to school. As part of an initiative to improve pedestrian safety throughout Evanston, city officials are trying to teach parents and kids the safest routes for walking to school. Working in partnership with District 65, city engineers studied the traffic patterns around each Evanston school to create a list of safe walk routes, which can be accessed on the District 65 website. Talk of improving pedestrian safety in Evanston gained After a 7-year-old girl was hit by a speeding driver near Oakton School last May, Ald. Coleen Burrus …
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Pedestrian safety committee initially rejects daycare's request for a crosswalk, arguing there is not enough pedestrian traffic and the intersection is too dangerous due to industry nearby.
Every day, a fleet of infants and toddlers cross Main Street in baby buggies, from the Infant Welfare Society Baby Toddler Nursery on one side to Harbert Park on the other. “We cross the street, but we do it with trepidation in our hearts,” nursery director Cass Wolf told the city council at a special meeting convened to discuss pedestrian safety on Monday. Wolf came to ask the city to reconsider adding a crosswalk at Main Street and Pitner Avenue, then handed aldermen a petition signed by 50 parents and staff from the nursery. The nursery asked the city's pedestrian safety committee, formed earlier this summer, to consider a crosswalk at the intersection, but it did not make the cut on a list of recommended locations for new crosswalks …
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Main St & Pitner Ave, Evanston, IL
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Oakton St & Barton Ave, Evanston, IL
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42.03071
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Dodge Ave & Monroe St, Evanston, IL
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42.04485
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Forest Pl & Davis St, Evanston, IL
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42.06065
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Ridge Ave & Colfax St, Evanston, IL
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42.05918
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Hartrey Ave & Grant St, Evanston, IL
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42.05208
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Emerson St & Sheridan Rd, Evanston, IL
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42.019
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Harbert Park
East of Canal between Main and Dempster, Evanston, IL
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1373724
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Infant Welfare Society of Evanston
2200 Main St, Evanston, IL
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262215
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Tuesday, July 31, 2012
A special city council meeting will be held August 6 when aldermen will vote on recommendations for improvements at several intersections.
The City of Evanston will hold a special meeting early next week to consider how pedestrian safety can be improved. A committee formed by the city to identify areas that could be fortified, communicated their findings at a public workshop July 24, and input from the public was accepted until Friday, July 27. Creating crosswalks, signals, signs, markings and providing safety education for children all have been proposed as solutions to reduce car versus pedestrian accidents further, the committee reported. “We looked at the entire city and at accident data, as well areas of concern for residents,” said Suzette Robinson, director of public works. “The data collected indicated a majority of accidents have been at signalized locations, so we…
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
A committee formed by the city to study pedestrian safety offered a preliminary list of recommendations and gathered public input at a meeting Tuesday.
Reduced speed limits, radar speed displays and flashing LED school crossing signs are among the preliminary recommendations of a committee formed to improve pedestrian safety in Evanston. Members of the committee presented their recommendations and gathered input from residents at a public workshop at the Civic Center Tuesday night. “As far as education and enforcement, I think we’re on the way to making it safer for pedestrians,” said Sgt. Pat Moran, head of the police department’s traffic management bureau. The figures support his statement—but the city believes it can do better. Over the past three years, the number of car accidents involving pedestrians on public property has decreased substantially. There were 52 accidents involving…
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Evanston residents are invited to come out to a workshop Tuesday night at the Civic Center.
Two months after a 7-year-old girl was struck in a crosswalk by a driver speeding near Oakton School, city officials will convene a discussion of pedestrian safety. The city will host a workshop on the subject from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 24, in room 2200 of the Lorraine H. Morton Civic Center. Residents are invited to stop by at any time during the workshop to share their thoughts with city staff, police and members of a traffic consulting firm who will be on hand. "Pedestrian safety is a growing issue in many communities especially during summer months and as we approach the beginning of the next school year,” Public Works Director Suzette Robinson said in a press release. “It is our hope to bring a diverse group of community …
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Data from Evanston’s Public Works Department reveals which intersections had the greatest number of accidents involving pedestrians between 2009 and 2011.
Davis Street and Ridge Avenue tops the list of intersections with the greatest number of pedestrian accidents from 2009 through 2011. There were seven incidents at that intersection in the last three years, according to Director of Public Works Suzette Robinson, who presented a report on pedestrian safety to the city council on Monday. Robinson said that the narrow width of Ridge Avenue combined with a mail drop-off, bike lane and right turn lane just before Davis Street may be contributing factors. Earlier: Top 10 Most Dangerous Intersections in Evanston “There’s a lot of stuff going on right before that intersection," she said. To improve pedestrian visibility, public works crews will make some changes to the intersection when they …
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Chicago Ave & Main St, Evanston, IL
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Church St & Benson Ave, Evanston, IL
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Chicago Ave & Howard St, Evanston, IL
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Chicago Ave & Dempster St, Evanston, IL
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Davis St & Ridge Ave, Evanston, IL
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Chicago Ave & South Blvd, Evanston, IL
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42.06434
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Green Bay Rd & Central St, Evanston, IL
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42.03755
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Chicago Ave & Greenleaf St, Evanston, IL
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42.05208
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Sheridan Rd & Emerson St, Evanston, IL
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Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Car accidents involving pedestrians in Evanston are declining, according to city staff, but more improvements are planned. Ald. Melissa Wynne suggested that the city investigate the cost of speed cameras.
While the number of car crashes involving pedestrians has decreased steadily in the past several years, the city believes there’s more work to be done. Aldermen discussed several measures designed to increase pedestrian safety, particularly in school zones, at Monday night’s city council meeting. Radar speed displays, a citywide speed limit of 25 miles per hour and sidewalk bump-outs are all on the list of possible improvements. Ald. Melissa Wynne (3rd Ward) also suggested that city staff should investigate the cost of speed cameras. “I’m not necessarily an advocate of it. I think that there are other ways we can slow traffic down,” Wynne said. “But if we have chronic speeding, then maybe that’s what we have to look at.” Like this story…
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Evanston police report a 16.5 percent decrease in car accidents over the past four years. Officers credit a crackdown on pedestrian safety violations and distracted driving, with nearly 4,000 tickets issued to drivers on cell phones.
Despite the fact that an 7-year-old girl was recently injured by a speeding car near Oakton School, Evanston may actually be a safer place for drivers and pedestrians than it was four years ago. According to the police department’s annual report, the number of car crashes has declined by 16.5 percent in the last four years. Between 2008 and 2011, the number of car crashes went down from 2,934 to 2,458, according to the report released in May. Last year, the number decreased 1.5 percent, from 2,490 to 2,458. Related: Top 10 Most Dangerous Intersections in Evanston Police Cmdr. Thomas Moore, who headed the traffic unit for the past four years, said that he believes increased police enforcement and improved engineering at certain …
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
After a pedestrian was seriously injured last week after getting hit by a car at that intersection, Patch readers said they've long been wary of that corner. In response, Patch got two years worth of accident statistics for that spot.
When Patch ran a story last week about a man who was hit by a car while he was walking across Green Bay Road, readers wrote in to say that they've long considered the interesection to be dangerous. Patch checked with the Evanston Police Department to see how many accidents there have been at the interstection and learned that while, of course, even a single accident is too many, police do not consider it a problem spot. Related: Man seriously injured while walking across Green Bay Road. According to Cmdr. Jason Parrott, since January 2010, there have been 29 accidents at that corner, two of them involving pedestrians. (The other pedestrian accident did not result in an injury. The man hurt last week remains in critical, but stable …
Cass Wolfe
5:07 pm on Wednesday, August 8, 2012
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