A group of more than 20 people, most of us wearing reflective orange safety vests, had made it most of the way across Fourth Street when the driver of a black pickup apparently decided he had waited long enough. As I approached the far sidewalk, taking up the rear of our group, he revved his engine and accelerated straight toward me. He swerved into another lane at the last second, his big vehicle missing me by inches.
Our group was conducting a “walk audit” of Eureka’s Fourth and Fifth streets corridor, one of two we conducted this October. A walk audit consists simply of people walking or rolling along the street, taking note of features and experiences that affect pedestrians, and answering questions like, “Do you have enough room to walk?,” “Is it easy to cross streets?,” and “Do you feel safe here?”
Another harrowing street crossing, this time using the crosswalk where Broadway’s northbound lanes turn to become Fifth Street, prompted this question from a participant: “Is there a term for a crosswalk that you’re not really supposed to use?” Similarly, as our group prepared to cross Fourth Street at O Street on a different day, another participant asked, “Should we be doing this?” And when we crossed R Street at Fifth Street, we discovered the traffic signal doesn’t provide enough time to cross if you are an older, slower walker, and instead leaves you stranded on the center island with cars speeding by on both sides. One participant asked if we could somehow direct pedestrians away from this corridor altogether so they wouldn’t be exposed to so much danger.
The fact is pedestrians have a legal right to use any crosswalk, marked or unmarked, traffic signal or not. Pedestrians can even cross outside a crosswalk without criminal penalty since the passage of the 2022 Freedom to Walk Act. Furthermore, the Fourth and Fifth streets corridor — a state-owned highway designated as U.S. Highway 101 — is full of homes, jobs, businesses and government services that a lot of non-drivers need to get to. Drivers accessing these destinations have to get out of their cars at some point, too, and often even have to cross the street. Plus, local entrepreneurs need customers to feel safe and comfortable in the area if they want their businesses to thrive.
So it matters that crossing the street here can feel like taking your life in your hands even for the most confident pedestrian. And, since all kinds of people have to walk and roll here, other issues that may seem trivial to a confident pedestrian also matter. For example, it is important to know that, as a low-vision walk audit participant pointed out, the extremely loud traffic makes it impossible for blind and low-vision people to hear when it is safe to cross the street. And it is a real problem that the countless sidewalk holes, cracks, grates and empty tree wells pose tripping hazards for many people, while utility poles, temporary signs, overgrown vegetation and other obstructions keep some wheelchair users and parents pushing strollers from comfortably using the sidewalk.
Before we conducted the walk audits, we already knew from years of crash data and crowdsourced reports on the online Street Story platform that the Fourth and Fifth streets corridor is one of the most dangerous and unpleasant areas for pedestrians in the whole region. But the walk audits provide additional key insights into the problems plaguing this corridor, particularly for pedestrians with disabilities, older pedestrians and other folks whose needs are often misunderstood or underrepresented.
Crucially, identifying these needs is not just an academic exercise. We intend to make sure that it is a first step toward making key changes to transform the corridor into a safe, comfortable and inviting place for all kinds of people using all modes of transportation.
The full report of findings from the Fourth and Fifth streets walk audits, including suggested solutions to the identified problems, can be found online at transportationpriorities.org.
Colin Fiske (he/him) is the executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities, a nonprofit organization advocating for safe and sustainable transportation. He lives in Arcata.
This article appears in Flash Fiction 2024.