SEATTLE — Greenwood neighbors celebrated the launch of a new crosswalk at Greenwood and 83rd Saturday, noting it as a milestone that was years in the making.
"It's the main gateway North and South, it was a really tough crossing and ultimately we have people that pull into the bakery and post office and library and lots of kids going to school so, lots of cross traffic and lots of traffic all over," Northwest Greenways volunteer Lisa McCrummen said. "There's an advocacy piece of proposing we get crosswalks and ultimately it ended up getting proposed in 2019 and then COVID and other things took precedence, so we've waited a long time to get here and it's fantastic we got here."
Northwest Greenways is a coalition of groups working to make streets safer for all people to walk, bike, play and live.
"It's just important to connect that all together," McCrummen said. "It makes for stronger, more resilient neighborhoods and stronger, more resilient people and that's what Seattle is all about."
SDOT says the project was activated at the same time as two other safety-related projects, including an upgrade to the traffic signal at 23rd Ave E and E John St on Capitol Hill and a new crossing signal at California Ave SW and SW Findlay St in West Seattle.
Currently, SDOT is undergoing a 90-day review of its Vision Zero program. In an Op-Ed, director Greg Spotts wrote that he wants "to ensure a robust analysis that produces a hypothesis as to why what we’ve done before hasn’t worked well enough."
He says it will ask "why are traffic deaths rising even though we are spending money and making changes to our streets? Which changes are working? Which weren’t as effective?"