More crosswalks for pedestrian safety and convenience

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Edited by Kyle, Tuesday, 19 January 2016, 9:22 PM
An issue many people face, including myself, are the rare existence of mid-road crosswalks within many cities of Washington State. Walking and biking are my main forms of transportation for me. The most problematic issue i encounter walking is having to walk to a distant intersection to cross over to the other side of a road safely and legally. An even worse scenario for me is crossing a wide, busy road on my bicycle to get to a convenient store i'll be working at. The road doesn't have any stop lights or crosswalks at all and by what i’ve seen, fatal traffic accidents occur much more on the road than others. Due to this fact, i fear crossing the road. I’ve known and seen many others that encounter these very same issues as me. To reduce traffic accidents involving pedestrians, I propose that all single and long roads are require to have at least two forms of a pedestrian crosswalk. It could be as cheap as a pedestrian crossing sign to a full blown stoplight intersection depending on the traffic the road has. If a city council wants to use there funding for a different project they will still be required to have the lowest form of a crosswalk. A miniscule increase onto Public Road Construction taxes would pay for materials and construction costs for the crosswalks. Enforcement for pedestrian safety would be based on current Washington State Pedestrian Laws. A new law would also be formed specifically for pedestrians that will fine any seen idlers on crosswalks that prevent traffic flow. Success of this policy will be based on annual pedestrian accident statistics acquired by the Washington State government. GRADE Analysis: Goal: Creation of more mid-road crosswalks Rivals Supporters: students, parents, exercisers, non-automobile commuters Opposers: auto-mobile users, taxpayers, working class Advantages: Reduces dangers and penalties placed on pedestrians and drivers by reducing jaywalking and negligence at costs as low as paint and a sign. Disadvantages: Increases slowing traffic and doesn’t ensure physical protection. Also increase the chances of automobile accidents Evaluate: Comparing a small tax to a human life, this policy seems to outweigh disadvantages. The worst thing to come out of this policy is slower traffic but this could happen also without crosswalks due to traffic accidents caused by jay walkers could happen also without crosswalks due to traffic accidents caused by jay walkers
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Longmont should prevent assaults- Neomi A., Malie S., and John S:

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These past few weeks, we have been working on a Civic Action Project for our government class at Silver Creek High School. We proposed changing what we believed is an issue in our community. My name is Neomi A., and my partners, Malie S. and John S. and I have unraveled a serious safety problem in our city and the surrounding area.

We are concerned about the amount of assaults and harassment on college campuses and in the cities of Colorado. We have proposed to try to decrease theseacts of injustice by placing emergency landline phones called blue light phones in the city. However, after meeting with the director of safety, Stuart Pike, at the University of Colorado -Boulder, we realized that emergency phones are not the most efficient way to solve the safety problem. So, what is the solution?

Stuart Pike is in the process of working on an application or app that he believes would be more efficient. It's more efficient because the emergency phones are outdated, nobody knows how to use them, and everyone has cell phones. Pike stated that students were confused by the landline and tried to connect their cell phone to it, which shows that technology has surpassed the use of the blue light landlines.

Click the link below to read the rest of the opinion article published in the Times-Call Opinion Section:

http://www.timescall.com/Opinion/ci_26838236/Neomi-Aboytes-Malie-Sanchez-and-John-Scott:-Longmont-should-prevent-assaults

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