Seniors turn to pedestrian flags for visibility

Published 2:00 pm Saturday, September 30, 2006

Take one down, wave it around as you cross the street.

In front of four sets of feet, the pale teeth of the crosswalk lay flat and evenly-spaced across the asphalt of Winslow Way.

Dwarfed but undaunted by the lunch-hour rush of cars, Bainbridge seniors Marcia Rudoff, Ruth Wender, Orabelle Connally and Dorothy Bland each grab a fire-orange flag from the can at the side of the road and plunge boldly, flags unfurled in front of them, into the jaws of traffic.

The cars roll to a halt on either side until, one-by-one, each woman shuffles to safety.

Just prior to christening the flags – installed moments before along with signs explaining how to use them – Rudoff summarized the plight of street-crossing seniors thusly:

“When you’re 6 feet tall, crossing the street isn’t a problem because people can see you,” she said, standing near the crosswalk in front of Town & Country. “But when you’re a little old lady or a 2-year-old, you could use some help alerting drivers.”

That sentiment, long shared by some of the island’s more vulnerable pedestrians, is the impetus behind a pilot program that began Wednesday at two downtown crosswalks.

The program – adopted by the city at the urging of several Bainbridge Island Senior Community Center members – will last six months and makes available small orange flags to pedestrians, who can halt drivers with the flags prior to crossing the street.

Walkers are instructed by signs to enter the road cautiously, flag in tow, as demonstrated by Rudoff, Wender, Connally and Bland on their inaugural jaunt through traffic.

Because many senior center members don’t have cars, Rudoff said a number of them a few years ago began researching ways to improve pedestrian safety in Winslow.

They formed a pedestrian safety group to push for sidewalks along Ericksen Avenue, where at the time passing cars often forced walkers into ditches along the shoulder.

“It’s difficult to jump into a ditch when you’re older,” said senior center program coordinator Eileen Magnuson. “So they made it their mission to try to make the community safer for pedestrians and bicyclists.”

Sidewalks were eventually built on Ericksen and, following its role in the success of that project, the group became aware of a pedestrian flag program in Kirkland that began in 1995.

The group researched the idea of bringing flagged crosswalks to Bainbridge and last summer pitched it to the city. After a series of holdups, the program was adopted on a trial basis at two crosswalks, one on Winslow Way, the other on Bjune Drive.

If successful, the city may expand the program to include other crosswalks.

Downsides include the possibility that flags – which cost about two dollars apiece – will be stolen or destroyed, something that has happened in other cities.

In Kirkland, where 47 flagged crosswalks now exist, the city loses two or three flags per crosswalk each month, according to Noel Schoneman, the city’s neighborhood traffic-control coordinator.

Schoneman said the city monitors and maintains 17 of the crosswalks near downtown, with the rest tended to by volunteers.

“We haven’t seen any problems at all,” he said. “Some people use them, some people don’t. It’s just an extra way to make pedestrians more visible.”