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Commission hears pleas for crosswalk safety after pedestrian killed in Germantown
Summary
A Germantown pedestrian’s death prompted residents and Councilmember Jacob Coopin to press the Traffic and Parking Commission and NDOT for faster safety measures, a public dashboard and an informational briefing; the commission asked NDOT to return with a presentation and coordinate a joint session with related advisory groups.
Robert Kelly, a Germantown resident, told the Traffic and Parking Commission that “Last night, Dot Dobbins was struck and killed while crossing a marked crosswalk, on Third Avenue North,” and urged immediate safety action.
The commission heard several speakers call for stepped-up enforcement, traffic calming, cameras and infrastructure changes at high-speed corridors after the fatality at the Third Avenue South crosswalk between Van Buren and Hume. Councilperson Jacob Coopin (District 19) described Dobbins as “a dear friend” and said the crosswalk “was striped with good intentions, but the heavy flow on traffic on Third Avenue makes this crosswalk terribly unsafe without more stop signs and perhaps signage to alert of a crosswalk ahead.” He urged faster deployment of raised crossings and other changes already under departmental review.
Hal Balthrop, chief engineer at NDOT, said department staff “takes it very seriously” and that the agency reprioritizes projects after incidents. Andrew Smith, NDOT staff, told the commission NDOT can deploy LIDAR and other data-collection tools to evaluate pedestrian movements and near-miss events at candidate locations.
Commissioners and public speakers pressed NDOT to improve transparency. Residents asked for a public-facing dashboard so “any John Hugh citizen can go to an ndot link and be able to see this is what’s being done,” as one commissioner put it. The commission asked NDOT to prepare a roughly 30-minute briefing on how it evaluates safety projects, to identify its 10 most-challenging sites and to propose dates for a joint informational session with the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPAC) and the Vision Zero advisory group. NDOT agreed to coordinate with the other bodies and to return with proposed dates at the commission’s next meeting.
The commission did not adopt new rules or make a binding policy change at the meeting; members directed staff to provide the requested presentation, the prioritized-site list and proposed meeting dates so the commission and the public can review NDOT’s methodology and near-term actions.
