Sandpoint committee adopts package of short- and long-term safety recommendations for Boyer–Highway 2 intersection

The Sandpoint Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee on May 8 unanimously approved a package of short- and long-term recommendations to improve pedestrian and bicycle safety at the Boyer Street and State Highway 2 intersection.

The adopted short-term measures include repainting worn crosswalks, providing orange pedestrian flags for people crossing, installing mid-street pedestals or warning devices, and testing walk-activated or flashing signage that would alert drivers when a pedestrian is in the crosswalk. The committee also added a seven-second “lead time” for pedestrians — a brief period that gives people time to enter the crossing before turning or through traffic receives a green — to the short-term list. Longer-term recommendations include reorienting crosswalk locations and geometry as part of a future intersection redesign.

Why it matters: committee members and public commenters said the intersection has recurring conflicts between turning vehicles and people on foot or bicycle. A resident who identified himself as Brad Smith told the committee “the ideal solution ... all those turns would be protected,” arguing that protected left- or turn-phasing would reduce conflicts between turning vehicles and pedestrians or cyclists.

Committee discussion and constraints: committee members and city staff emphasized that some actions — notably reprogramming signal phasing to create fully protected left-turn movements — would require coordination with the Idaho Transportation Department (ITD) and traffic engineering resources. Brandon (city staff) said major changes to intersection timing or geometry are best pursued through a formal project in an adopted master plan and that the committee’s recommendations will be shared with public works and entered into the record for future master-plan work. He cautioned that those changes “are not something that we'll just get done, you know, this year or next year.”

Motion and next steps: the motion to adopt the short- and long-term recommendations, including the seven-second pedestrian lead time moved forward and passed unanimously. The committee recorded the request that staff forward the recommendations to public works and that the measures be considered during master-plan and capital-project planning. Staff said it will share the committee’s recommendations with public works and include them in future staff reports and council briefing materials when the intersection is considered for design or funding.

Quotes from meeting participants are quoted verbatim and attributed to speakers identified in the committee’s meeting record.

Ending: Staff and the committee said they will follow up with ITD and city capital-planning staff to determine which short-term measures can be implemented quickly (repainting, flags, signage) and which require formal project planning, design, and public-review steps (signal reprogramming and geometric redesign).