A new traffic signal at the intersection of 32nd and Saint Paul streets is the latest attempt to make the streets surrounding Homewood campus safer for drivers and pedestrians.
The signal is one of several improvements the Baltimore City Department of Transportation deemed necessary after junior Miriam Frankel was killed by a hit-and-run driver crossing the 3500 block of Saint Paul street last October. But almost a year after Frankel’s death, some of the remaining safety measures, including speed cameras, promised by the Department of Transportation, are not yet in place.
The delay in these improvements sparks greater concern after a male pedestrian was struck by a car while crossing the street on the 3400 block of Saint Paul street outside McCoy dormitory at 8:50 AM on September 7.
The victim was transported to Johns Hopkins Hospital after reporting lacerations on his elbows and additional pain.
When the News-Letter last spoke with the Department of Transportation in late April, Deputy Director Jamie Kendrick said they were working to install red light and speed cameras at the intersections of 33rd and Saint Paul streets, and University Parkway and Saint Paul street by the end of August.
Additional signage and re-stripped crosswalks were scheduled for completion by the end of last May.
“We’re working with our vendors to get [the cameras] installed,” Kendrick said in a follow-up interview with the News-Letter last week. “They’ll be installed this fall. We’ll keep at it. I’m going to go and push my guys a little harder.”
However, some basic traffic safety improvements are not compatible at some intersections around campus, Mr. Kendrick explained.
“After further analysis we were not able to do some things for technical reasons,” Kendrick said. “For example, one of the things we were trying to do is install much larger street name signs that hang from where the signals are located. In a couple of those places, the wires hang too low so we couldn’t use the big signs.”
But street signs aren’t the major problem, according to junior Jenn Walton, who said she’d like to see speed limit signs on North Charles street and Saint Paul street.
“I don’t see a lot of police vehicles around enforcing the speed limit, and people speed up and down North Charles,” Walton said. “The speed is just ridiculous. I think they should put up a speed camera on north Charles in front of Charles Street Market because that intersection gets the biggest amount of people traffic. I live in Ohio and we have tons of those cameras, and after people get their first ticket they slow down there because the ticket fees are outrageous.”
University spokesman Dennis O’Shea agreed that speed cameras tend to cut back on speeding and would enhance pedestrian and driver safety.
“Those speed cameras do have an effect. Getting a ticket does slow you down in the future,” he wrote in an email to The News-Letter.
If there have been traffic safety changes made in the area, senior Molly Dillon said she hasn’t noticed many of them and is surprised that certain concerns have still not been addressed, although she acknowledged that the crosswalk at University and North Charles has been changed to a countdown crosswalk.
“I haven’t noticed any real changes as far as pedestrian safety goes,” Dillon said. “I was surprised that it took so long to change the crosswalk at University and North Charles to a countdown crosswalk, which they just changed this week. I thought by now they would have done more, especially about other lights in the are that so many students face every day. While there may be some more signs I may have missed, substantial change for student safety has been seemingly non-existent.”
Crosswalks are also a concern to senior Dylan Goldberg, who said he thinks countdown crosswalks are needed at more intersections.
“I go mostly down to the med campus but I’ve noticed pretty much no change on the roads around campus,” Goldberg said. “The crosswalks at 33rd and Saint Paul don’t have timers so you have no idea when it’s safe to go and when it’s not because they only have the walk sign for two seconds and then it goes away. I always cross when it’s blinking don’t walk and sometimes I make it and sometimes I get caught in the street.”
But a new plan to completely revamp North Charles and Saint Paul streets beginning next spring will hopefully eliminate many existing safety concerns, Mr. Kendrick explained.
“We have this rather large capital project to rebuild Charles and Saint Paul street,” Kendrick said. “It’s a 25 million dollar project that restores the original boulevard from 25th to University. We’ll take those alleys out and put the median truly in the center of both streets. We’ll also make major lighting improvements.”
O’Shea commented briefly on the future plans for the streets around the University.
“Johns Hopkins and its neighbors have been working on this for years . . . [we] are pleased that the plan addresses the key questions of pedestrian safety and traffic calming,” he wrote. “This project will benefit the entire city, but especially those of us — from Johns Hopkins and elsewhere — who live and work along Charles Street.”
