Third Street crosswalk gap makes for safety challenge

A lot of people do it, and not because they want to. Crossing the street without a crosswalk can save time, but it’s stressful and dangerous.

The crosswalk at the corner of Franklin and Third Street in Bend is the last one you’ll see for a while, depending on which direction you’re going. If you walk south from there, you won’t find another crosswalk for over a mile.

Which is a significant stretch, on a street as busy as Third.

“Most of the time, when you’re crossing, you’re crossing against moving traffic,” former Bend City Councilor Suzanne Johannsen said Friday evening. “And that’s what makes it dangerous.”

Johannsen walks to work across Third Street five days a week. Unless she wants to walk over a third of a mile south, to cross at Wilson Avenue, then back up again, she has to do it without a marked crosswalk.

She sees the city now working on Third Street sidewalk improvements, but thinks they’re under-serving that mile-long stretch.

“There was a big sidewalk project to improve sidewalks on Third Street, but it ends up there at the light at Wilson,” she said.

And that’s not all Johannsen said the area is missing.

“There’s also no bike lanes in this section of Third Street,” she said. “So being a bicyclist or pedestrian here is dangerous.”

Johannsen said a recent study showed that in Bend, cars stop for pedestrians outside of marked crosswalks only about 11 percent of the time.

Last week, a pedestrian was killed trying to cross the section of Third Street between Franklin and Wilson, one of four pedestrian fatalities along Third Street or Highway 97 (the Bend Parkway) in the past six months.

Johannsen addressed the issue during the visitors’ section of Wednesday night’s city council meeting.

But she said Friday that she’s not sure how likely the city is to act on her requests, as they juggle a lot of transportation priorities and a well-known funding shortfall.

In a Facebook post Friday night, Johannsen said she was told it’s “a very, very long and complicated process” to get bike lanes and crosswalks added.

“Really???” she wrote. “I’m very willing to commit to a long process for REAL improvements, but years for just some paint? I guess I’m going to need to do some grassroots organizing!”