Daily Herald opinion: Public safety and strict bureaucracy: A neighborhood safety issue points up challenges of responding to public concerns
On the surface, calls for a traffic light near then Marian Park apartments in Wheaton can have a very parochial feel. It is, after all, one light affecting one suburban neighborhood; it’s not a broad suburban or even communitywide issue, in and of itself.
But the situation does represent the kinds of risks and frustrations that fester dangerously when potential solutions run up against rigid statutory definitions and competing, lumbering bureaucracies.
Such is the case for a traffic light across busy Roosevelt Road near the Marian Park apartments in Wheaton. As reported by our senior writer Marni Pyke on Monday, residents in the area rallied last week to repeat concerns they’ve expressed for years about the dangers of crossing Roosevelt to get to shopping and restaurants.
For rally speaker Mehret Asgedom the stakes were personal. Her father died trying to cross Roosevelt Road 38 years ago, and she recalled for the gathering her own difficulties crossing the road later to get to a job at Boston Market, in addition to describing watching “a senior citizen that would race and pause to beat traffic in his motorized wheelchair.”
Other speakers offered their own harrowing stories about the risks they’ve seen or experienced. The Rev. Kevin Caruso, rector at Trinity Episcopal Church in Wheaton, offered the context of numbers.
“Over the past 28 years, lives have continued to be lost crossing Roosevelt Road, resulting in three fatalities, 11 reported pedestrian injuries and dozens of car accidents every year,” he said.
Anecdotal arguments such as these, however, have not moved government officials sufficiently to boost the urgency for a response.
As Roosevelt Road is also Illinois Route 38, the state Department of Transportation says it has evaluated the area with traffic counts, crash data and analysis based on “the Federal Highway Administration’s Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices” and IDOT’s own “TRA-23: Guidelines for Pedestrian Crossing at Uncontrolled Locations.” It found a site where a signal could be justified, but said that because it links a Target driveway and the exit to St. Francis High School, it would serve only private interests and thus be considered “a private benefit traffic signal.”
Meanwhile, city officials say the issue is tied up in the bureaucracy of a broader IDOT five-year plan for the area.
And so, the residents — mostly low-income and senior citizens — find themselves stuck between the slow-moving mechanics of governmental and intergovernmental operations and the coldly official distinction between matters of public and private benefit. Strictly speaking, yes, the primary beneficiaries of a light in the preferred location would seem to be a business and a private school. But as the residents’ stories and fears demonstrated, the issue defies simple strict analysis. School students and scores of pedestrians also depend on the ability to safely cross the dangerous roadway.
“This is a public safety issue. This is not a ‘private land matter’,” said Keyana Ray, who described witnessing a near-miss recently involving a semitrailer truck and children who were crossing Roosevelt.
These residents have been waiting for years to get protection at a dangerous crossing. The best they’ve been offered so far is a $250,000 state grant for a project that would cost three and a half times that amount to complete. True, it is just one traffic light in one suburban neighborhood. But the deeper issue is the question of government’s responsiveness to serious localized public concerns.
In this case, DuPage County, Wheaton and state officials, in conjunction with the admittedly private interests being served, ought to be able to do better — before one of those anecdotal cases becomes another fatality or serious injury.