he o everyone welcome to a special edition of the belmont journal i'm your host roger coulton there's been significant concern in belmont in recent months about traffic and pedestrian safety now my journal has invited assist police chief james mcgaha zick to join us today to talk about those topics thanks for coming over thanks for having me roger let's start with school safety st because it seems like the area is a struggle today to fill  pedestrian safety positions the crossing guards yep well since my twenty years in the police department there have been times when we've had difficulty filling these positions and we're at one of those times again we currently have sixteen crossing posts and we have one vacancy and we have a vacancy in the reserve crossing post so we would like to carry sixteen crossing guards into reserve crossing guards in what happens when a crossing guard is old sick or not feeling well as in i need to come to work we try to fill those posts with the reserve crossing god if we don't have a reserve crossing god we then use police officer is working the day shift to fill that post and you know there are durbin times recently we've had to fill a number of post for a number of reasons crossing guards or wraps and you know for a variety of personal reasons but there's been days when we've had to fill three or four posts with offices in the morning and in the afternoon and to make clear to our viewers you know what a crossing guard is and i know what a crossing guard against but these are the folks who i think i have there's one at washington comments yes there's one at the generally there's one down on common street by the wellington but each of the schools has has a crossing one or more crossing guard that's the kids some of the crossing posts like school it shop covers kids going to the burbank but also kids going up to the middle school and so they cover a dual school post if you will and the then those intersections and yes they can stop traffic irrespective of the traffic signals they and they say when you go in when you stop and the kids go and stop that's right you listen to the cross over you know listen  you pay attention to what the crossing guards are telling you yes and what is the is there a particular reason why there is a problem filling those positions or is it just the normal well flow of things you have problems in some years we've had problems over the years with a used to be going back twenty years or maybe even eighteen years days to be fully uniformed in you know was kind of the more of a  an established position and then we've gotten rid of the uniforms to make it easier for try to make it more attractive so people are putting on the uniforms but i think one of the biggest hindrances to us being able to fill those positions is the hours because it's the morning hours in the afternoon yes in on wednesday they have to go in the morning in midday for the early release so i think people you know whether they're trying to plan their day that work around the day or whatever i think they find that those the split was a little bit too much to handle you know in terms of i can't run an errand i'm going to be back in in three hours or never can anybody be a crossing guard yet you know need special training i imagine you get special training but you don't have to have any particular qualify we train them nope and then in fact even to make the job more inviting this time around we've offered to if somebody wanted to split a job or if somebody wanted to be a reserve god said i can only work in the morning i can't work in walking transportation but we have always taken interest in traffic it's something that all of our offices or supposed to be doing on a daily basis is traffic and foresman we've we've work with their office of community development to develop you know to talk about intersections which intersections might need some engineering changes and i've recently dusted off a pedestrian safety seminar that i st created in two thousand four when i was a patrol officer investigating serious motor vehicle crashes and will be presenting that on october rd at the beach streets at seven o'clock and we cover three kind of critical areas where we talk about cross walk that's open to anybody yes yeah there are tobar rd you said yes and it's open to anybody it's free everybody's welcome it's free and it is invited simple yes and it would be a good thing because it is well i'd like to follow up on something you just said passed but yesterday in crashes because i think it seems to me i mean to give you an opinion here tell me whether i'm wrong that people are are focusing on pedestrian safety now because of th something you could you know comfortable so in in two thousand and one i was a patrol officer as a sign of the traffic department and i was sent to motor vehicle crash reconstruction school and one of my responsibilities was to investigate serious pedestrian crashes there's a number of reasons for that is you know people don't do well when they get hit by a car as opposed to you know younger people but when i just heard you say is if an older person gets hit by a car it's more likely to be serious  activate the lights and the idea is you know that the motor vehicles have the right away on a green ok but having said that that does not give it's not and i get two for the motorists so if there's a pedestrian in the cross walk to the motorist as i have a green light so therefore i get to push that person back on the corner they still have to yield to the pedestrian in the cross walk but it creates a more controlled environment in a more kind of visible that the motorist is coming up in is seeing lights and these should be paying closer attention to what's going on in front of them more importantly to me it seems not to disagree with you but the pedestrian just because the pedestrian has a walk signal doesn't mean that they should assume that they're going to have the right of way because if if there is a car in a pedestrian whether or not you have the walk signal you give and just way you mentioned with the pedestrian has the right away but the motivated motor vehicle still has to give the right away or yield the right away to the pedestrian and i think it's something you said it is important which is something i actually had never thought of before but when i think of a regulated cross walk as you described it now i think of school street in common street and when i think i just heard you say is just because there's a green light doesn't mean that pedestrians have the go ahead to cross that they should push the button and wait for the cross signal yes the green lights are for the motor vehicles the motor vehicles but you still need to push the button and wait for the signal yes it's the right right as opposed to an unregulated cross walk which doesn't have any any traffic lights and we have way more unregulated cross walks in town than we have regulated cross walks naturally and i'm very regulated crosswalks pose a certain risk because they tend to be longer crossings if you think of belmont street in the area of wish to street crossing about sixty feet of roadway there in an unregulated crosswalk and now the the law on an unregulated cross walk is that the pedestrian has a right away and nobody knows this even police officers really don't know this little piece of the law but if i'm traveling out west bound on belmont street heading towards you know while family coaching square i'm required to stop if that the destiny and on the opposite side of the road once they get within ten feet of the center of the road the motorist is required to stop we tell people all the time and i'll tell them in tuesday next tuesday night that if you see a pedestrian crossing you should stop you know if they're waiting to cross and in the  sually a longer way across but also not everybody knows you know we we have new drivers and we're teaching people how to drive when they see that international crosswalk the supposed to scan back and forth and people don't do that obviously do you find the yellow signs if i say the yellow science is insufficiently descriptive the signs and saying crosswalk warning signs yes this says state law requires there's one at the post office there's one encouraging  recognizes any of the signs i think through education and trying to tell you know people that what crosswalks mean and what they are and they should look out for them that you know that's important and you something that's a reality areas in my scene something that's not there you missed this other slide in my my presentation where i have a aerial shot of belmont center and i circle the middle crosswalk and i say and i'm going to tell people if you going to cross in beaumont santa that's the crosswalk you should cross at it's it's it's you know it's the mindset of you len history used to be about sixty three feet wide and it's been narrowed and that's one of the most narrow points right now is right in the center  of leonard street and just before what you talked about the cross walk down at my rank at tory's yeah that's that's a little more risky because think about what you have you have people who probably just stopped for people  yeah and they're finally making it and it's a little then when they want me that and they want to speed up and it's a little bit longer of a crossing and it's you know i could i walk through there probably almost every afternoon and you can see people that they just don't you know they see you at the last minute and they and they stop you know especially me with i'm in uniform so you know i can imagine probably if i was in civilian clothes seventy five percent of the time they would stop for me but the middle crosswalk is a is the safer crosswalk to use in my opinion the police aren't the police department isn't the cheerleader for the businesses about my bad if i say i'm going to make a comment and see if it rings true we want people to shop in our business districts and the only way people will shop in our business districts is if they feel safe so it really is incumbent upon us if we want to support our businesses to drive safely relative to p does that ring true yes yeah and i don't mean to say that other pedestrians shouldn't feel safe whether they're ian the windbreak neighborhood or the waverly neighborhood but it seems like bringing people into our business districts and having having them feel safe go hand in hand yeah and it's not easy you know it's you have to strike a balance you know because we we deal with parking issues as well so you know you you know you want a vibrant downtown area right but you know you can't pray for rain and then complain about the mud in the mud is cause you know you want people to go to all these restaurants and now you're going to have a you need employee parking you need people you know you know it would be nice if people in belmont could ride a bike or walk there but you know we have people from all over coming to you know some of these restaurants of a well known now and and well established so we have all these cars coming in and so then it's kind of managing that in the best possible way and i think narrowing when it street has done a lot of other people that might  spoke out against that but i think that's done a lot to kind of slow things down well in the area let's extend that just a tiny bit or maybe not a tiny bit to what extent is speed i factor will all cited the same thing that they couldn't see the person or it was operating and attention so why is it to push back a little bit why is it that the perception is that the pedestrian say well terms of miles per hour when you do crash investigation you think in terms of feet per nd so you know if a cars going twenty five miles per hour which is the speed limit in town on most roads are the ones that are posted the cars going about thirty six feet per nd now thirty six feet is probably the length of the studio right and so if i don't have a long line of visibility if my line of visibility is forty feet fifty feet that car is going twenty five is going to get to me in a nd in change and so you know when you are in a when you're in a confined area or on a narrow street that's it will tend to get people really speeding on the street and a lot of it is because just the proximity to the motor vehicles and the lines of sight you don't  you know you you see the vehicle when it's already upon you so are there intersections that you would recommend that people or maybe not just intersections intersections and cross we do crash reconstruction and one of that one of the rules is that if there's a crosswalk within three hundred feet of you you have to use the crosswalk now everybody how many times it doesn't condone it's in on to polaroid have you seen people crossing and there's a regulated crosswalk right there that they could push the button but yes they get out of the economy just scoot across to paul wrote so one of the things that i've always encouraged people to do is we have a lot of we have not a lot but we have several areas in town where there are unregulated crosswalks belmont streets one of four or five on regular gas walks that are in close proximity to regulated crosswalks so if you have the time then we don't have a map to show but you can walk up to a regulated crosswalk and push the button when i can think of it and again this will tell you where i walk and drive the crosswalk for c v s over to the fire station in the bank yes over  when i'm hearing you say is that it would simply be safer for me to walk up to slade street in use the regular exactly that so even though i have the right to the perfect right to use that crosswalk that's right say for that's right know there to cross and so those are just ideas that if people have time and they're not rushed they can you know walk a little bit further in be in a regulated crosswalk as opposed to an unregulated crosswalk  have you found or have you seen an impact from that reduction i've seen vehicles going slower but i wouldn't you know i think it's is it going to be a learning curve all the communities around us have  done that as well which is good you know have reduced the speed limit to twenty five dollars in their communities and i think i think we have i think this times you know when you get people complaining about heavy traffic certainly nobody's going to twenty five unless  we have people that are trying to jump off pleasant street or to polar road in the they might tend to get to speed up to thirty or whatever going down the side streets but you know one thing is for sure is the traffic is only go worse and you know one thing that does do is it does slow traffic down and i can i can also see looking back past motor vehicle crashes that we've had in town we don't have the high speed crashes that we used to have and by that i mean you know you know a car you know goes takes down to signs in a pole oh yes you know serious injury we haven't knocked on we haven't had those in recently and i think a big part of it is it's just it's really hard to get get those speeds up you know there's still roads ready in town where you can do it yes but we just haven't been been seeing those and i think the traffic plays a big part in that well i'd like to get to cross the street you have to really pay attention was a great book out there thinking fast thinking slow on of you've read it but it brain works like when you smile at me that's my system one because i know you're happy and if you ask me a complicated math question i go in the system to wri so i think you know when you get to it when you boat across the street you don't ever assume that the cars can see you don't ever assume that you have the right away that right away has to be given to you and really pay attention to cross and pay attention to where you walking and the time of day you know if you're somebody who goes out for a run every morning at six o'clock well now this time of year it's dock at six o'clock so you might have to change your you know you're a tie with if you're going for walk and or you're going for material reflective material is the best and just be aware of your present in every assume that somebody can see you or that they're going to stop for you until they stop especially at night most of these crushes happen early morning late in the afternoon and a lot of people think because a lot of pedestrians will think because they saw the headlights that the driver saw them yes and that's not the case so that's great this is been great fun me i thank you for coming over and hopefully we will do some safety in the town of valhalla thank you for watching this special edition of the belmont journal on your host roger colton i will talk to you again next