Salt Lake City upgrades safety at school crossings, intersections

SALT LAKE CITY — Construction season is in full swing and there are a lot of upgrades underway to make roads and school crossings safer.

It’s part of the city’s plan to make roads safer for kids walking to school as well as other pedestrians, bikers, and drivers.

An area of concern is for students who attend Whittier Elementary who walk along Kensington and Main Street to get to school.

“This is an intersection in particular where we have heard a lot of concern from parents about their kids being able to safely get to and from school,” Jon Larsen, transportation division director for Salt Lake City said. “Really it’s just all about helping the drivers slow down and pay attention to make it safer for people walking and biking. At the end of the day, it’s really a linear safety project.”

He called it the Neighborhood Byways program. The city has identified several intersections with safety concerns.

The program will make them a more pleasant and convenient route by creating safer crossings.

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“The idea is to slow traffic down on the street segments, in between the busy streets so there will be some traffic calming there,” Larsen said. “But then also the big focus is to try to get people across the streets because that’s one of the challenges with the more quiet streets, is they don’t have a lot of investment at the busy intersections.”

The changes call for shortening crosswalks, adding bike and pedestrian signals, traffic signals, flashing beacons, and concrete curbs in intersections that force drivers to slow down.

“Once it’s done it will provide a very comfortable and pretty critical connection east-west across the city,” Larsen said.

You can get a full list of intersections that will see improvements as part of the Neighborhood Byway program by clicking here.

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