Students cross the street on Calhoun Road. | Rebekah Stearns/The Daily Cougar
A new crosswalk was installed on Calhoun Road between Melcher Hall and parking lot 20A to assist students crossing the street during high traffic.
Previously, the crosswalk had been a blinking yellow light, indicating cars should use caution while driving and slow down for pedestrians. Now, it has been upgraded to a manual crosswalk.
“It’s just a manually activated pedestrian signal that, under normal conditions, would be a steady green until someone pushes the button and needs to cross,” said UH police Lt. Bret Collier. “As long as both pedestrians and people that are driving pay attention to the way the light’s operating, it should make a safer intersection.”
According to Collier, the UH Police Department issued a recommendation to amend the crosswalk after the UH Department of Public Safety received complaints from students and faculty.
“I understand that there were some concerns from student and staff over at the Bauer College about both vehicles and pedestrians not paying close attention to what was going on at that intersection,” Collier said. “We felt that an upgrade was probably needed.”
“The information was forwarded to UH Facilities Operation & Maintenance, which contacted the city about constructing the new crosswalk,” said Michael Wheeler, senior project manager of Utility, Energy & Technical Services.
“It’s really just some anecdotal evidence that there may be a problem there,” Collier said. “We didn’t see any recent increase in traffic accidents or anything of that nature, but when someone points out a concern, it certainly behooves us to look at it.”
UHDPS then issued an email to students Nov. 12, informing them of the upgrade.
“We put that out because we did want to let people know that it was there,” Collier said. “Any time there is something different about the way traffic is working, we want to make sure people are aware of it so they can pay attention to it.”
Now if you could only teach the moron pedestrians to actually pay attention to it instead of making cars stop on a green light!
Seriously! These pedestrians don’t pay attention to whether they are allowed to walk or not. I always have to stop at a green light because some idiot wants to cross. Then cars feel obligated to stop for them which makes more pedestrians want to cross too.
UH, where jaywalking is always the ‘in’ thing.
The light is green for auto traffic and the students are still crossing. This is a problem all across the campus. Students cross wherever they want to and expect drivers to yield to their stupidity.
Maybe UHDPS needs to:
1. Start ticketing for jaywalking. Since students cross whenever and wherever they wish.
2. Hire crossing guards to insure people cross safely and cross in the designated crossings or at street corners.
3. Fence all esplanades so students are only able to cross where it is legal to cross.
They really need to fix the pedestrian crosswalk on Wheeler Rd. between the Cameron Building and the Quadrangle. That road is way more busy than Calhoun Rd. and it makes it really difficult for pedestrians to cross safely since there always seems to be cars going from at least one side if not the other.
For those complaining about the pedestrians on Calhoun, you should either:
a) Honk if they jaywalk at a green light to indicate they’re wrongdoing
b) Not slow down as you approach the crosswalk so that pedestrians understand you have the right of way at this green light and that you’re not slowing down so they can walk across.
c) Tell UHPD instead of complaining in the comments section
Also if you’re complaining about these behaviors while you’re driving very far away from the crosswalk, you shouldn’t be whiny about it as it may not affect you enough to make you slow down and people have places to go instead of waiting for the crosslight that appears to hate pedestrians by making them “wait. wait.” for no cars passing in the street.
Hey Quikboy, I see you on lots of post complaining about how people are complaining, too much. I hope you see the irony here.
I’m not really complaining: Merely providing suggestions 😉