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Springfield's deadliest strip.

Article Excerpt
Byline: Diane Dietz The Register-Guard

SPRINGFIELD - East Main Street landed in the top 10 percent of Oregon roads for its concentration of motor-vehicle-related fatalities last year - including pedestrian deaths.

It's a dubious distinction that the fast-moving strip has earned each year since the late 1980s, when the state Department of Transportation launched its Safety Priority Index ranking system.

Six pedestrians were killed, and 40 were injured on the five-lane road during the past 11 years. It can be hair-raising for pedestrians to cross and spooky for drivers to negotiate, especially at night.

"At night when it's raining, gosh, it's hard to see," said Debra Rollins, a credit union manager who works on East Main. "You see these dark shadows running across the road."

Even though the road is hazardous - and ODOT and the city of Springfield know it's hazardous- government agencies have in several cases

failed to make basic pedestrian safety upgrades; for instance, adding pedestrian refuge islands in the center lane or adding a traffic light in a long signal-less stretch. Conflicts between the state, the city and businesses along the road have generally killed the efforts.

East Main is "an unlucky combination of a lot of traffic and a lot of pedestrians all trying to use the same facility at the same time," said Angela Kargel, a high-ranking state traffic engineer.

And given the stalemate between the state, the city and nearby businesses, nothing is likely to change.

State officials have acknowledged in internal documents that they're making a dangerous decision leaving East Main as is. If the pattern holds, more people are apt to die while trying to cross the street, and the families of the dead might sue to hold government officials to account.

Pedestrian no-man's land

Traffic picks up speed in the four miles of East Main between 30th Street and 72nd Street as Thurston-area residents head for home and...

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