Pedestrian safety improvements slated for Spokane streets, but activists say the progress is too slow

On a relatively sunny Thursday afternoon as another Spokane winter draws to a close, children walked the few blocks from Logan Elementary and Yasuhara Middle schools to Donut Parade, where helping the store place labels on a handful of doughnut boxes will earn them a free treat.

They can make the trip twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays – Saturdays too, if they’re in the neighborhood. The walk could become a little bit easier and safer when a new stretch of sidewalk is built along Marietta Avenue, one of more than a dozen small projects across the city to make the streets safer for pedestrians.

The Spokane City Council recently approved nearly $2.9 million in funding for these projects over the next two years from the “Safe Streets For All Fund,” the recently renamed Traffic Calming Fund that comes from revenue from speeding and red light tickets.

The fund is separate from the rest of the city’s streets budget and is intended to be used only on projects that explicitly make the streets safer, with projects requested by neighborhood councils often prioritized.

Some still worry the city isn’t moving fast enough to stop the deaths of pedestrians.

“You’re the only people that can do something about this crisis right now,” traffic safety advocate Sarah Rose told the City Council. “I ask that you use this time on city council to not just push resolutions, but push the departments who should be working on solutions.”

Seven of the projects are quick-to-install “adaptive design” projects scheduled for rollout this year, mostly bumpouts, which shorten the crosswalk by narrowing the street at the intersection to make it quicker to cross.

Following the hit-and-run death of foster care advocate Janet Mann, Mayor Lisa Brown pledged to work more quickly to make the city’s streets safer, including by relying more heavily on projects that could be quickly installed to pilot longer-term solutions or changed if necessary. These projects tend to rely more on plastic bollards and painted stripes than costly concrete infrastructure.

The projects

In the Bemiss Neighborhood, the intersection of Regal and Rich near On Track Academy and the Newtech Skill Center will see either a temporary traffic circle or bumpouts. City officials are still consulting the Spokane school district on the preferred version.

Downtown, crosswalks on Riverside Avenue will be modified to have a “leading pedestrian interval,” meaning people could start walking before vehicle traffic is given a green light.

The East Central Neighborhood will see new bumpouts on East Ninth Avenue between Altamont and Perry. The Lincoln Heights Neighborhood will get bumpouts on a large stretch of 17th Avenue between Havana Street and Rockwood Boulevard, cutting through the entire neighborhood.

The Manito/Cannon Hill Neighborhood will get bumpouts on Bernard Street intersections between 18th and 21st avenues.

The North Indian Trail Neighborhood will see bumpouts at the Shawnee and Farmdale intersection. Barnes could also see added and connected bike lanes while its vehicle lanes are narrowed to reduce speeds.

Finally, Emerson/Garfield will see speed humps added to Euclid Avenue just west of Division. The neighborhood council has pitched closing off that entrance into Euclid Avenue altogether, but the temporary speed humps will be installed to see if the traffic safety issues there are mitigated.

More permanent projects are planned for the 2026 construction season, including completing a currently patchy stretch of crosswalk on Marietta Avenue just south of Yasuhara Middle School.

Many of these projects entail some kind of enhanced crosswalk signal that flashes to warn drivers to yield to someone about to cross the street. These include the intersections of Wellesley and Lacey near Regal Elementary School, Haven and Queen in the Hillyard Neighborhood, Third and Cowley near the East Central Goodwill, and Northwest Boulevard and F Street in the Audobon/Downriver Neighborhood.

37th Avenue in the Comstock Neighborhood will get speed humps between High and Bernard.

The intersection of 11th and Altamont in the Lincoln Heights Neighborhood will get a raised crosswalk and permanent bumpouts.

Rosamund Avenue northeast of the Finch Arboretum will receive its first stretch of sidewalk between F Street and the Rosamund Bridge, where it goes over Sunset Boulevard.

Traffic signals will be installed on Rowan where it intersects with Ash and Maple in the North Hill Neighborhood. These intersections currently are controlled only by stop signs. Ash and Rowan was recently listed as one of the 30 most dangerous intersections in the city.

Finally, in the Emerson/Garfield Neighborhood, Washington will be made northbound only for a short stretch immediately north of the intersection with Buckeye, easing traffic on that unaligned intersection.

But in the face of traffic deaths and serious injuries, which skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic and haven’t decreased since, some believe the city isn’t acting fast enough.

Advocates call for ‘Vision Zero’

At the March 3 City Council meeting, traffic safety activists Erik Lowe and Rose pointed to two recent pedestrian deaths and called for the city to do more.

“I stand here tonight, a week after two pedestrian fatalities, looking at a total of seven adaptive projects for the entirety of 2025. At the rate of seven projects per year, we should reach Vision Zero in approximately never,” referring to an international initiative to eliminate pedestrian deaths.

Rose noted that she witnessed emergency crews attempt to resuscitate 72-year-old Zhilan Chen, who was struck and killed by a driver near Spokane Falls Community College on Feb. 24. Just three days prior, 66-year-old Douglas Martindale was struck and killed by a driver in the Audobon-Downriver Neighborhood.

“I was going to tell you about that experience and what it was like to witness that for everyone there that had to witness that witness her daughter crying at the loss of her mother and her grandson becoming a man in that moment,” Rose said.

“But then, Thursday night, I saw someone unconscious lifted into an ambulance after they were hit by a car in a crosswalk outside my favorite bookstore,” Rose added.

And just before midnight on March 2, 28-year-old Oliver Smith was riding on an e-bike when he was hit and killed by a truck driver in the West Plains.

Councilman Michael Cathcart said these stories were difficult to hear, but noted that the safe streets fund has recently dwindled as the state has limited how much speeding and red -light tickets could cost.

“Dwindling resources have made it very challenging to do this sort of thing,” he said. “If enough funds could be raised, if cameras are installed, if the Legislature changes certain things, there are some possibilities there, but I don’t think it’s fair to blame Public Works.”

Brown, in an interview, said she empathized with the frustration of activists. She noted that she created a new cabinet position, director of transportation and sustainability, and hired traffic safety advocate and former Councilman Jon Snyder to fill that position to get quicker results.

She also expressed frustration with decreased driver safety following the pandemic.

“Anytime someone dies it’s tragic and awful, and hopefully a wakeup call, because driver behavior got notably worse during COVID,” she said.

Public Works Director Marlene Feist also emphasized that the slate of projects approved by the City Council were only a small portion of the ones planned by the city division.

“We also have great Safe Routes to School projects around Francis Scott Elementary, and a bike safety project around the updated Post Street Bridge,” she listed. “We have three more pedestrian flashing beacons coming in from a grant, including one on Whistalks around where a gentleman was hit recently.”

The city is exploring a wider rollout of pedestrian leading intervals and banning right turns on red lights in some areas, she added. But it can’t quickly fix problems that have been baked in by decades of infrastructure.

“It takes a lot of work a little at a time to get the system to be better,” Feist argued. “You can’t expect everything to happen at once – there’s 2,200 lane miles in the city, and it takes a while to hit all of the places where we can improve safety for people getting around.”