There isn’t one single thing driving this year’s high number of pedestrian fatalities in Anchorage, according to Anna Bosin, central traffic and safety engineer for Alaska’s Department of Transportation.
“Aggressive driving was a contributing factor, driving under the influence was a contributing factor in many of these crashes,” Bosin said. “Driving without headlights on, driving with tinted windows. So there are many contributing factors in this, beyond the pedestrian’s actions.”
Drivers struck and killed 13 people in Anchorage so far this year. Six of the pedestrian deaths happened in September alone — the highest number in a single month in more than a decade. The rise in pedestrian fatalities is a problem not just here, but nationwide, and it’s one that state and city leaders, engineers and other experts are trying to solve. But they say major solutions will take time, money and community buy-in.
In Anchorage, Assembly leaders want speed limits lowered on some roads and more lighting installed. Most of the pedestrians killed this year were crossing the street outside of a crosswalk, at dark and on major roadways where the speed limit is 45 miles per hour or higher like the Seward Highway, Minnesota Drive, Tudor Road and Debarr Road.
Assembly leaders also asked for more traffic enforcement and for a public campaign for pedestrian safety.
Bosin said the funding for these projects comes from the federal Highway Safety Improvement Plan, where the state gets money from the federal government and then chooses projects to fund. She said many areas that have seen pedestrian deaths are on the state’s radar.
“Many of these sites were already on our list of considering nominations for them,” Bosin said. “So we have already created scope. We have already created budgets and recommendations.”
Bosin said some projects will also rely on an increase in public awareness. She worries that simply adding infrastructure, like crosswalks, won’t be enough.
“It’s a nuance that I think many drivers aren’t aware of,” Bosin said. “And so when you’re driving through a community that has sidewalks on both sides, many times it is legal for pedestrians to cross, and drivers need to be very aware of that.”
In the short-term, there’s an ongoing legal question about whether the city can change speed limits on state roads — which were the site of a majority of this year’s deaths. Brad Coy, Anchorage’s traffic engineer, said he believes he has the authority, but he’d still want the state to be involved.
“We would want to do it in conjunction and partnership and coordination with the state, given that it’s on their roads, they maintain the signs on their roads,” Coy said. “And if they have the power, and we have the power, and we do something different than what they do, it just becomes messy.”
And while Anchorage’s pedestrian deaths are on the rise, it’s not the only city facing this problem.
“We are in the midst of a pedestrian safety crisis in the U.S.,” said Raveena John with Smart Growth America, a national nonprofit that works with communities to improve transportation and land use infrastructure. “We are at a 40-year high in terms of pedestrian fatalities. There’s been a 75% increase in the number of people who’ve been killed while walking on the roads since 2010.”
John attributes the rise to a focus from traffic planners on getting drivers from point A to point B the fastest, and a focus from car manufacturers to make larger vehicles, as opposed to the smaller sedans of the past.
“We’ve designed so many places in the U.S. to be really sprawling with wide streets, straight roads focused on, you know, trying to eliminate congestion,” John said. “But what you’re really doing is encouraging drivers to drive fast.”
John said the suggestions made by advocates and Assembly members are good ones, especially lowering speed limits and adding more lighting. She said cities that have reduced pedestrian deaths have also worked to redesign how their roads look.
“If we want people to slow down, we should narrow the lanes,” John said. “We should install more crosswalks with more signals. There are design improvements that don’t require an officer’s oversight or people to, you know, make the right choice in terms of following the speed limit.”
Coy, the city engineer, said that Anchorage officials are already working to make the city more pedestrian friendly, like the bike lane pilot project this summer.
“It was a phenomenal opportunity to try a new facility and see how it was going to get used, and what some of the challenges and benefits were, working with the state as a key partner,” Coy said. “So doing more pilots, I could see being a super helpful way to figure some of this out.”
Bosin, with the state, said it’s all part of a collaborative process between the state and the city called Vision Zero. The idea is that all pedestrian deaths are preventable, and the goal is having none. She said nominations for projects are due at the start of October.
“The soonest we could start pulling the trigger on funding those solutions is after the new year,” Bosin said.
State and city traffic leaders are due to provide their findings on how to reduce pedestrian fatalities to the Assembly at its next regular meeting on Oct. 8.
RELATED: What we know so far about this year’s pedestrian deaths in Anchorage
Wesley Early covers Anchorage life and city politics for Alaska Public Media. Reach him at wearly@alaskapublic.org and follow him on X at @wesley_early. Read more about Wesley here.
