With accidents up over 100 percent is Newtown a walkable community? Residents urge change
Newtown has a reputation as a walkable community. Its town center is filled with shops that can be reached from a municipal parking lot. Victorian era homes with wide porches for chatting with neighbors line streets in the oldest parts of town and a walking trail laces through the region.
But walking can be dangerous as data collected by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation shows. Since 2018, 20 accidents involving pedestrians have been reported in the borough and surrounding Newtown Township, including two fatalities in 2021 and five other crashes involving suspected serious injuries.
On Buck Road at its intersection with Mill Pond Drive, an older woman walker from the Newtown Crossing development was struck by vehicles twice in one year, Newtown Township Police Chief John Hearn said, even though there is a traffic signal for pedestrians there.
But the situation is especially dangerous where there is no traffic signal timed for a pedestrian crossing, residents say.
At the township supervisors' meeting earlier this month, several residents of the Newtown Walk development pleaded for a flashing light to be placed at a crosswalk on busy Newtown-Yardley Road at Tara Boulevard so pedestrians in their neighborhood can get to the other side of Newtown-Yardley safely to walk on the Newtown Trail.
The crosswalk is not at a traffic signal so drivers would have no reason to slow down if they didn't see the pedestrian.
Resident Marc Bjorkman showed the supervisors photos of car parts left by the side of the road from accidents that he thinks occurred when one vehicle rear-ended another that had stopped for a pedestrian. He said drivers in a second or third car behind a stopping vehicle may not see the pedestrian and that's why the flashing light to alert motorists to the crosswalk there is so important.
"This is a very dangerous intersection. People stop and people behind them don't see it (a pedestrian in the roadway)," Bjorkman said. He said residents have clocked people driving at 60 miles per hour on the road even though the speed limit is 25 mph at that intersection.
The residents said they have been asking for the flashing light for a couple of years.
The township installed brighter crosswalk stripping, a bright yellow sign and other safety features on North Sycamore Street following an accident before the Christmas holidays in 2021 that left a male pedestrian dead. He had just left a restaurant on Sycamore where there is a crosswalk but no traffic signal. That interesection is also awaiting a flashing light.
More: Pedestrian killed attempting to cross N. Sycamore St. in Newtown Township
Township Manager Micah Lewis said the township has applied for an ARLE (Automatic Red Light Enforcement) grant from PennDOT to help fund the flashing lights. It received $50,000 toward the Sycamore project but is awaiting word on a grant that could help fund the Newtown-Yardley Road flashing light that would cost approximately $145,000 to install.
Hearn told the supervisors that serious vehicular accidents in Newtown Township rose from 45 in 2022 to 106 last year, a 136% increase.
"Everybody is in a hurry," he said, and newer vehicles have so many electronic devices in them, combined with cellphone use, that drivers often are distracted.
Pedestrians have the right of way in crosswalks that don't have traffic signals in Pennslvania but they need to look both ways before crossing and be aware that drivers can be distracted, both for their own safety and so they don't cause an accident involving others, the police chief pointed out.
Pedestrian safety lies both with walkers and drivers. "It's a shared responsibility," Hearn said.
This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Newtown Township looks to improve safety at crosswalks
