Montclair pedestrian strikes are on the rise. Officials and residents looking for answers

On Saturday evening, Oct. 29, 30-year-old Christina Kata was walking along Grove Street with her boyfriend after a Halloween party at Montclair Brewery. In the crosswalk at Claremont Avenue, she was hit by a 22-year-old Bloomfield woman in a Toyota Corolla making a left turn. Kata considers herself lucky that her worst injury, a displaced fracture in her right hand, is healing and should recover fully, though she is still undergoing physical therapy.

But the accident upended her life. With her dominant hand in a cast, she couldn't perform basic tasks or self-care, or use a keyboard. Fortunately, her employer, a Manhattan-based urban planning nonprofit, allowed her to work from home while she healed, and use dictation software.

Even more frustrating than the physical injury has been the difficulty of getting reimbursement for her medical bills from the driver's insurance carrier, she said. Ironically, the problem is that she doesn't have a car. In New Jersey, pedestrians hit by a vehicle who don't have car insurance must have all their medical bills routed through a state agency called PLIGA, a complicated and lengthy process.

Even though she hired an attorney who specializes in pedestrian and bike accidents, it took so long to get approval that she was forced to delay physical therapy. "It's a recurring headache," she said. "We're a car-focused culture."

According to Lt. Stephanie Egnezzo, head of the Montclair traffic bureau, there were 47 car accidents involving pedestrians in 2022, up from 24 in 2021. However, she said, the 2021 number is skewed because there were so few cars on the road the first half of the year, when schools were closed and few people went to work because of the pandemic. In prior years, the number of pedestrian accidents has ranged between the high 30s and low 40s.

She said Montclair's "exponential growth" from new development has contributed to the increase in pedestrian "crashes." It's not just the new apartment dwellers; new retail and commercial space is bringing more people and cars to town for work, shopping and dining out.

"I see a big difference in the volume of traffic on Bloomfield Avenue, and all over town," Egnezzo said.

Signs of trouble spots

Pedestrian accidents are on the minds of many residents, especially those who drive along Upper Mountain Avenue, where a string of colorful signs implore drivers to slow down and yield to pedestrians.

The signs were created by residents of the busy county road, the site of three pedestrian-car collisions in the last two months. Two of them took place in the same Normal Avenue crosswalk.

In November, it was a 39-year-old woman from Bloomfield; last Monday it was a 44-year-old woman and her 3-year-old son. Both women were treated at the hospital for minor injuries, and the child was unharmed.

The third pedestrian accident on Upper Mountain Avenue occurred on Dec. 5 in the crosswalk at Mt. Hebron Road. A 65-year-old man was hit while crossing with his dog; he was treated at the hospital for minor injuries (the dog was unharmed).

The Montclair police do not regularly report crashes or pedestrian accidents to the public, but informal reports are circulating. On Facebook recently, one resident asked for referrals to physical therapy because she is “recovering from a significant back injury” after being hit at Walnut Street and Depot Square on April 13. (Because of a pending lawsuit, she was not able to speak on the record.) And Kata was not the only pedestrian struck on Grove Street in October; another pedestrian was hit at Grove and Oxford, according to an eyewitness account that was verified by police.

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Last week, Essex County Commissioner Brendan Gill, a Montclair resident, issued a statement about the repeat Upper Mountain Avenue accident, saying he was “disturbed” to hear about it and that he is working with the county and local officials on speed reduction and traffic-calming interventions.

Trade-offs

It won't be easy. Improving pedestrian safety in heavily trafficked areas can bring new headaches. A good example is Bloomfield Avenue, where traffic backups have worsened since the county redesigned intersections to protect pedestrians with longer and safer crossings.

A similar trade-off is evident at the intersection of Upper Mountain and Normal avenues, where the town worked with the county to install a pedestrian-only signal after the recent accidents. When the pedestrian pushes the new pedestrian-only button, all four directions of cars get a red light, and traffic quickly backs up to the train tracks. Egnezzo said she hopes the signal can be adjusted to integrate a pedestrian walk option into its normal rotation; only if the walker chooses to push the walk-only button would red lights go on for all directions.

Councilor Peter Yacobellis said he's working with Bike&Walk Montclair to create a Vision Zero task force; Vision Zero is a strategy to eliminate traffic fatalities, through education, traffic calming and safer crosswalks, that has proved successful in Europe and New York City.

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He is also pushing for speed-clocking signs on county roads such as Grove Street and Valley Road, where speed limits are higher and there are fewer intersections and narrow streets to slow traffic.

But making roadway improvements treats only the symptoms of the disease, Yacobellis said, not the disease itself, which he calls reckless driving. And there are simply too many problem areas to address. In the last two years, residents have come to the council with over 100 intersections or areas they say are dangerous, he said.

"People are just in a hurry in general. There's a lot of anxiety and rushing, not leaving enough time to drive slowly. Everyone is impatient," he said.

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Another problem is that a segment of today's drivers have grown up on their devices, creating a "lethal combination of distracted walking and distracted driving," Yacobellis said.

And many drivers don't yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk, which is the law in New Jersey. Periodically, the police set up plainclothes decoys at intersections and issue warnings to those who don't stop, along with an information card, Egnezzo said.

For Kata, who moved to Montclair from Clifton two years ago in large part because she wouldn't need a car, walking has become more fraught. She lives near the Bay Street train station and uses the train to commute to work and even to do errands like shopping in Upper Montclair. But she's had some close calls simply crossing Glenridge Avenue from the train platform to her Bay Street apartment, with drivers trying to beat the gates before they come down, or getting impatient waiting behind them.

"I'm definitely a lot more hesitant now," she said. "I had assumed drivers would be paying attention, but I've come to realize I can't trust them to be mindful of my presence on the street."

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Montclair pedestrian strikes on rise. Township looks for answers