The City of Hastings and Mary Lanning Healthcare are working to implement crossing improvements and highlight pedestrian safety at two fairly high traffic areas on the Mary Lanning campus, (City of Hastings, Courtesy)
HASTINGS — The City of Hastings collaborated with Mary Lanning Healthcare to improve pedestrian crossing and overall safety on the streets abutting the hospital campus with the focus on Denver and Kansas avenues.
A review by the City and Mary Lanning of pedestrian, employee and vehicular safety resulted in the following improvements that were recently implemented:
1. Increasing the street lighting level from residential level to collector level. This will better illuminate both Denver Avenue and Kansas Avenues from Seventh to Ninth streets.
2. Adding an additional streetlight in the northeast corner of Denver Avenue and Seventh Street to light the crosswalk for the north leg of the intersection.
3. Adding a mid-block pedestrian crossing on Denver Avenue, north of Seventh Street.
4. Upgrading the mid-block crossing on Kansas Avenue north of Seventh Street.
5. The above crosswalks have:
- a. New concrete footings and poles
- b. New crosswalk signs with Diamond Grade DG3 reflective sheeting. The former crosswalk signs were High Intensity Prismatic (HIP) with truncated cube technology. The new signs are DG3 with full-cube prismatic technology. The DG3 sheeting is more visible and brighter, making the signs easier for drivers to notice and react. Signs with DG3 reflective sheeting bounce back almost twice the amount of light compared to HIP.
- c. Adding safe-walk crosswalk illuminator lights to each pole for the crosswalks. The cross-walk illuminator lights are used at locations where crosswalks have pedestrian activity 24 hours a day.
- d. Adding Rapid Rectangular Flashing Beacon lights for the crosswalks.
- e. A pedestrian push button to activate the RRFB’s and the illuminated cross walks (at night).
The Federal Highway Administration estimates that Rapid Rectangular Flashing Beacon lights boost driver awareness and can reduce pedestrian crashes by as much as 47% compared to crosswalks without flashing lights.
The push button and RRFB’s are designed to warn drivers in real-time of pedestrian presence at crosswalks and work much better than the typical static crosswalk signs.
Mary Lanning ran electricity to each of the crosswalk locations and will be responsible for furnishing and maintenance of the electrical source. Mary Lanning removed a tree that blocked one of the installations.
The city pushed conduit under each street for interconnect between the poles, furnished and installed each of the poles, signs, RRFB, and painted the crosswalks. The city will maintain the crosswalks and crosswalk signs/lights. The material cost for each of the poles, sign, RRFB, and crosswalk illumination were just under $4,500 each for a total of just under $18,000.
The City of Hastings Engineering Department put together a plan and work order to upgrade the street lighting. The City of Hastings Utility Department upgraded the street lighting.
Sometimes crosswalks are not used by pedestrians when crossing streets, but we believe making sure the crosswalks are in the correct location for the pedestrian travel paths and adding the new RRFB’s with push buttons and the crosswalk illumination will bring pedestrians to the crosswalks and improve safety.
