LHENA Pleads For Road Safety After Pedestrian Death

On October 12th, Ted Ferrara was killed when he was struck by a car while crossing Lyndale Ave at 25th St on foot from our neighborhood. On behalf of the Lowry Hill East Neighborhood Association, I send condolences to his friends and loved ones. This is the event we have feared and have been working to prevent.

Nearly every person who lives in the Lowry Hill East Neighborhood (known to most as The Wedge) will tell you the thing they appreciate most about their neighborhood is its walkability. Indeed, with multiple schools, groceries, places of worship, doctors, dentists, co-working spaces, coffee shops, restaurants, bars, retail locations, parks, and lakes within an easy one mile of any location inside our neighborhood, it is arguably the most walkable place in Minneapolis, perhaps even the entire state. Yet crossing Lyndale, Hennepin, or Lake to exit our neighborhood can be a harrowing experience. The 2017 Minneapolis Crash Study confirmed our experiences with data. Our neighborhood is home to three of the most dangerous intersections for pedestrians in the city. Since the release of that crash study, the Lowry Hill East Neighborhood Association and our members have been contacting our elected officials to complain about the unsafe walking, biking, and driving conditions. The closure of I-35 and the use of Lyndale as an alternate route has compounded the problem.

Just a couple of weeks ago, at a city open house to discuss the redevelopment of a parking lot behind the Jungle Theater on the other side of Lyndale from our neighborhood, the city planners asked people to identify barriers to accessing this area. In response there were so many colored dots marking the intersection of 29th and Lyndale as a safety hazard that you could no longer read any of the text. The Midtown Greenway hypothetically provides a safe, healthy, and easy way of accessing the LynLake business district at the Lyndale and 29th St corner, but in practice it does not because if you exit the Greenway here there is no crosswalk, meaning that for two blocks there is no designated place for pedestrians or cyclists to cross a busy street that vehicles move down at high speeds. The nearest designated crossing intersection to the Greenway, at Lake St. and Lyndale Ave., has suffered the most crashes involving pedestrians in the entire city over the past 10 years. Thousands of people live within a few blocks of this location, thousands more utilize the Greenway by foot and by bike, scores of small, independent businesses are a unique and rich resource, but the inability to safely cross the road negatively impacts our quality of life. And as there is also no crosswalk at 27th and Lyndale Ave, the disastrous pedestrian situation continues as you move north into our neighborhood. With multiple extended areas that have no traffic lights and no stop signs, many drivers treat Lyndale as an expressway. The uniformity of public response at the city engagement event gave me hopes that something would be done sooner rather than later to address this problem. Imagine my dismay to hear that just a week later a pedestrian was killed walking from our neighborhood across Lyndale. 

We know that making Lyndale safer is a bureaucratic tangle, particularly since it is a county road and the decisions for its maintenance and design are in large part made by those who have likely never walked or driven in our neighborhood. And we know that if our locally elected representatives could snap their fingers, this death might have been prevented. But we also know that the time has come for all relevant actors to come together now to save lives and to stop the ever growing list of injuries and terrifying close calls.

We ask that a temporary solution for improving pedestrian safety between Franklin and Lake be in place by January 2020, and after that a more permanent solution by June of 2020. The Lowry Hill East Neighborhood Association and its members are eager to support our local and regional leaders in meeting these reasonable safety requests.

In addition, we ask all of you who drive through our neighborhood to look up and to SLOW DOWN. No matter what the posted speed limit is, we know that driving over 25 in a high traffic, heavy pedestrian-filled area is lethal. Furthermore, please reconsider any number of driving habits that make using our streets as pedestrians unsafe. Furthermore, please reconsider any number of driving habits that make using our streets as pedestrians unsafe: rights on red when parked cars block visibility, moving through intersections while human beings are still present in them, left hand turns without checking for approaching pedestrians. And please, please do not run red lights and stop signs. This is a truly frightening act that has become the new norm. We can have all the improved safety laws we want, but if the people behind the wheel don't take responsibility as drivers to care more for the lives of others, the injuries and deaths will continue to occur.

Alicia Gibson
President of the Board of Directors
Lowry Hill East Neighborhood Association