The worst intersection is Dunn Street and Kirkwood with 16 crashes. (Isabella Vesperini / WFIU-WTIU News)
Bloomington prides itself as being a bike and pedestrian-friendly city. But how does it measure up when you look at the data?
Resident Mark Stosberg combed through 20 years of crash reports to find out how safe the city is for people on foot.
Stosberg’s report shows the top five intersections in Bloomington for pedestrian crashes.
The worst place is the intersection of Dunn Street and Kirkwood. Looking at data from the years 2003 through 2022, there were 16 pedestrian-involved crashes at the Dunn/Kirkwood interchange.
The other intersections that round out the top five are: Kinser and the Bypass, 10th and Eagleson, College Avenue and Kirkwood, and Walnut and Seventh Street.
WFIU’s Sara Wittmeyer talked to Stosberg to learn more about the report.
This conversation has been edited for conciseness and clarity.
Wittmeyer: Looking at the top five worst intersections, they are very different. I’m specifically looking at Kirkwood and Dunn compared to Kinser and Bypass.
Stosberg: Yeah, it's because there are multiple factors that go into it. How wide is it to cross? How fast is the traffic moving? What's the volume of cars going through? What's the volume of pedestrians there? And all those things together make it more or less likely. You could also have the level of distraction that's going on there.
But there are similarities. I mean, some of them were around closer to campus, but 10th and Eagleson and the one at Kirkwood and Dunn is not far from campus. A couple of them were in the downtown area, which was for similar reasons, and one that was more of the outlier was Kinser and the Bypass.
Wittmeyer: Is there infrastructure in those areas? I’m thinking particularly about sidewalks.
Stosberg: So the Bypass is a four-lane divided highway. And at that intersection, there's one set of pedestrian signals to cross one way, there are not signals to cross the other ways. And there are definitely fewer sidewalks in that area as well. The other ones all have stop signs or stoplights and sidewalks, so there were other factors there.
Read more: Here's how Bloomington is changing the way it prioritizes sidewalk projects
Wittmeyer: How does speed play a role in these accidents?
Stosberg: So the faster the car is moving, the more likelihood that the pedestrian will be killed or injured. And I don't have those stats memorized, but I think, once you get above 40 miles per hour, you're looking at a much greater chance of injury or fatality.
Wittmeyer: And like you said, your data did look at a period that was from the early 2000s to 2022. How did things change over that time period?
Stosberg: So the B-Line we think of it as something that's been here a long time. It was constructed, I think in 2009. So right in the middle of that period. I've been here 10 years and I've watched new sidewalks and side paths be put in every year. They've added over 500 of the curb cuts in the recent time. There’s a lot more bike infrastructure and some of these dedicated bike lanes. So the infrastructure has been consistently getting better, but it's not always evenly distributed. I previously looked at the sort of the equity distribution of sidewalks around town, and found we'd been building sort of disproportionately in wealthier areas of town with higher car ownership. So some of the places that were not as great for walking 20 years ago, or still not as great today.
Wittmeyer: So as you're talking about these places, with new sidewalks and new curbs – does the data show those improvements have had a positive impact?
Stosberg: So I didn't look as much at the trends over time. I did do a basic chart for that. And it has gone up and down. But it's hovered around one pedestrian-involved crash per week. Some things have changed - I think more people are walking around, but our population has gone up about 10 percent in the last decade. And the national trend towards larger, heavier vehicles, which cause more damage, more injuries and fatalities when they do hit people. So we have some things to make things safer to lower rates, and we have some things that are going to make it more dangerous as well.
Sara: I have to ask you about two relatively new things that I know were mentioned in your report, and one was the 7-Line, a controversial bike and pedestrian project here in Bloomington. And then also how the city started closing part of Kirkwood during the warmer months. Can you talk about what impact those changes have made?
Stosberg: I was in some other meetings about the 7-Line, and I believe the crash data presented recently on the 7-Line was that there were still some crashes. And they put the stop sign back in. The crashes were largely due to drivers driving above the speed limit and drivers disregarding signs. So now the most recent thing that happened is they've added back the stop sign at 7th and Dunn, and they are sort of waiting and measuring more.
Read more: City of Bloomington celebrates completion of 7-Line bike lane
There had been some conversation about the danger of crossing the 7-Line for pedestrians. I was curious about that and went back and looked in the data. And there had been in that 20-year period, one pedestrian involved crash, but it was actually at a place that had a stop sign. At the time of the accident, it was late at night.
One thing you see in the data is most of the intersections that have the high crash rates have stop signs or stoplights. It's a different situation. If you look at the fatalities, which are often in a different place than the high crash locations, the fatalities are often on high speed roads and often not in places that have good pedestrian infrastructure. They also look like they are in random locations, but if you map it with our network of higher speed roads, they do correlate and the fatalities tend to be somewhere along the network of higher speed roads.
You've also asked about the Kirkwood. Yeah, so I thought it was notable that the city had already been working on this plan for seasonal bollards and looking at changing Kirkwood overtime to a shared street with even a further reduction in car traffic. So however that conclusion was arrived at, that would directly address the high crash rate there. I think one conclusion I gained was just that separating cars and people walking, it works. I made a comment that if you look at the interior of Indiana University's campus, there's basically no crashes happening. There are no cars there, there are no crashes.
Wittmeyer: What do you think comes next after this data? What do you hope is done with it?
Stosberg: I felt I first published it with the government officials in mind- that it could help. We have a limited budget and limited time, let's make the biggest dent we can and prioritize safety.
Let’s not focus on these places where we're getting an A and make it an A plus. That’s nice if we can do that, but let's find out where our D's and F's are. Let’s bring those up to a C.
But a few days after I published it, someone was hit at one of these intersections. They were at Kinser and the Bypass crossing the street and hit by one of the super big trucks that I had warned cause more injuries. This pedestrian had a broken pelvis and other injuries. I believe there was like a Kroger bag and a Subway spotted there. They had gone over to just get lunch and get groceries. So after that, I shared it more on social media. Until these places get fixed, whether you're driving or walking or biking, it's good to know that you're in a location where you need to pay more attention and just be more aware and hopefully avoid some of these crashes until we can get them improved.
Mark Stosberg’s complete report is available here.
Mark is working on a project now to analyze crashes involving cyclists. He’s going through the data now and said he hopes to have something ready to publish soon.
