SALT LAKE CITY — Utah is quickly approaching the "100 Deadliest Days of Summer," the time period between Memorial Day and Labor Day when road fatalities are nearly double compared to the rest of the year.
Salt Lake City officials have been making road enhancements and improvements to keep both pedestrians and drivers safe, including the intersection of 400 East and 2100 South near the Sugar House neighborhood.
"It's pretty busy street, multiple lanes of traffic," said Salt Lake City Transportation Director Jon Larsen. "We wanted to create a safer place for people to cross."
According to Larsen, the crosswalk at the intersection is an example of that effort.
"The high curve that bulbs out, you can see that it provides kind of a safe place for people to wait for traffic to stop," he explained. "You can push a button and you get some flashing lights, we call it a rectangular rapid flashing beacon, and that helps get driver's attention."
The department's budget has fluctuated between $200,000 and $500,000 per year for crosswalk safety enhancements. Larsen says projects similar to the one at 400 East are being done elsewhere.
"The city, a couple of years ago, developed a Livable Streets Program which is basically traffic calming to help make our neighborhoods more safe and comfortable for everyone to slow people down," said Larsen. "That program is built around this idea of breaking the city down into 113 different neighborhood zones."
Salt Lake City prioritizes those based on need, with crews currently working their way down that list of neighborhood zones.
The transportation department has received about $2 million a year the last two years for the program, and another $300,000 a year for what are called quick action projects. Larsen says those projects are semi-permanent enhancements to do a little bit of triage in targeted areas, until they can come to the neighborhood and do more permanent installations.
At the end of the day, Larsen says it comes down to safety.
"We're trying to make it so that, people aren't seriously hurt or killed on our, on our street network," said Larsen. "These are real tragedies."
Sweet Streets SLC is an organization that fights for safer streets in all neighborhoods. A map they've compiled with data from media and police reports shows that four deaths and 15 injuries have taken place on Salt Lake City streets so far this year.
"I like to see what the city is doing with all of these pop-up street enhancements, like you're talking about with those bulb outs there," said Sweet Streets SLC board Julian Jurkoic.
The hope is to see more of the same done elsewhere.
