The Battle Ground City Council signaled support Tuesday, Jan. 20, for adding flashing beacons at the intersection of Main Street and Grace Avenue as a short-term step to improve pedestrian safety.
Public Works Director Mark Herceg presented three interim options requested by council members ahead of a larger capital project that will realign Southeast Grace Avenue with Northeast Grace Avenue at East Main Street and add a traffic signal at the new intersection. Southeast Grace Avenue currently meets Main Street farther east than Northeast Grace Avenue. Construction of the full project is estimated at $7 million according to the city’s website.
The future roadway is planned to include one through lane in each direction, a center turn lane, bike lanes, planter strips and sidewalks.
Herceg said converting the intersection to an all-way stop was not advised due to traffic imbalance, with most vehicles traveling eastbound during peak hours. Eastward traffic on Main Street currently does not stop at the intersection.
“When you have an all-way stop, it typically works best when you have pretty equal traffic through all legs, and so the fact that you have a huge majority of the traffic in one direction, it would cause quite a backup in that way, so we don’t think it’d be a good solution,” he said.
A second option involving rapid rectangular flashing beacons (RRFBs) was also ruled out because it would violate the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), which governs traffic control standards nationwide.
“So RRFBs are actually not allowed at stop-controlled crosswalks, which is in this situation, both are stop-controlled, so it would not be allowed by that,” Herceg explained.
Staff instead recommended flashing beacons mounted to existing stop and crosswalk signs, which Herceg said have shown strong safety results and can be installed quickly.
“All the studies have shown that these actually have pretty good results; they’re also MUTCD compliant, the cost for those is less than $2,000 per unit, it’s fairly quick to implement, and they’re easily relocatable, so we could use them at other locations,” he said.
During the council discussion, Herceg emphasized that most complaints at the intersection involve drivers failing to stop.
“I think the biggest complaint we get is people blowing through the stop sign, so I think anything you can do to enhance it helps,” he said.
Council members expressed support for moving forward with the staff recommendation to mitigate safety concerns until the long-term project is completed.
“I would request that staff move forward with option number three since we have money budgeted and I think we need to do whatever we can to mitigate any issues in that area until we have a better long-term solution in place,” Councilor Jeanie Kuypers said.
The council did not take formal action through an ordinance but gave a consensus thumbs-up for staff to proceed with the recommended option, which is already budgeted.
