Glover Avenue—

Raised Crosswalk Removed Following Damage By Snowplowing

By Andrew Gorosko

The physical instability of a raised crosswalk on Glover Avenue, which was discovered during town snowplowing operations last weekend, has resulted in the town removing the highly visible portable device from the pavement.

Town road workers on December 8 removed from Glover Avenue the multiple hard rubber segments of the raised crosswalk and placed them in crates on a flatbed truck, after which the rubber pads were trucked away for storage.

The town had installed the raised crosswalk on Glover Avenue at its intersection with Meadow Road last September in an experiment.

Raised crosswalks are designed for a dual purpose. They are intended to both slow traffic and to provide a safe place for pedestrians to cross the street. The pedestrian crossing markings are painted atop a broad speed bump, known as a speed table, which works to slow traffic.

State law requires motorists to stop for pedestrians who are in crosswalks.

Town road crew members had started work on installing a second raised crosswalk on Queen Street in front of Newtown Middle School on December 4. But they stopped work on that project after encountering technical problems in preparing the pavement there for the project.

The Queen Street raised crosswalk was to have been an improved design of the device that had been installed on Glover Avenue. 

Having encountered snowplow-related problems with the Glover Avenue raised crosswalk, the Queen Street raised crosswalk installation has now been put on hold, according to Public Works Director Fred Hurley.

The town had planned to leave the experimental Glover Avenue raised crosswalk in place during the winter to learn how the device would stand up to winter conditions, said Joe Tani, the town’s highway chief.

But after snowplow crews were called into work on the night of December 6, they learned that when a plow blade scraped over the raised crosswalk, the force of a plow broke the bolts that connected the crosswalk to the street. he said.

Town crews were careful in plowing snow over the raised crosswalk, but the action of the plow blade pried the rubber pads off the pavement, he said.

In the absence of the raised crosswalk, the town has painted a conventional crosswalk on Glover Avenue where the raised crosswalk had been positioned.

Mr Hurley explained that the friction caused by the steel plow scraping across the hard-rubber raised crosswalk surface “popped” some of the expansion bolts that linked the rubber segments to the pavement, causing the rubber segments to move.

“It’s the sort of [physical] uncertainty that we couldn’t have out there,” he said of the decision to remove the structure from the street. “This has always been an experiment,” he added.

Mr Hurley suggested that if the town chooses, it could use hard-rubber raised crosswalks during the spring, fall, and winter seasons, but then remove them in the wintertime.

But if the town wants “permanent” year-round raised crosswalks, it should construct them out of durable, stable materials such as asphalt and concrete, he said. Mr Hurley termed such substances “true road materials” that could withstand wear and tear.

Mr Hurley said that in light of the problems experienced with the hard-rubber Glover Avenue raised crosswalk, plans for such a structure on Queen Street “are on hold until the spring.”

Mr Hurley said he will talk to police officials about positioning raised crosswalks on Glover Avenue and Queen Street in determining what approach to take in installing such devices there in the future.

The Police Commission, which is the local traffic authority, endorsed the installation of the two portable raised crosswalks to learn the effectiveness of such devices in slowing traffic and providing a safe place for people to cross the street.

The locations chosen for the raised crosswalks are near Newtown Middle School where many young pedestrians walk.