Deadly Seattle Street: 23rd Ave

Walking in Seattle is looking at deadly streets that may be good road diet candidates. The list included 28 different locations – just a fraction of the 90 locations throughout the city where a pedestrian had been killed between 2001 and 2009.

With four people having been killed in less than one mile of roadway between Yesler St and I-90, Walking in Seattle nominates 23rd Ave as a good road diet candidate. A road diet on 23rd Ave would improve road safety by re-striping the roadway to add a center turn lane and bike lanes, thus slowing vehicle traffic. Pedestrians are much more likely to be killed by a car traveling at 40 mph than by a car traveling at 30 mph.

At 10 pm on January 4, 2008, a 53-year-old female pedestrian was killed at 23rd & Lane in the Judkins Park neighborhood. On May 21, 2009, a 74-year-old man was struck and killed at 23rd & Main at 3 in the afternoon. In 2004, a 57-year-old motorcyclist died at 23rd and S Judkins St. Two years later, in 2006, a 26-year-old police officer was killed at 23rd and Yesler, when a speeding car ran a light.

This particularly deadly section of 23rd has four lanes of vehicle travel, with no sharrows or bicycle lanes and few marked crosswalks. There is also a curve and an incline that limit visibility. The daily traffic volume here is only 13,400 vehicles per day, well below SDOT’s maximum threshold of 25,000 for implementing a lane rechannelization. With the low visibility, low traffic volume, and high number of fatalities, this section of roadway would be an ideal candidate for a road diet that could prevent further death of all roadway users.

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