What is the “Balboa Crossing”, What Will it Do, and When Will it End?

First, I apologize for the bad photo.  These signs never come out on my phone.

Second, no, the “Balboa Crossing” has nothing to do with a church.

Third, it’s a crosswalk project.

Fourth, no: It’s not the flashing crosswalks that the community has been waiting for.

The “Balboa Crossing” project is a project to re-paint the crosswalks on 45 intersections for a cost of $425,000, or $9,444.44 per crosswalk.  The national average for crosswalk repainting is $2,500, with a top-end crosswalk being $5,700 and the low-end being $600.  How are we spending 2-4x the national average, and a whopping 16x more than when someone gets a “good deal”?  Ask Councilwoman Diane Dixon, who was the one who spearheaded this project in her district, who also ignored over a thousand calls by residents in support of flashing crosswalks which cost about $5,000 per intersection (when done in multiples of 5 or more).

The project will seek to move our current crosswalks into what a city-paid consultant said were better crosswalks, known as “continental stripes”, pictured here:

The crosswalk project was done in response to a study done by the aforementioned consultant, who came up with these safety figures for each crosswalk:

To execute this project, workers will close one lane at a time to paint, potentially causing some major congestion along the way.  The project will last until 6/15, just one week before summer officially begins to roll in on 6/21.

 

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