Community Commentary:

The issue of pedestrian and traffic safety has clearly been one of the most serious issues facing Glendale in the past few years. To date, the City Council, along with the city manager and pertinent department heads, have attempted to solve the problem to the best of our collective abilities. Examples of efforts to solve the problem include pedestrian crosswalk stings, helicopter enforcement of Glenoaks Boulevard, traffic-calming measures and red-light cameras, to name just a few.

The City Council has recently agreed to place this issue on an agenda for discussion at a future time, but the time to act on this issue is now and should not be subject to the normal time-consuming process of bringing an item before the council.

I have formulated what I call the Glendale Safe Streets Initiative, which is a six-point plan toward solving the pedestrian and traffic safety issues we face.

The plan is as follows:

1. I have contacted UC Berkeley and the director of its nationally recognized Traffic Safety Center. I have secured the school’s commitment to select Glendale as one of its four target cities.

As a target city, Glendale will receive community education and professional training to create a safer pedestrian environment. This step and the following two steps will be provided at absolutely no cost to Glendale or our residents.

2. In addition to the Berkeley efforts, the state’s Department of Public Health, along with experts from the Federal Highway Administration, will meet with our city officials from the Police, Fire and Public Works departments and will conduct a training seminar where the latest state-of-the-art traffic and pedestrian safety measures will be introduced. These experts will also review the current efforts at safety that Glendale has in place and evaluate them for their effectiveness. The experts will then recommend a series of safety planning procedures that will comprise one portion of Glendale’s initiative for safe streets.

3. The team of experts will also meet with the citizens of Glendale, who are stakeholders in this issue. It is essential that the residents participate and have a voice and a seat at the table in this effort to devise a safer city.

At this educational meeting, citizen-based groups representing the elderly, the disabled, children, students and others would be in attendance to express their opinions and concerns.