Pedestrian Safety

GLENDALE — Enrollment for a much-touted May 16 pedestrian safety seminar that was free and open to the public has been closed after organizers said they were flooded with requests from residents, business owners and local organizations who wanted to participate. Enrollment was increased to 45 people after organizers asked an additional facilitator to help manage the group during for the Community Pedestrian Safety Training program at the Glendale Police Department, said Wendy Alfsen, executive director of California Walks, a nonprofit that looks at pedestrian safety issues.

GLENDALE — An officer in plainclothes walked across an unmarked crosswalk at Hawthorne Street and Pacific Avenue numerous times Wednesday to see if drivers yielded to him, and those who didn’t stop received a citation. Many motorists sped by the officer, who wore a white T-shirt and blue jeans, as he walked the unmarked crosswalk, but other drivers stopped for him. Uniformed motorcycle officers quickly followed motorists who made no attempts to stop for the officer, cited them for failing to yield to a pedestrian at an unmarked crosswalk and informed them of the rules for those walkways.

GLENDALE — UC Berkeley’s Traffic Safety Center selected Glendale as one of 12 sites throughout California for its Community Pedestrian Safety Training program because of the city’s frequent problems with pedestrian safety, officials said. The program will help residents and community advocates identify and assess pedestrian-safety problems in their communities as well as teaching them how to examine street engineering, said Marilyn Sabin, a project consultant with the center.

Only death brings constructive results I have noticed that once again the Glendale News-Press had an editorial on pedestrian safety (“It’s time for speeders to slow down,” May 10). I have worked on pedestrian and traffic safety matters for more years than I care to count. The reality is that the city of Glendale has a dismal record on pedestrian safety. It is one of the worst in the country. What has been done to correct this problem? Basically, nothing.

CITY HALL ? Potential electioneering crossed with taxpayer-funded television ? and the controversy it created seven years ago ? could hamper Mayor John Drayman?s plans to reintroduce his colleagues to the public airwaves. His plans for a pre-taped television show on the city?s government-access channel, GTV6, would include all five City Council members as they respond to viewer-generated inquiries by holding interviews with various city officials and leaders. To do so, the City Council will have to reverse a policy established in 2001, when Councilman Dave Weaver?

Traffic safety has become a perennial topic of conversation in Glendale. With more than 350 miles of streets, reducing the number of injuries and accidents presents quite a challenge for our leanly staffed Police Department. During 2006 and 2007, there were 252 collisions between cars and pedestrians. During those same two years, five pedestrians lost their lives when struck by cars. When compared to cities of similar size, Glendale has the fourth-highest number of vehicle/pedestrian collisions and the highest number of collisions involving pedestrians over the age of 65, according to the California Office of Traffic Safety.

GLENDALE — Police are poised to roll out a pedestrian-education campaign today, designed to get the word out about problem intersections, where pedestrians are vulnerable to being hit by passing vehicles. The campaign — which is funded through a $133,000 California Office of Traffic Safety grant — will step up efforts to educate pedestrians and motorists, in light of the fact that more than 100 pedestrians were either injured or killed in pedestrian-vehicle collisions in 2006, Glendale Police Officer John Balian said.

GLENDALE — A Glendale man was sentenced to 15 years to life Wednesday for the 2005 hit-and-run murder of a Burbank teenager who was sitting in a parked car on Columbus Avenue. Andranik Atshemyan, 25, will also serve nine years concurrently for two felony counts of hit-and-run causing great bodily injury, authorities said. Pasadena Superior Court Judge Dorothy Shubin handed down the sentence Wednesday nearly three months after a jury convicted Atshemyan on all three counts in the November 2005 crash that killed Burbank resident Oscar Torres, 18, and seriously injured his friend, Jason Papricio, who was 17 at the time.