OPINION: It’s time to fix our dangerous roads

Last weekend, two more pedestrians were killed while crossing the street in Anchorage. A few days ago, another was critically injured. Thirteen pedestrians have died on our city’s roads in 2024, with six of those occurring in rapid succession in September alone. Every one of these deaths is a tragedy, and it’s heartbreaking to watch our community wrestle with the same question each time: “How could this happen?”

Too often, the immediate response to these fatalities focuses on the actions of the pedestrian — were they crossing in the right place? Were they visible? Should they have been more cautious? But this line of thinking misses the forest for the trees; the real issue is the design of our streets, not individual behavior.

Our streets are dangerous by design. The wide, fast-moving roads in Anchorage are built to move as many cars as possible, as quickly as possible, but they fail to provide for the safety of everyone else — pedestrians, bicyclists, transit riders, and even other drivers. When streets are designed this way, it’s not a matter of if tragedy will strike, but when.

Wide lanes encourage dangerous speeding, unreasonably long distances between crosswalks tempt people to cross mid-block, and poor lighting makes it difficult for drivers to see people in the roadway. These are design flaws, not pedestrian mistakes. This isn’t just the opinion of a few advocates; the state Department of Transportation & Public Facilities (DOT&PF) has researched and acknowledged these problems in its 2023 Vulnerable Road Users Assessment and 2024 Safety Plan, specifically identifying many of the roads where pedestrians have been killed this month.

Many cities around the world have come to the conclusion that making modest reductions in road size and speed is well worth the improved quality of life and safety of all road users, including drivers. We’ve already started to make these same changes — Spenard Road from Northern Lights Boulevard to Hillcrest Drive is not a perfect road, but it is far more comfortable to walk alongside and drive on, with lower average travel speeds and minimal impact to car traffic.

Blaming pedestrians for their own deaths not only overlooks the systemic issue of dangerous road design, but also creates a false sense of security. If we believe that “those” pedestrians died because “they” didn’t follow the rules, we convince ourselves that as long as we do everything right, we’ll be safe. But the truth is, our road design choices put everyone at risk — even if you’re in a car, like the drivers who lost their lives on Tudor Road, Commercial Drive and the Seward Highway earlier this summer.

The loss of 13 pedestrians in Anchorage this year must be a wake-up call. These deaths aren’t isolated incidents or mere accidents. They’re the tragic but predictable outcome of a system that prioritizes moving cars quickly over the safety of people walking, on bikes or in wheelchairs, and it doesn’t have to be this way. Our transportation system is for everyone, not just people in cars, and should support freedom of choice in how to get around town.

We know what needs to be done to make our streets safer for everyone. Slowing vehicle speeds, narrowing lanes, adding protected bike lanes, and installing more frequent, well-lit, pedestrian-priority crosswalks are just a few of the life-saving design changes that DOT&PF has identified to prevent further tragedies. Like the saying about planting trees, the best time to implement these changes was 20 years ago, but the second-best time is now.

Alexa Dobson is the executive director of Bike Anchorage.

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