EDITORIAL: Making Fourth and Auburn safer for students

Published 11:45 am Friday, October 20, 2023

Streets are designed to allow traffic to flow efficiently, with as few stops as possible.

But sometimes drivers should make a slight sacrifice in convenience to help protect the much more vulnerable people with whom they share travel routes.

Pedestrians, it scarcely needs to be said, do not fare well in any encounter with a 4,000-pound automobile, no matter the speed of the latter.

Although Baker City’s public works department has taken steps to make the intersection of Fourth Street and Auburn Avenue safer for pedestrians — and in particular for students at nearby South Baker Intermediate and Baker Middle School — city officials need to seriously consider making the intersection a four-way stop.

Currently there are stop signs on Fourth Street, but not on Auburn Avenue.

There have been multiple traffic crashes at or near the intersection over the past several years. Fortunately, no students have been injured, although neighbors report seeing “close calls.”

Auburn is an arterial — a main east-west route with relatively few stop signs or traffic signals.

Between Second Street and Auburn’s dead end near 20th Street, drivers on Auburn don’t have to stop unless there’s a train on the tracks near Eighth Street.

But unlike any of the other intersections along that stretch of Auburn, the one at Fourth Street is a major crossing point for students.

Local residents and school district officials have expressed concern about the risk to students crossing Auburn at Fourth.

One issue is the relative scarcity of off-street parking. The result is that cars often are parked on both sides of Auburn near Fourth Street. Those cars — and more so trailers and other long, tall vehicles — impede the views of drivers as well as pedestrians even when legally parked.

The city recently painted yellow strips on the curbs along Auburn and put up no parking signs within 10 feet of Fourth Street. The city plans to extend the ban to 20 feet, which will be an improvement.

City workers also painted more visible crosswalks, with perpendicular strips as well as the usual pair of parallel lines.

But paint doesn’t stop, or necessarily even slow, traffic.

Stop signs, with rare exceptions, do.

Making Fourth and Auburn a four-way stop would increase traffic congestion. And there’s always the potential for confusion as drivers engage in the classic series of tentative stops and starts as they try to settle on who reached the intersection first and has the right-of-way.

But at least the cars would stop, making them vastly less dangerous, temporarily, to the students who go that way four days a week.

The city and school district should also consider designating the intersection as a school zone, with posted signs. Under Oregon law, school zones can be designated for crosswalks, such as those at Fourth and Auburn, that aren’t adjacent to a school.

— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor