“Spokane’s streets are dangerous!”
That sentiment is thrown around nearly every Monday night at council meetings — and it’s true. Spokane’s streets are dangerous, but not necessarily in the way that public commenters mean. Yes, the city is in a state of emergency due to the opioid crisis, but property crime and violent crime rates in the city are way down, and arrests for camping violations are way up. You could make the argument that Spokane’s streets are actually the safest they’ve been in years … if it weren’t for our city’s collision rate.
The streets of Spokane are *literally* dangerous: it’s riskier to drive, walk or cycle on them than it is in other similarly sized cities, like Tacoma.
After a few particularly deadly months for traffic fatalities and outcry from both community groups like Spokane Reimagined and most neighborhood councils across the city, traffic safety has been one of the city’s most pressing issues.
Earlier this year, Mayor Lisa Brown signed an executive order committing the city to immediate traffic safety measures, after prominent community member Janet Mann was killed in a fatal traffic collision while crossing a street downtown, and the Spokane City Council passed their own resolution calling for budget-friendly fixes that could be done on the double.
For the past few months, RANGE has been working to understand the crisis through our coverage (and look at the transit-minded solutions proposed to mitigate it — better public transit, adaptive design strategies, pedestrian and bicyclist friendly networks.)
Data about collisions is one thing, but actually taking a look at the road infrastructure in Spokane that creates the most crashes is another. So, RANGE’s Urbanism columnist Lauren Pangborn and City Hall reporter Erin Sellers are going to take you on a guided virtual tour of the city’s Top 10 Most Dangerous Intersections so you too can get a sense for the safety of our city’s streets.
The Top 10 tour
Buckle up, folks: today, we’re taking a tour of the 10 locations in Spokane that have seen the highest number of collisions over the last seven years, and you’re definitely going to want to keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle.
10 fast facts on the 10 dangerous intersections:
- Three of the intersections on this list play host to coffee shop drive-thrus — two Dutch Bros and one Blissful Blends (owned by the same woman who owns the bikini barista coffee chain). Another has a Taco Johns, and two more are *near* drive-thrus that could back up into the intersection. This puts Spokane squarely into the nationwide trend of drive-thrus creating deadly traffic congestion.
- Four intersections are five lanes of traffic wide on both intersecting streets.
- One of the intersections isn’t actually an intersection, but an entire bridge (and a bridge with a blind merge and a persistent speeding problem).
- Three are in population centers with lots of pedestrians: a college and transit center, a high school and another college.
- Three are next to grocery stores — scary for the ambitious among us who walk to buy groceries.
- Half of the intersections have gas stations turn-ins. Two intersections have two gas stations.
- Seven are on major Spokane Transit Authority (STA) routes, which see pedestrian traffic: 83% percent of STA riders walk to their stops.
- Three could soon receive major Division Bus Rapid Transit line stops, which will likely increase in vulnerable road users (those on foot, on bikes and on mobility devices) and decrease in car traffic because Division BRT is being completed in tandem with the North-South Freeway.
- Seven are north of the river and none are on the South Hill (Spokane City Council Member Jonathan Bingle had a message for people driving in his district, “Maybe pay attention when you’re driving a little bit more.”)
- Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) has recorded 134 total traffic collision fatalities in Spokane over the last seven years. Only five of those fatalities have been at the most dangerous intersections, which means while you’re more likely to get into a crash at these intersections, traffic fatalities are more randomly spread across the city.
