This story was reported by Sophie Acker, Quinn Bisbee, Caitlin Boyarsky, Liv Buchler, Jonas Camera, Leah Golding, Emma Graham, Tanner Hopkins, Finn Hummel, Kate Kampner, Abby Minton, Julia O’Dwyer, Lindsay Renk, Kate Rosegard, Phoebe Swartz, Amelia Veleber and Meredith Williamson. Renk and Veleber did additional reporting. It was edited by Carolyn Shapiro. The Community News Service is a program in which University of Vermont students work with professional editors to provide content for local news outlets at no cost.
Isabelle Ribeiro, a first year student at the University of Vermont, crosses busy Main Street at University Heights nearly every day to get from her dorm to class. To her and many other students on foot, that routine trek is perilous.
“I have a class right near the Davis Center, so I always use that crosswalk,” Ribeiro said of the mid-campus intersection, which studies show has some of the heaviest vehicle traffic in the state.
“I don’t understand why something so dangerous is the main road that thousands of students have to cross daily just to get to their classes,” Ribeiro said. “I wish I wasn’t scared to walk the main road back to my dorm and to classes.”
The steady flow of students across this intersection creates constant conflict between vehicles and pedestrians. This fall, a class of University of Vermont students recorded traffic and pedestrian patterns at the intersection and concluded that public safety officials need to take another look at reducing or eliminating the risk of accidents there. They identified safety hazards for students and drivers alike.
For most students living on campus, the crosswalk serves as the connection between the campus residential area to the south of Main Street and the central academic buildings, as well as the Dudley H. Davis Center on the north side. A Green Mountain Transit bus also stops at the intersection, complicating the crossing challenges.
Meanwhile, drivers depend on Main Street as a major thoroughfare between Interstate 89 and downtown Burlington. It’s also a primary link from Burlington to the east side of South Burlington, and traffic is only likely to grow as that city develops an urban center on and around Dorset Street, where new housing is under construction.
“I drive through that intersection on my way to both of my jobs, often multiple times per day,” said Cody Waterfall, a University of Vermont sophomore in the Grossman School of Business. “I feel like, more and more, I see close calls, especially between cars turning onto the street and people trying to speed up through yellow lights. I think it’s a real problem and I really don’t think it’s a very safe environment for pedestrians or drivers.”
In 2018, Resource Systems Group, a data gathering and analysis firm affiliated with Dartmouth University, produced a report for University of Vermont campus planners on traffic and accident volume at the University Heights-Main Street intersection and deemed it a “high crash location.” The firm’s data showed 105 accidents occurred at the site between 2012 and 2018, including three that involved pedestrians and seven involving heavy vehicles. These crashes led to 20 injuries.
Since then, University of Vermont students have collected their own data at the intersection. In 2021, they counted 7,000 students who crossed the intersection and 15,000 vehicles that drove through it each day. Vermont Agency of Transportation data in 2022 showed as many as 27,000 vehicles traveled daily on Main Street between South Prospect and Spear streets, passing University Heights in the middle.
In October, students recorded 77 cars that ran the red light on Main Street between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon. Within that hour, 583 students crossed the street. The next day, the students who conducted that research for an environmental journalism class gathered at the intersection for a news conference to call for more traffic and roadway modifications to improve safety.
“Burlington seems to value moving cars more than pedestrian safety, which should be the biggest priority on a college campus,” Jackson Jewell, a University of Vermont senior, told the student researchers.
Students rush to beat the intersection’s walk signal — or ignore it entirely — while cars will often speed through a yellow light on the verge of turning red. When a green light faces University Heights, allowing vehicles to turn east onto Main Street, students have the “walk” signal at the same time and cross in front of the drivers, causing more confusion and traffic-dodging. The 2021 analysis of the intersection found that 564 cars make that turn each day on both red and green lights.
“They’ll just get really close to you and honk the horn for, like, five minutes straight,” Josie Murphy, a University of Vermont sophomore, said of drivers. “I think they should do something about the people turning right on red. It’s really annoying having them turn when everyone is crossing.”
From the driver’s point of view, students on foot are equally at fault. “It’s really scary,” said Alex Alves, a sophomore who has a car on campus and drives across the intersection daily. She continued, “Sometimes people will keep going after the light ends and so not a single car gets to turn. Sometimes I’m trying to get to an appointment, and I will be running late because I’m stuck at that light rotation.”
In 2016, the University of Vermont Active Transportation Plan designated the intersection as the most heavily used pedestrian crossing on campus. It called for an engineering assessment to explore safety enhancements and proposed several solutions, some of which were never implemented.
The university’s 2022-2032 Campus Plan identifies the Main Street-University Heights intersection as a “municipal mobility area needing improvement,” said Lisa Kingsbury, Univeristy of Vermont’s associate director of planning, who answered questions via email.
The responsibility for traffic safety on public roadways, however, lies with the city of Burlington’s public works department. The university has no authority to make changes to those streets, even those that are essential to movement on campus, Kingsbury said.
University of Vermont planners have worked with city officials to make improvements in recent years, such as wider crosswalks and extended sidewalks to the west of University Heights to encourage more pedestrians to cross at a different spot, alleviating the volume.
“From my perspective, the intersection has gotten safer as UVM and the city have implemented changes, but I do think there is more than can be done,” Kingsbury wrote. “Burlington recently installed cameras at the intersection to be able to better capture data that they can use to make informed decisions on additional safety measures. I’m looking forward to speaking with them more about their data.”
Rob Goulding, the city’s spokesperson, wrote in an email that Burlington and university officials have worked together to mitigate the conflicts at this intersection. The city collected traffic data there in 2020.
“The city has studied this intersection to identify contributing factors to crashes,” Goulding wrote. “This study reviewed traffic volumes and speed, bicycle and pedestrian volumes, pedestrian travel paths and origins and destinations, transit service, red light running and crash history. It recommended signal improvements and physical improvements.”
Goulding did not identify specific improvements that the city has made since the study.
As part of the student researchers’ 2021 traffic survey, they called for another reassessment and suggested bumping out the curbs and creating a dedicated bike crossing, among other redesigns. One recurring proposal would have traffic signals turn red in all directions at one time — called a “barn dance” configuration — allowing pedestrians to cross, even diagonally, which students often do.
“I think the barn (dance) might be the best way to minimize confusion between drivers, pedestrians and cyclists,” said Jewell, the University of Vermont senior. “I ride to work every day from campus to Dorset Street on my bike, and I’m always worried about passing through that spot. I’d be reassured if there were stricter lights and wider margins.”
Raising crosswalks, instead of having them flush with the roadway, can improve pedestrian comfort and reduce collisions by up to 45%, according to traffic consulting company Crafton Tull and the U.S. Department of Transportation. Raised crosswalks essentially act as a speed bump for drivers, slowing speeds and increasing alertness.
The intersection currently employs a “leading pedestrian interval” of seven seconds, giving walkers a head start before the signal turns green for drivers exiting University Heights.
These pedestrian intervals can reduce pedestrian-vehicle collisions by up to 60% at treated intersections, according to the National Association of City Transportation Officials.
At midnight though, the traffic light at the intersection starts flashing yellow, giving no buffer for pedestrians crossing late.
The University of Vermont built a tunnel under Main Street connecting the dorms around University Heights with the Davis Center to help students avoid traffic. Many students consider the tunnel inconvenient compared to crossing the street, and bike riders say the space is too tight for them.
But Caroline Meadows, a sophomore who lives in the Harris-Millis residence hall on the south side of Main Street, said she relies on the pedestrian passageway to get to class on central campus.
“I definitely prefer to use the tunnel,” said Meadows, an animal science major, who also rides the campus shuttle to avoid confronting cars. “The crosswalk is always really crowded, and cars are eager to go, even if it means running red lights. Using the tunnel just makes my walk more peaceful overall.”
Correction (2/15/24): The story initially used incorrect pronouns for Alves.