By Karina Martinez-CarterThe Daily Northwestern

The traffic light at the corner of Sheridan Road and Chicago Avenue flashes a message in ominous orange letters: “DON’T WALK.”

Pedestrians, many of them students who are late for class, disregard the warning and sprint across the street.

“People don’t obey the ‘Don’t Walk,’ ” said Weinberg freshman Amy Liebster. “They are always in a rush, and it’s a long light. It’s hard to tell when the light will change exactly, so they just go across.”

In May 2006, Northwestern administrators allocated money for crosswalk countdowns, devices that inform pedestrians how many seconds they have before the traffic light changes.

The Undergraduate Budget Priorities Committee requested the countdowns be placed at three locations – The Arch, Jacobs Center and Technological Institute – yet those traffic signals are still without countdowns.

Because the signals aren’t NU property, the addition of crosswalk countdowns is more complicated than hooking up another machine to the light or tweaking a few wires, said David Jennings, Evanston’s director of public works.

“The existing hardware doesn’t take it,” Jennings said. “One of the three is physically impossible to convert, and we don’t think it’s wise to upgrade an old sign.”

The Illinois Department of Transportation owns the road, while Evanston is responsible for signal maintenance, said Bonnie Humphrey, NU’s director of design and construction for Facilities Management.

“This is complicated,” she said. “We cannot work this out ourselves. We must go through the city. We knew that from the very beginning and anticipated it would take a while.”

Installing the crosswalk countdowns will take two to three years, in part because the current signals are too old to upgrade, Jennings said.

Jennings said the city is also in the early stages of transferring Sheridan Road from state jurisdiction to city jurisdiction.

The transfer should occur later this year and will allow Evanston to begin to replace traffic signals, he said.

“It’s not an immediate changeover, but there is progress,” Jennings said.

Similar transfers have already occurred, and the state is pushing for Evanston to take over all its routes. Evanston will only do so if the road is in good condition, and parts of Sheridan Road are not, he said. Thus, the transfer will happen either when the state fixes the street or appropriates funding for Evanston to do so.

“We need to look out for the citizens of Evanston, so we don’t have to bear the entire financial responsibility,” he said.

Jennings said Evanston is taking steps separate from NU’s initiative to install crosswalk countdowns at three intersections on Chicago Avenue in fall 2007.

“We are adopting (crosswalk countdowns) as our standard for all future signals we design and construct,” he said.

Evanston Police Department Deputy Chief Joseph Bellino said the countdowns will only be beneficial if pedestrians obey them.

“A lot of people disregard the signals and just walk out into an intersection,” he said. “That’s just as much of a problem as knowing whether you have 20 or four seconds to get across.”

Reach Karina Martinez-Carter at [email protected].