JUNEAU, Alaska (KTUU) – Leaders from the Department of Transportation struggled to answer how they plan to curb the rising number of pedestrian deaths during Thursday’s senate Transportation hearing. One lawmaker, who said she herself had been struck by a vehicle, said the answers they gave wouldn’t prevent deaths.
“I’m going to use the most polite word I can come up with and say it’s cockamamie,” Juneau Sen. Jesse Kiehl, D, told transportation leaders Thursday when presented with some of the department’s answers to improve road safety.
For about two hours, lawmakers pressed into DOT officials who presented how they collect their data, assess it and ultimately implement it. Two solutions at the end of the slide present a dividing wall between the flows of traffic on 5th Avenue near Merrill field, and plans for Ingra and Gambell putting telephone poles underground, adding a reflective back plate to traffic signals and changing street lighting…