Sen. Libby introduces bill to fund pedestrian safety improvements

A bill sponsored by Sen. Nate Libby, D-Lewiston, would create the “Fund for Municipalities To Improve Pedestrian Safety.”

LD 778 “An Act To Create the Fund for Municipalities To Improve Pedestrian Safety” was the subject of a public hearing in the Legislature’s Transportation Committee on Thursday.

“Our towns and cities are struggling to pay for needed pedestrian safety-related repairs and upgrades to our transportation infrastructure,” said Sen. Libby. “It shouldn’t take having a State Senator, spurred to action by a fatal pedestrian crash, calling DOT to get vitally needed funding for these projects.”

The Fund would finance pedestrian safety improvements such as lights, paint, signs, speed bumps and reconstruction of intersections which municipalities or groups of municipalities would apply to use. Up to 80 percent of project costs could be financed from the Fund with the remainder of the costs provided by the applicant, unless the project is located within an area identified by the Department of Transportation (DOT) as a dangerous intersection based on pedestrian crash data, where 100 percent of the needed money could come from the Fund.

Additionally, LD 778 requires DOT to notify municipalities about this Fund, along with pedestrian crash data.

Increased attention has been paid to pedestrian safety in recent years. In Nov. 2016, Jayden Cho-Sargent was killed while walking to middle school in Lewiston and 2017 was the worst year for pedestrian fatalities in Maine in 24 years. Following a 2017 bill from Sen. Libby, and increased scrutiny on the issue, DOT has stepped up work on pedestrian safety, but it has been focused in 21 communities that experienced the highest number of pedestrian crashes between 2011 and 2015, mostly in Maine’s most densely populated, urban areas.

“As proposed in LD 778, safety, rather than demographics is the primary filter,” said Rebecca Graham of the Maine Municipal Association. “Officials believe this process will better support vital pedestrian projects in all areas of the state that might otherwise not be able to access alternative funding due to arbitrary population density requirements often used to access federal funding mechanisms in a largely rural state.”

LD 778 faces further action in the committee, as well as votes in the Maine House and Senate.