The intersection of East Mason and Bellevue is one of those intersections that as I approach, I take a deep breath.

Because it’s a dangerous place to be a pedestrian.

I’ll explain.

Really, all of East Mason is a tough place to be a walker. This is because it’s such a busy road. If you’re from the area you already know this. But when you reach Bellevue, it gets especially bad. Let me explain.

Because of the volume: You have something of a coke bottle effect at the intersection during peak hours. This means you have people running late, and they’ll do whatever they have to in order to get where they need to be. When the community already takes pedestrian safety as something of a suggestion, this becomes an even more dangerous situation. There is also a busy gas station here, so they’ve got even more traffic trying to get on that makes us less of a priority.

The left turn eastbound is fast and obstructs the view of drivers: This is the actually the most dangerous position to be in. When drivers are making this turn, they’re already moving at a fast rate of speed because they’re coming off of a busy Mason, but then they can’t always see us because the turn occurs so quickly.

At night, I’ve had drivers not even slow down with the light allowing me to cross.

There are also a lot of younger drivers in the area: A lot of school kids driving here and they’ve got places to be. This makes an intersection where a tough read for an experienced driver, leads to even more problems with school aged drivers behind the wheel.

This intersection is dangerous. So dangerous that I’ll walk down to Kimball to avoid it. But that shouldn’t be the case for one of our communities biggest and most important traffic arteries.

If you’ve had problems at this intersection, call your local leaders and do something before it’s too late!