Just like any weekday, Alisha Wayman, 17, and her friends crossed Silverdale Way Northwest Wednesday where it intersects with Northwest Bucklin Hill Road on their way to school.

Although joking and chatting with one another, crossing the street is no laughing matter, the Central Kitsap High School students said.

“I almost died crossing,” said Wayman as she recalled an incident five months ago when she had to quickly jump back to let a truck go by even though she had the pedestrian signal to proceed the crosswalk. She was already in the crosswalk at the time.

“It’s not safe. Drivers go really fast and don’t care.” Wayman added that the driver looked at her after she jumped back, and drove on.

From September 2009 to last month, the intersection at Bucklin Hill Road and Silverdale Way had the most reported vehicular collisions out of all Silverdale intersections. None of the 17 reported collisions were fatalities, but it has even more close calls and complaints from drivers and pedestrians.

“People need to be more courteous,” said Mike McCoy of Seabeck, who passes through the intersection as a motorist on his way to work as a motorcycle mechanic in Seattle. “They’re still in la-la land because they’re coming off a dirt road.”

A July traffic count study by Kitsap County Public Works monitored about 17 Silverdale intersections over the course of several days on both weekdays and weekends. They kept track of every vehicle that crossed or turned.

Results of the count will be entered into modeling software that will calculate the best green time signal for the movements of each intersection. It will then feed straight into the signals to adjust the timing of the lights accordingly. Traffic signals are expected to be reset in spring, so for intersections like the one at Bucklin Hill, drivers and pedestrians must wait to see if there is any difference.

During peak hours from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., 3,755 vehicles pass through the intersection per hour, said Jeff Shea, county traffic engineer.

“You have to pay attention all the time,” said Tina Christopherson, 17, who was one of the friends crossing the street with Wayman. “You have to make sure no one is running a red light.”

Often, because of the large size of the intersection and the quick duration of the light cycle, those waiting for a green have to wait for the intersection to clear before they can proceed.

“We do hear, ‘Every time I go through there, someone runs a red light,’” said Shea.

At this point, Shea said he couldn’t say what specifically could be done to fix the intersection, but mentioned that some improvements would be made with the retiming efforts from the summer’s study. However, the proposed fixes would have to be studied to ensure they were cost effective.

About $2 million is spent annually on maintaining 41 traffic signals in the county, said Jon Brand, county road engineer.

MAKING THE GRADE

Similar to how students receive grades A through F from teachers, intersections are also graded by traffic engineers.

Level of service A is when the driver waits at a red light for up to 10 seconds while an F is equal to waiting greater than 50 seconds. The NW Bucklin Hill Road and Silverdale Way NW intersection as a whole is a level of service D, Shea said. This means on average the wait-time is 25 to 35 seconds. However, a driver could be waiting for up to 50 seconds going eastbound or westbound Bucklin Hill because those specific directions have a level of service E, Shea said. Level of service E is categorized as having a wait-time of 35 to 50 seconds.

Loren Johnson, a broker at Reid Property Management on the southeast corner of the intersection has complaints not just about the signals, but how people behave when passing by.

“The light changes really quickly for pedestrians and people making a right turn have a complete disregard for them,” Johnson said. “They’re just in a hurry taking the right. They disregard the law.”

The failure for a vehicle to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk is $124 – the same amount it is for running a red light. And if a driver has committed an infraction within a school speed zone, the penalty doubles, said Deputy Scott Wilson, spokesman for the Kitsap Sheriff’s Office.

“I have seen several close calls,” said Wilson, who provided the number of wrecks at the intersection.

If the vehicle’s front wheels are already across the stop line on the road before the signal is red and the driver turns on a red light, it’s not considered running the light, Wilson said. The stop lines at NW Bucklin Hill Road and Silverdale Way NW are set farther back from the street corners because of its odd shape, he added. When drivers wait patiently behind the stop lines, there’s more distance they have to cross once in the intersection.

But tickets can be issued both ways – pedestrians can receive a $68 ticket for jaywalking or for entering a crosswalk after the red crosswalk hand flashes.

There are no laws regulating the timing of a red light however Shea said that for safety measures, all Silverdale signals are red for a second, or “one second all red.” This ensures that vehicles passing through yellow or red are not hit by oncoming traffic, he said.

The latest solution for Silverdale traffic woes, NW Greaves Way, was built west of Silverdale Way last year. Shea said the department is still studying it and cannot tell if it has alleviated stress from Silverdale Way.

“That’s a work in progress,” Shea said, adding that none of the intersections involving NW Greaves Way were part of the summer traffic count because those signals have not been hardwired together with other signals in the area yet.

Two intersections that came close to the Bucklin Hill intersection, Kitsap Mall Blvd. NW at NW Randall Way and NW Myhre Road at Ridgetop Blvd. NW both had 14 reported collisions within the year.

As for the NW Bucklin Hill Road and Silverdale Way NW intersection that Wayman considers unsafe: “They just need to make it not so busy.”