With cars zooming by and no traffic lights to be found, pedestrians crossing some of Madison's busiest streets often turn to little red flags for protection.
Hoisting the handheld banners above their heads and wading into the wilds of rush hour, walkers at 50 intersections across the city hope to avoid being hit by a car during a game of human Frogger.
But the red flags, which are already stolen on a daily basis, are not always inviting. After sitting in plastic tubes full of dirty water, leaves and garbage, the flags regularly emerge with wet handles. In addition, community members have complained that the current flag holders are ugly.
Monroe Street, the West side thoroughfare that doubles as a de facto four-lane highway on weekday afternoons, rests at the forefront of the flag debate. And neighborhood leaders are demanding a change.
Enter a group of UW-Madison engineering students, who unveiled a new flag holder design for Monroe Street Tuesday night. The collection of undergraduates is enrolled in an Engineering 160 class that occasionally focuses on city planning.
Alyssa Campbell, a freshman involved in the project, said the time has come for a change on the city's most hectic corners. Since September, Campbell and her classmates have been working on the design.
Pedestrian flags first began appearing in Madison five years ago, after the Safe Community Coalition deemed a number of intersections too chaotic for conventional crossings. According to Executive Director Cheryl Wittke, the original system of toilet pipes strapped to telephone poles or buckets filled with sand is now outdated.
The students' design features a flat, narrow piece of high-density polyethylene, with four brackets attached to hold four separate flags.
Ace Hardware, 1398 Williamson St., has maintained a bank of plastic flags for several years. According to long-time employee Kristy Jackson, the flags are highly popular on the busy east side street.
""I see people use them every day,"" Jackson said. ""I use them every day.""
Although stop lights slow traffic near Ace's store at the intersection of Williamson and Dickinson Streets, cars commonly form bumper-to-bumper lines in the morning and afternoon.
""It's just intense, and the cars don't always stop,"" Jackson said. ""Even if you're a lady pushing a stroller and you have the flag in your hand, they may not stop.""
Still, she said the flags have generally been a success, noting that pedestrians without flags are often invisible to hurried drivers.
