Hayward community members raise crosswalk concerns

The busy intersection of Highway 63 and Main Street has five lanes of traffic, including a left turning lane that goes to Main Street. The pedestrian signal system is also perched about 15 feet high.

Two Hayward residents say that’s too high, and could be dangerous. 

Chris Ruckdaschel is Executive Director of the Hayward Chamber of Commerce. He and Mark Lundeen— Station Manager of WHSM and WBZH— brought their concerns to the Sawyer County Highway Traffic Safety Committee meeting last week. 

Drivers approaching the crosswalk from approximately 100 feet often do not have an adequate low‐level warning to alert them that a pedestrian is in or entering the crosswalk.

Lundeen says that he’s experienced this himself while using the crosswalk to get across to Main Street.

“I’m waving my hands and yelling at them and they just go right by like they’re not even paying attention,” says Lundeen.

Lundeen adds that he is also worried about more people using the crosswalk to get from the parking lot of the Chamber building to the new Lumber Exchange building on Main Street, which opens this summer.

The crosswalk is right next to the Hayward Chamber of Commerce building. Ruckdaschel says that members in the community have discussed the same concern with him.

The Hayward Area Chamber of Commerce & Hayward Lakes Visitors & Convention Bureau staff provide bright orange hand‐flags at the crossing for pedestrians to hold and wave while crossing during the summer months and early fall. It’s a temporary solution.

“Even in recent years, we have even received more comments from the public, folks stopping into our information center, whether it be close calls or that, “man this seems kind of dangerous,” says Ruckdaschel.

Lundeen and Ruckdaschel have spoken with a representative for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation as an effort to improve the signaling system.