Dangerous intersections fuel push for pedestrian safety in Federal Way

Published 3:36 pm Thursday, April 2, 2026

The upcoming adoption of the city’s new Traffic Safety Action Plan can’t come soon enough for concerned community members in Federal Way.

Mike Bollich Ziegler is one of these community members and expressed this at the last Federal Way City Council meeting, when the council voted to confirm a project to improve a protected shoulder of a road near Federal Way High School to connect it to the City Center.

“We all should agree that one of our highest priorities as a city is to protect our kids. Our kids walk to school, they roll to school, they drive to school, and I want to see the city take steps to make sure that their safety is prioritized over all else,” Bollich Ziegler told the Mirror.

Bollich Ziegler has since launched the Federal Way Streets Alliance to push for safer streets in the city.

The group is advocating for an increase in funding for the city’s Neighborhood Traffic Safety Program. The group is also addressing concerns about an intersection that has seen four kids struck by vehicles in the past six months.

Intersection of 19th Avenue SW and SW Campus Drive

There have been eight incidents of a pedestrian being struck by a vehicle in this intersection in the past nine years, with four children being struck by vehicles in the past six months alone.

In an incident on Jan. 21, 2026, two juveniles were struck head-on by a left-turning vehicle at the intersection. In video footage of the incident, they can be seen being flung onto the hood of the car and then into the street by the impact. One juvenile suffered a leg contusion and the other had a cut on their chin.

“In case you weren’t aware, the penalty for running over or striking a child in the crosswalk with your car is a $200 failure to yield ticket. That’s a small price to pay compared to the lasting physical and mental trauma these kids will have after being struck. This is essentially another form of violence and no one, especially our kids, should have to experience it,” Bollich Ziegler said.

City records confirm that the three drivers who struck pedestrians in this crosswalk in the past two years were fined $201 for failing to yield.

Another child was struck in the intersection on Oct. 27, 2025. The child can be seen in the video footage carrying a patterned umbrella and being struck head-on by a large white van.

A woman was struck in the exact same location on Feb. 26, 2024, and another was hit a half a block down the street a year later on Feb. 22, 2025.

In three of these incidents, the pedestrians had the right of way and were in the crosswalk when they were hit.

While this intersection was not originally going to be studied as part of the upcoming Traffic Action Safety Plan, it has since been added after Bollich Ziegler’s efforts to bring the issue to the city’s attention.

Greenway project near FWHS

At the March 24 council meeting, the city approved the authorization for staff to complete the design and request bids for the city center Greenway project.

While Bollich Ziegler supports Greenway and pedestrian improvements in general, he raised concerns about the design, noting that a similar design in another area of the city is ineffective in its goal of reserving a protected shoulder for pedestrians.

The area in question is about four blocks, including South 308th Street from Pacific Highway South to 20th Avenue South, then from 20th Avenue South down to South 312th Street. The purpose of the project is to “improve the connection for pedestrians and bicyclists between Federal Way High School and the City Center.”

The project will provide “a designated shoulder, roadway signing and striping, traffic calming and lighting improvements,” according to a memorandum in council documents.

The same designated shoulder design was used to create a safer path to Olympic View K-8 school, approaching it from the south along 26th Avenue SW, but the small rounded curb does not accomplish the purpose, according to Bollich Ziegler.

Bollich Ziegler said that cars consistently park in the pedestrian lane, forcing pedestrians to walk in the street. To deal with the issue, he reports vehicles to SeeClickFix or to the non-emergency line of the police. Recently the city installed No Parking signs to try to curb the issue.

In Seattle, the Even Better Bike Lanes project is also experimenting with various types of road barriers for circumstances like this, including hardened buffer materials like tall curbs, sometimes referred to as “Toronto barriers,” and precast flat-top curbs.

When asked if the city plans to try any of these safety interventions, a spokesperson stated that the public works team doesn’t expect too much of an issue on this street because they “have not observed many incidences of parking on the street being an issue, especially on 20th Avenue S.”

They do plan to include No Parking signs throughout the project area, which were recently added to the road along 26th Avenue SW.

On 20th Avenue South, the plan is to use thick plastic roadway striping to delineate the new shoulder. The city is also considering the use of roadway striping and other more restrictive measures like flex posts along South 308th Street.

As the project matures, the city will continue to consider additional options to prevent parking on the new shoulder, according to a follow-up email to the Mirror.

Traffic safety budget

Transportation improvements are expensive and the city has already outlined projects for the next 5 years that they approved in June 2025.

The city also has a Neighborhood Traffic Safety Program (NTS), where concerned residents can trigger the city to study and respond to safety concerns.

In October 2025, 13 locations met the NTS criteria to qualify for the speed reduction projects. All 13 see a high volume of school traffic each day, but only seven are estimated to be possible within the program’s budget, according to staff at the Oct. 6 Land Use and Transportation Committee meeting.

An NTS evaluation can start by a citizen submitting a request or complaint, or can be initiated by a police department request or Public Works Traffic Division data analysis.

Once identified as a location with a possible traffic safety issue, public works evaluates the area using a rubric to determine the danger of the area, then implements a response plan including phases of education, enforcement and possible engineering interventions if necessary.

Depending on how severe this danger score is, the city will then hold a neighborhood meeting to discuss the “advantages and disadvantages of various traffic calming devices and to develop a consensus solution.”

This solution is then voted on through ballots sent to nearby properties, and a simple majority then sends the solution to be approved by the city council.

This program is currently funded at $100,000 per year. The Federal Way Streets Alliance wants to see this doubled in the next budget.

“These projects are essential for traffic calming and improving pedestrian safety, especially outside of our schools and in neighborhoods that don’t have existing sidewalks,” according to the alliance’s website, adding that “$100,000 only covers a handful of projects each year depending on scope and size.”