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Our corners come from SDOT's long-range plan, the Seattle Transportation Plan, adopted in 2024. Its pedestrian section maps every intersection that has no marked crosswalk, all-way stop or traffic signal and is at least 600 feet (about two blocks) from one that does. Almost all are on arterials, the busier streets. SDOT lists 1,466. We leave out about 40 where every street is a highway, ramp, tunnel or bridge deck, since nobody crosses there on foot. Seattle has about 15,500 intersections, so roughly 1 in 11 is on the list.
The list is a map of gaps, not a schedule. SDOT says it will use it to choose streets to study and to find chances to add crossings during other projects, and that some corners on it won't get one. One new crosswalk often closes the gap for the corners on either side of it, too.
The numbers at the top of each page count every corner on the list there, and how many SDOT has scheduled. The map shows every corner on the list.
Corners are ranked most needed by SDOT's own score for each corner on its list, which we call SDOT priority. It's out of 40 points, and the highest in Seattle is 37. Corners with the same score share a rank, shown as "Tied." The points come from three things:
Places people walk to, up to 12: public schools, parks, transit stops and busy neighborhood centers nearby, up to 3 points each, more the closer they are.
Safety, up to 16: points if SDOT's own pedestrian safety analysis flagged the corner, if it had 3 or more pedestrian crashes in five years, or if people cross 3 or more lanes.
Equity, up to 12: by where the area falls on the City's Race and Social Equity Index, from 0 for the most advantaged two-fifths of the city to 12 for the highest-need fifth.
SDOT weighs safety most on paper (40% of the points), but about 5 in 6 corners get no safety points, and nearly all the rest get 5 for lanes. So in practice, equity explains most of the difference between one corner's score and another's, followed by places people walk to. The score doesn't count how many cars pass. That's SDOT's choice about who should get crossings first, and every corner page shows where its points came from.
Neighbors vote for the corners they want, and each neighborhood has a most wanted list. Each person gets 10 votes, one per corner, and confirms their email address once so nobody can vote twice. Votes aren't part of SDOT's score and don't change the most needed order. They show SDOT, and your council member, what the people who live nearby want most, alongside SDOT's own ranking. Notes about what happens at a corner, like near-misses and who crosses when, go into the request to SDOT.
The Seattle page has a citywide most wanted list too. Some neighborhoods have more people online to vote than others, so it leans toward those neighborhoods; each neighborhood's own list is the fairer comparison.
Each corner has a risk level, from a simple rule on facts anyone can check:
Very risky: a pedestrian crash with a serious injury or death since 2016, 2 or more pedestrian crashes, or 4 or more lanes with 15,000 or more cars a day.
Risky: 1 pedestrian crash, 4 or more lanes, 10,000 or more cars a day, or a public school within a quarter mile on a main or minor arterial.
Moderately risky: everything else.
There's no "low risk." Every corner on SDOT's list is a gap of at least 600 feet with no crosswalk, signal or all-way stop, near places people walk to. Crashes are those reported to police at the corner or on the blocks next to it, so a corner with no crashes on record can still be dangerous: near-misses and unreported crashes don't show up. Traffic is SDOT's average weekday count for the busiest street at the corner. About half were counted in 2023 or 2024; the rest are older counts SDOT adjusted to 2024, or SDOT estimates.
Risk doesn't change the most needed order. Some corners SDOT ranks highest are moderately risky, mostly because SDOT weighs equity and places people walk to, not traffic.
A corner is scheduled once SDOT opens a work order within about 200 feet of it for a crosswalk or, since 2023, for a new traffic signal, a signal project or a pedestrian crossing beacon. SDOT paints crosswalks in the dry months, about April to September, usually a few months or more after opening the work order. Some take a year or longer.
Each corner page says whether it has crossing flags: none, flags coming (someone's getting them) or flags up. It works like a wiki. Anyone who has confirmed their email can update it, and the next person can change it back if it's wrong. We keep every change and undo ones that are wrong on purpose. Flags go missing, so if nobody has marked or checked a corner's flags in 60 days, its page says they haven't been checked lately instead of saying they're up.
Priority corners and scores come from SDOT's Enhanced Street Crossings priority network (Seattle Transportation Plan). Crosswalks, plans and build years come from SDOT's Marked Crosswalks data and traffic work orders, which also show when SDOT repaints a crosswalk. Pedestrian crashes come from SDOT's collision records, traffic from SDOT's 2024 arterial traffic volumes, and jobs nearby from the Census's LEHD Origin-Destination Employment Statistics. Neighborhood boundaries come from Seattle's Neighborhood Map Atlas. Votes, the reasons neighbors give and crossing flag updates come from people using this site. Nothing on it is sample data.