From police to public works and in neighborhoods all over St. Paul, pedestrian safety is getting attention. It will increase as the year goes on, and that’s good.

Crash data make clear why: Through Feb. 11, there were 30 pedestrian crashes in the city this year, 27 of them involving injuries. The count — at stpaul.gov/departments/police/pedestrian-and-bike-crash-data-city-st-paul — includes one fatal accident, the Jan. 28 crash that involved a Green Line train. Improvements in reporting are said to be among factors in increases from 19 pedestrian crashes in the same period in 2016 and 25 in 2017.

The numbers illustrate a chilling fact: No matter who’s in the right in the contest between a pedestrian and a big machine, the pedestrian always loses.

Police Cmdr. Jeremy Ellison, who coordinates department pedestrian-safety efforts, talks about the need to educate both drivers and pedestrians, calling it a dual responsibility.

Fay Simer, pedestrian safety advocate in the city’s public works department, emphasizes walking as part of everyone’s daily life. “Folks from every demographic in St. Paul want to be able to walk safely,” she told us.

There is a misconception that focus on pedestrians and bicyclists “means we’re going to ditch the combustion engine,” Public Works Director Kathy Lantry notes, “when the fact is even if you parked in a parking ramp, you have to walk to your destination.”

Behind the attention from city government is research funded by MnDOT and conducted by the University of Minnesota.

An initial phase — begun last fall and providing baseline data from thousands of crossings at study sites around town — sheds some light on the state of pedestrian safety in St. Paul. It involved researchers — one person observing and another serving as a “stage” pedestrian — measuring yielding rates in the city.

“On average, we have a sense that pedestrian yielding in St. Paul is generally pretty low,” explains Nichole Morris, a research scholar at the university’s Center for Transportation Studies.

Some places are much safer to cross than others but, on average, only about 3 in 10 cars will stop for us, said Morris, who also is director of the HumanFIRST Laboratory in the U’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. Yielding rates go as low as about 17 percent at the city’s poorest-performing locations and up to about 49 percent at the best.

Among the most problematic locations: a crosswalk at Dale Street and Jessamine Avenue in the North End. It offers “some really good engineering opportunities,” Morris told us, to “add some visual aspects to that crosswalk to make it more obvious as drivers approach that there are likely to be pedestrians there and that they should be looking for them and ready to stop.”

Among locations where results were better: a crosswalk at Snelling and Fairmount Avenues. “If you drive through it, you can see why we get really good rates there,” Morris said, noting that the area, near Macalester College, includes a “pedestrian refuge” in the middle of Snelling, in addition to markings and signage.

Yet concerns remain there about so-called “multi-threat” accidents in which a pedestrian crossing multiple lanes is in peril when one driver stops and obeys the law, while another does not.

The research effort will resume in the spring and continue through summer and fall, along with enforcement and public works initiatives. Simer’s work includes coordinating a St. Paul Pedestrian Plan outlined at stpaul.gov/walking. The site features information on a photo contest that, through March 30, invites submission of pictures of people walking in St. Paul. The winning photographer will take a walk with Mayor Melvin Carter.

Lantry highlights an additional effort, one that will result in creation of a “matrix” for use as public works handles requests for improvement options that might include stop signs, painted crosswalks, new lighting technology and more. It will make clear that if certain conditions “are present at an intersection, here are improvements that we will consider and here’s how much they cost.”

“It’s an equity issue for us, as well,” Lantry told us. It won’t be a matter of “who has the loudest voice or who knows who to call.”

Morris told us she’s often asked about the issue of fairness to drivers — if we’re also ticketing pedestrians who don’t cross legally and if we’re we doing enough to educate them about their shared responsibility.

“Those are fair questions,” she told us, but “it’s the drivers who have the weapon; the driver is in best position to avoid the pedestrian.”

As any driver knows, that’s not always so. Pedestrians can be unpredictable, and walkers in dark clothes on a dark night at a dark crossing are nigh to invisible until they step into the headlights.

There are things we can do to enforce laws and better educate pedestrians, she said. “Certainly, those are not off the table. This is not an “either-or’; this is an ‘and.’”

But if we’re “going to tackle this issue, our resources are best spent focusing on drivers. They are in the best position to save lives here.”

The perspective is helpful as St. Paul strives to be a safer place for all.