Officials with the City of Hagerstown said jay walking on North Burhans Boulevard, between the intersections of West Franklin Street and Salem Avenue, is becoming a problem.

“We counted a 12 hour period and we found we had over 700 people cross the street and of that only about 20 percent of them were actually crossing at a crosswalk the rest of them were crossing mid-block, cutting through cars,” said Rodney Tissue, City Engineer.

The city decided to try to make the crosswalk more prominent. City officials say they’re planning in increasing pedestrian signal time, installing signs that alert drivers to be aware of pedestrians and are going to distribute more flyers to local businesses about pedestrian safety.

“We’re just trying to educate the folks to try and do the right thing and use the crosswalks,” said Tissue.

Tissue said that the high volume of traffic has caused some accidents.

“In five years [there have]been nine accidents, eight involved pedestrians and one involved a bicycle and that’s fairly high for pedestrian accidents in an area like that,” said Tissue.

The city also says they will also be asking for more auxiliary police to be in the area to help manage traffic.