Dozens of St. Paul residents, most of them Hmong activists, stormed the downtown office lobby of the Ramsey County commissioners last week demanding funding for a four-way traffic signal at Johnson Parkway and Ames Avenue East, at an entrance to the Hmong Village Shopping Center.

Addressing Ramsey County Commissioner Jim McDonough with a megaphone, the group chanted for nearly 30 minutes: “This is what democracy looks like” and “If we were white, we would have the light.”

“Your last statement is wrong,” responded McDonough, who has worked with county engineers since March to come up with an alternate traffic-calming strategy.

“There’s a lot of misinformation out there,” he said. “I’ve been making a great effort to meet with everyone out there. This really is a powerful statement from each and every one of you.”

It was an unusual protest, and one that followed months of discussion between city, county and civic leaders over basic traffic calming near the busy shopping center. A spate of pedestrian crashes across St. Paul over the past year — 310 crashes as of mid-December — has brought added attention to the intersection, which is near the Johnson Parkway Apartments complex.

Pointing to a perceived lack of public investment on the East Side, protesters have spoken of both racial and geographic inequality. County engineers counter that traffic signals aren’t just expensive but that they’re also sometimes overkill that can make low-volume intersections less safe.

20 TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS SINCE JAN. 2014

The “Racial Equity on Johnson Parkway and Ames Avenue East” coalition is calling for a new four-way traffic signal at Johnson and Ames, but an analysis conducted by the county in April found it would be the wrong solution. Other than a stop sign on Ames, the intersection is not controlled by a light or signage.

Yingya Vang, chair of the equity coalition, said in an interview that pedestrians can wait as long as 20 minutes before they feel it’s safe to cross. St. Paul police records show that officers have been called to 20 reported traffic accidents at or near the intersection from January 2014 through September 2016. Two involved injuries, though none involved pedestrians or loss of life.

Vang said she believes the county’s real concern is cost. As an alternative to a four-way signal, Ramsey County has proposed a concrete median to remove left-turn lanes from the center of Johnson Parkway. A four-way traffic signal would cost roughly $300,000, and a new concrete median would cost “just a few thousand dollars,” Vang said. “Traffic lights need continuous maintenance, and that would cost extra money.”

“The county does not seem to understand our communities’ struggles,” Vang wrote in a later email exchange. “They do not have the lived experiences of crossing that road.”

A petition for the light on Change.org has drawn more than 1,500 supporters. Adding to insult, Vang said, a recent study by the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs at the University of Minnesota found city spending on infrastructure to be disproportionately low on the East Side relative to the size of the area’s population.

McDonough told the protesters on Tuesday that he had met repeatedly since March with District Council 4, leaders of the Hmong 18 Council, St. Paul City Council Member Dan Bostrom, state Sen. Foung Hawj, DFL-St. Paul, and others about the intersection.

He said Ramsey County found that a four-way signalized intersection could actually lead to an increase in the number of crashes because drivers speed up to beat the lights.

“It’s a two-way street on listening,” McDonough told the crowd. “It’s a two-way street on working together on these issues. You say I don’t care about the community? I live in the community. I don’t go home to anywhere else but the East Side of St. Paul. … A light will not make that intersection safer. It will cause more harm than anything else.”

At his urging, the city’s “Stop for Me” pedestrian safety campaign held a traffic-calming event with St. Paul police on June 8. With McDonough and other residents acting as pedestrians attempting to cross the street, officers conducted 37 traffic stops and issued 30 citations to drivers who failed to yield for pedestrians in the crosswalk, as well as 17 additional citations.

AN ALTERNATE PLAN

In early 2017, he plans to approach the District 4 council and other civic leaders with a multitiered solution that includes a new, wider crosswalk and eliminating a left-turn lane on Johnson Parkway going eastbound onto Ames. The county would also install a pedestrian median refuge, and a push-button operated flashing beacon to remind drivers to stop for those attempting to cross.

The approach would cost in the vicinity of $35,000 to $40,000, as opposed to around $300,000 for a four-way traffic signal.

“So much of our Public Works dollars is federal and state dollars,” McDonough said. “But we can only spend it based on their criteria. It didn’t meet any of those requirements.”

Ramsey County Engineer Jim Tolaas said Friday that in April, the county studied traffic volumes, speeds, types of crashes and six other types of data and found that a traffic signal might be warranted at the intersection “for a marginal period” on Saturday afternoons, exclusively. Only two of some 19 crashes studied would have been avoided with a light, he said.

“That’s not a good, cost-effective solution,” Tolaas said. “You can get more rear-end crashes because people aren’t paying attention to cars that are stopped.”

Joe Ellickson, a spokesman for St. Paul Public Works, said in an interview that the city has deferred to the county to take the lead.

“This is a county issue, and we have publicly supported the county on their decision,” Ellickson said. “We don’t know if (a signal) would be less safe. Traffic engineers’ experience has shown that unwarranted traffic signals (can) produce ulterior outcomes, including less safe conditions.”

Bostrom, the city council member, is working with St. Paul Public Works to add a left-turn lane in and out of the Hmong Village Shopping Center along Phalen Boulevard by removing part of a median. That approach, said McDonough, also could help reduce traffic at the Ames Avenue entrance.

The county has also reached out to the property owners at the shopping center in hopes of getting them to improve sidewalks and traffic flow within their parking lot. The lot frequently reaches capacity, and some residents believe vehicular overcrowding could be contributing to traffic back-ups and unsafe conditions at Johnson and Ames.

Vang said her coalition is made up of St. Paul residents from the East Side, most of them Hmong activists in their 20s. On its Facebook page, the coalition has also objected to the county’s support for the extension of Metro Transit’s Green Line light rail corridor to Eden Prairie. A statement from the coalition opposes sending “billions of our tax-payer dollars to rich, affluent, and white suburbs that do not need it.”

Tuesday’s protest ended with the activists chanting “We’ll be back!” as they left the building. As of Thursday evening, video of the 30-minute protest had been seen 1,800 times on the group’s Facebook page.