First HAWK crosswalk in Fresno County boosts school safety in northwest Fresno

A new HAWK crosswalk on Grantland Avenue is now giving Herndon-Barstow Elementary families a clearer, more controlled way to cross one of northwest Fresno’s busiest school corridors. City and county officials, along with Central Unified School District leaders, marked the activation Wednesday, April 15, at the crossing near the campus at 6265 N Grantland Ave, where parents had long raised alarms about near-misses during drop-off and pickup.

The signal is Fresno County’s first HAWK crosswalk. It stays dark until a pedestrian presses the button, then cycles through flashing yellow, steady yellow, steady red and alternating flashing red so drivers know to slow down and stop for people in the crosswalk. The Federal Highway Administration uses the term pedestrian hybrid beacon for this kind of treatment and says it is designed for marked crosswalks on streets or highways where a full traffic signal is not otherwise warranted, especially where speed, traffic gaps or delay make crossing difficult. In federal research, HAWK treatments have been linked to a 69 percent reduction in pedestrian crashes and a 29 percent reduction in total crashes in a Tucson before-and-after study.

For Herndon-Barstow families, the timing matters. The school sits directly on Grantland Avenue, where fog, school traffic and commuter traffic have overlapped for years. Principal Paul Marashian said the area could be dangerous during busy times and in fog, and parents had pushed for a better answer after repeated close calls. One parent said earlier crashes had even knocked down a PG&E pole near the old crosswalk, causing outages that disrupted school days. City Councilmember Mike Karbassi said the goal is to make motorists more aware of children crossing a major thoroughfare.

The project cost about $1 million and was completed at the end of March. The city says HAWKs are part of a broader school-area safety toolkit that can also include sidewalks, bike lanes, traffic signals and street lights. The real test now is whether the beacon changes driver behavior at the start and end of the school day. The corridor has already seen serious danger beyond the campus crossing: on Nov. 22, 2024, a fatal DUI crash at Highway 180 and Grantland Avenue left two children with minor injuries, underscoring how much risk has been built into the road for years.