Puyallup neighborhood had 93 crashes in 10 years. Residents seek safety changes
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- WSDOT records show 93 crashes in the area over the past decade.
- Neighbors collected 75% signatures and filed a petition to trigger traffic review.
- City found low vehicle volumes, plans tree removals and schedules neighborhood meeting.
When Puyallup resident Greg McGough first moved into his home in 2021, he had no idea what was in store for him.
The 45-year-old said he has had a driver crash into his garage, and has almost been hit while working in his side yard. He has called 911 several times after witnessing crashes outside his home, he said.
“There’s been times where someone was flying down our street and hit our neighbor’s pickup and didn’t even stop at the stop sign – just blew through it,” McGough told The News Tribune. “People have had their dogs hit, their animals run over and killed. There’s a stretch of our neighborhood where there’s no sidewalk. We walk our dogs all the time and there’s spots where you’re having to walk in the street because there’s no sidewalk.”
On Oct. 6, 2025, a vehicle struck a student on Puyallup High School’s cross-country team outside McGough’s house at the intersection of 7th Street Northeast and 2nd Avenue Northeast.
After that, McGough started a petition and got 75% of his neighborhood to sign it. In the petition, the neighbors asked the city to consider traffic safety measures in the area, such as speed bumps, stop signs or a roundabout. He submitted the signatures to the city on Nov. 4.
Now, more than two months later, McGough said it’s not clear what actions the city will take.
Eric Johnson, spokesperson for the city, told The News Tribune the city will be removing trees near the intersection that it has identified as a hazard. He also said the petition prompted the city to conduct a traffic study, but declined to say what the results of that study were. He said the city is planning a meeting with the neighbors in February.
Why are neighbors asking for more traffic safety measures in this area?
McGough told The News Tribune in October that traffic is dangerous in the area because of the stoplight at Fifth Street Northeast and East Main Avenue. Traffic backs up during peak commute hours at the light, and some cars turn onto side streets in the neighborhood to avoid that light – often speeding through Seventh Street Northeast, he said.
Many of the neighbors, including McGough, attended the Oct. 7, 2025 Puyallup City Council meeting, the day after the high school student was hit. At the meeting, they told council members that traffic safety has been an issue in the area for a long time.
“It’s just a tragic accident, that’s all it boils down to,” McGough told The News Tribune. “Everybody in the neighborhood is just hoping for something like stop signs or speed bumps to come out of it.”
Johnson told The News Tribune in October that the city currently has two stop signs the intersection on Second Avenue Northeast for both east- and westbound traffic.
In October, The News Tribune filed a public records request with the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT), which listed 93 crashes in the area in the past 10 years. The News Tribune requested crash data for the area of:
- Seventh Street Northeast between Fourth Avenue Northeast and East Main Avenue
- Fifth Street Northeast between Fourth Avenue Northeast and East Main Avenue
- Fourth Avenue Northeast, Third Avenue Northeast and Second Avenue Northeast between Fifth Street and Seventh Street Northeast
Of the 93 crashes, the data listed 68 of the wrecks as having “no apparent injury.”
What changes do neighbors want to see, and what will the city do?
McGough told The News Tribune that a few days after he submitted the petition, the city said it would conduct a traffic study to determine next steps.
In order to get new safety measures, residents have to go through Puyallup’s traffic-calming process. In October, Johnson told The News Tribune the process works like this:
- A resident must gather 51% of their neighbors to sign a petition asking the city to look at traffic-calming methods in their neighborhood.
- The city then looks at factors like speed and number of vehicles and pedestrians to score the request.
- If it gets a score of 45 or above, the city conducts a traffic study of the intersection.
- The city then holds a meeting with neighbors where they discuss the results of the traffic study and recommended measures.
- If residents approve the plan at the meeting, the city sends out ballots to everyone within 300 feet of the intersection. If 60% of the ballots sent out vote “yes” to the plan, the plan is implemented.
McGough said city officials conducted a traffic study and told him there aren’t enough cars that drive through the intersection each day to warrant changes.
“They told me that there weren’t enough people that drove through our neighborhood for it to basically do anything, they said it didn’t look like it was a high-traffic area,” McGough said. “The number of cars that came through the neighborhood was not more than they had expected.”
The News Tribune reached out to Johnson, who confirmed that staff did find low traffic at the intersection. However, he said that the city is looking to add changes to the area.
“The traffic study did conclude that the vehicle volumes at that intersection were low,” Johnson wrote in an email to The News Tribune. “However, we are planning on implementing options at that intersection and in the neighborhood.”
Johnson said the city is scheduling a meeting with neighbors in February, but there isn’t a concrete date yet.
The News Tribune asked Johnson what the findings of the traffic study were, and what specific changes the city plans to make in the area. He declined to give specifics.
“We will talk about the traffic study findings and the option recommendations to the neighbors at the Neighborhood Meeting in February,” Johnson wrote.
Earlier this month, McGough said workers showed up in the neighborhood and said they were going to cut down some trees.
“From what I’ve been told from other neighbors, the trees are what they’re going to talk to us about [at the February meeting] – that’s their solution,” McGough said.
McGough said the trees in question are 150 years old.
“It makes zero sense because these trees are 150 years old, if not older. They were here before any of these houses were,” McGough told The News Tribune. “What we were hoping for was either speed bumps, stop signs or a roundabout, and it looks like the city’s stance is going to be: ‘Let’s cut down 10 trees that are over 150 years old.’”
The News Tribune asked Johnson if the city is planning to cut down 150-year-old trees. He did confirm the tree-cutting, but did not address the age of the trees.
“The City is cutting down seven trees that were identified due to site distance issues for drivers approaching that intersection,” Johnson wrote in an email to The News Tribune. “We are working with the property owner to get the trees removed.”
McGough said tree cutting alone won’t solve the problem, and that he hopes the city will do more.
“In my opinion, it’s just going to make it worse because people are actually going to be able to see whether or not people are coming from all the directions now, and less people are going to stop at that stop sign,” McGough said. “Right now, people kind of creep up to it, but right now, if you’ve got people coming up Seventh [Street] towards our house and they cut down all these trees, they’re going to be able to see down Second [Avenue] and see that nobody’s coming and they’re just going to punch it.”
McGough said his fear is: “Somebody getting killed on the corner or a car headed through my living room.”
How does the city’s traffic-calming program work?
Johnson confirmed that the city has identified the area as a “low-traffic” zone and said the city looks at factors like speed and number of vehicles during the traffic-calming process.
The News Tribune asked him for more information about the city’s traffic-calming process – specifically, how many vehicles need to drive past an intersection each day in order to get it up to the score of 45 needed to do a traffic study. The News Tribune also asked what speed is required.
“When we are doing the traffic study, we measure how fast cars are going, the number of vehicles that are using a road within the study area, and so forth,” Johnson wrote. “When we look at speeds, we are especially looking at the 85th percentile speed. In other words, the speed at which 85 percent of drivers travel on a particular road is an important factor for us to look at when we analyze the results.”
Johnson said the data helps the city understand “what drivers are doing” and helps staff “determine what mitigations are warranted, if at all.”
McGough called the process “bureaucratic” and an obstacle to enacting safety changes.
“It takes time, which is unfortunate,” McGough said.
Johnson said the city’s traffic-calming process allows staff to hear from the community before enacting changes.
“We need to make sure there is community buy-in. That is why we require the 51 percent signature threshold because we want to make sure the residents in the neighborhood are supportive of the application,” Johnson wrote. “Traffic mitigation measures can be expensive to implement, so we want to make sure the residents are supportive of the mitigation before we spend public funds on them.”
He also said the process allows the city to gather data, which helps them make the best choices.
“Traffic studies take time to complete, but in the end they are worth the time because we get data that helps us with making a decision about what traffic-calming measures to implement or if a mitigation is not suggested,” Johnson wrote.
According to the City of Puyallup’s website, an additional 13,000 people are expected to move to the city by 2030.
“The City is working on a Local Road Safety Plan through the Safe Streets and Roads for All grant program,” Johnson wrote. “The intention of the Plan is to be proactive in determining areas of the City that are in need of safety improvements and then prioritizing those areas to be improved. We are in the preliminary stages of developing the Plan, and we’ll do outreach to the community as part of the project scope.”
What happened on Oct. 6?
On Oct. 6, a 16-year-old cross country student was running east with his team in the 600 block of Second Avenue Northeast. He entered the intersection and a truck hit him while traveling south on Seventh Street Northeast, causing serious injuries.
Puyallup Municipal Court records say the 27-year-old man driving the truck “appeared visibly upset about the collision.”
Officers later cited the driver for operating a vehicle without an ignition interlock device, which is a breathalyzer connected to a vehicle’s ignition. The driver was not impaired, according to court records, but he was driving the truck without a valid license or insurance.
The driver allegedly told the officer that he “was on his way to deposit a check at the bank to pay for insurance” and thought he was going 15 miles per hour on a 25 mph street. He said he slowed down when he saw the runner, but couldn’t stop in time, according to court records.
The teen’s mother set up a fundraiser in December.
“On October 6th, my son was hit by a truck and nearly lost his life … He is currently recovering after losing half of his skull, and his road to healing is long and uncertain,” she wrote on the fundraising page.
She wrote that the teenager has medical insurance, but that she doesn’t know what costs the family will have to cover.
“The charges for treatment so far have been over $1 million,” she wrote. “This is going to be a potentially lifelong process.”
Those interested in donating to the fundraiser can visit spotfund.com.
