A crosswalk-building project spearheaded by the former Oak Harbor mayor will likely be scrapped.

City Engineer Joe Stowell enumerated a series of reasons that a project for a mid-block crosswalk is a bad idea during a presentation to the Oak Harbor City Council last week.

The council took no formal vote on the issue, but the project appears to be DOA.

“I personally feel it’s going to cause more problems than it solves,” Stowell said.

Scott Dudley, Oak Harbor’s former mayor, was a proponent of the project which was meant to alleviate safety concerns with pedestrian jaywalking across East Whidbey Avenue between State Highway 20 and Oak Harbor Street.

The proliferation of jaywalking is largely a function of demographics and services. On one side of Whidbey Avenue is high-density residential housing and on the other side is a bus stop, Saars Marketplace, restaurants and other businesses. Residents of an assisted living-facility complained about the difficulty of walking uphill to an existing crosswalk.

The city was awarded a $224,500 grant in 2014 to design and build a mid-block crosswalk, but that wasn’t without controversy.

Councilman Rick Almberg, a retired construction manager, expressed concerns and made a motion to require the city to get an opinion letter, at a cost of about $4,000, from an engineer about the feasibility of the project before moving forward with it.

Almberg pointed out that the area is crammed with driveways, entrances and exits that made the idea impractical.

The consulting engineer concluded that there is a need for a safe crossing in the area.

The segment of East Whidbey Avenue is the busiest east-west arterial in the city, carrying an average of 10,200 cars a day; the consultant counted 25 pedestrians walking across the road mid-block from 4:30 to 6 p.m. on a Wednesday. Nevertheless, concerns remained and the project stalled.

Last week, Stowell told the council that it is time to make a decision on the future of the project. He gave a PowerPoint presentation highlighting the problems with one of two alternative designs proposed by the consultant.

Both options call for a pedestrian “refuge,” or median, as part of the crosswalk.

One option would restrict the intersection with Northeast Barron to right-in and right-out turning. Stowell showed the options that drivers would have if they wanted to travel in the other direction from the turn. There would be a good chance, the officials agreed, that many people would end up using the Saars parking lot to turn in the opposite direction.

In addition, a restriction on left turns onto Barron would leave drivers with inconvenient and back-alley options, he said.

In an interview afterward, Stowell said he also has concerns about traffic flow and safety around the second alternative.

Stowell told the council that Washington Cities Insurance Authority — the insurance pool the city belongs to — also does not support mid-block crosswalks because of safety concerns.

Nobody spoke in favor of the project.

“I have to agree with Mr. Stowell that this could might create other problems, even be a danger,” Mayor Bob Severns said.

Almberg agreed.

“It doesn’t appear to me we are making it safer for pedestrians,” he said. “We are inviting them into a conflict with vehicles.”

Stowell said the problem with jaywalking in the area may be helped with increased patrols by the police and possibly relocation of the bus stop on the other side of the street.

The grant money was to be doled out as phases as the project went forward, so the city doesn’t have money it needs to return.

To drop the project, the council will have to take a formal action at a later date.