Drivers traveling on the roundabout of West Sims Way and Rainier Street at noon Friday may have been incredibly confused to see multiple people equipped with blindfolds, safety vests, and white canes traversing around the roundabout.

What may have looked like a strange and spontaneous occurrence to onlookers was actually a heavily planned and coordinated event organized by the Disability Awareness Starts Here group to display the safety risks of walking around Port Townsend’s roundabouts as a visually impaired individual.

As the city is planning to add a new roundabout on the Kearney Street and East Sims Way intersection, the advocacy group organized the event to stress the importance of making Port Townsend accessible for all citizens.

On Friday, members of the Washington State Department of Transportation and Port Townsend Public Works met with DASH and the Jefferson County Council of the Blind at Port Townsend Vineyards. Eight members from both government departments volunteered to travel across the Rainier Street and West Sims Way roundabout blindfolded, to simulate the daily experiences that blind and visually impaired residents experience when traveling around the city.

Around 20 people gathered at the vineyard, a block away from the roundabout, to discuss improving city infrastructure for visually impaired citizens in Port Townsend. Before embarking on the blindfolded journey, members of each organization listened to Carl Jarvis, a member of the Council of the Blind. Jarvis, who is visually impaired, discussed the challenges of walking across Port Townsend without proper infrastructure for disabled citizens.

“Many people in Port Townsend with impaired vision and or impaired hearing need to use this important intersection for banking or shopping. Continuous traffic flow is a horrifying prospect for us. Please reconsider this plan,” Jarvis said of the proposed roundabout.

Before crossing the roundabout firsthand, Jarvis showed participants techniques for how to use a white cane.

Blind and visually impaired people use white canes to scan their surroundings for obstacles and orientation marks while traversing public walkways.

The volunteers began their journey, accompanied with organizers holding their arms and guiding them along as they slowly navigated the sidewalks toward the intersection. Disoriented and wary, the eight participants crossed the walkways as some cars stopped to let them through, and other drivers hurried around the roundabout to avoid the blindfolded pedestrians.

After close to 45 minutes of traveling, the participants made their way around the roundabout and back to the vineyards unscathed.

Steve King, the city’s public works director and a participant in the blindfolded crossing, spoke of his experience trekking around the roundabout.

“It’s quite disorienting,” King said. “Without a guide, I’d still be wandering out there.”

As one of the planners for the new roundabout project, King received a first-hand confrontation with the concerns raised by disability advocates in Port Townsend.

“When you experience it, you change the way you think about it,” he said.

Michele Gransgaard, who attended the event, voiced her support for crosswalk infrastructure that can be used by all residents in the area.

“If you are focused on your most vulnerable folks, that’s just going to make everything better for everyone,” Gransgaard said.

With around 11,000 vehicles passing through the East Sims Way and Kearney Street intersection every day, disability advocates have stressed making the planned roundabout safe not only for visually impaired residents, but for all citizens with disabilities.

“They’re very afraid the roundabout won’t work for them,” said Pat Teal, president of DASH. “This is why we’re getting involved.”

The blindfolded crossing event showed participating city planners how nerve-wracking and potentially dangerous crossing a roundabout without proper infrastructure can be for blind or visually impaired citizens.

“We want[ed] them all to get a real feel for how hard it is to cross the roundabout,” Teal said.