PARIS – Selectmen agreed Monday to look into installing a crosswalk and signal at Main and Pine streets.

The action came after resident John Reed pointed out that pedestrians, including students from Oxford Hills Middle School on Pine Street, have no safe way to cross at the light.

There’s no striping to indicate a crosswalk, he said, and no crosswalk button for pedestrians crossing busy Route 26.

The traffic light is motion-activated by the approach of vehicles on Pine Street. If no vehicle needs to turn onto the highway, the light stays green.

“It creates a very dangerous situation,” Reed said. Even if one lane of traffic stops, the other might not, leaving a pedestrian stranded in the middle of the highway, he said.

“Unless you’re lucky enough to have someone at Pine Street activate the light, you might stand there 10 minutes before you can cross,” Reed said. There is a crosswalk striped in the road a short distance west, in front of McDonald’s Restaurant, but drivers cannot be trusted to stop for pedestrians in a crosswalk as state law requires.

“As much as people hate (traffic) lights, we are becoming a very populated area,” with traffic counts on Route 26 of upward of 26,000 cars a day, said Reed.

Town Manager Steve McAlister said that when the light was installed, there was no sidewalk on the north side of Main Street. Now there is, he said.

McAlister said he didn’t think it would cost much to have the light adapted to provide a button-activated signal change to accommodate people crossing Main Street.

“It would create more of a community feel,” Reed said. “Now, we tend to be more of a drive-through town.”