By Dennis O’Niel
A new pedestrian crosswalk was recently added by the University of Louisville to beef up the safety for students crossing one of the busiest roadways on campus Eastern Parkway.
The new crosswalk was added at the corner of Third Street and Eastern Parkway, which is the first of many modifications to be made in the area over the next year.
Other plans include turning the four lane road of Eastern Parkway into two lanes. This will allow for widened sidewalks and may provide more space for pedestrian traffic. Plans are also in the works to construct a median so students will not be in as much danger when crossing and repairing the bridge over Floyd Street.
According to Vice President for Business Affairs Larry Owsley, construction on the road will not begin until after the fall semester. Despite the construction being months away, Owsley said felt it was important to construct the new crosswalk as soon as possible.
“Now pedestrians actually have a safe place where they can cross in that area,” Owsley said. “In doing so, we also eliminated the possibility for cars to be turning onto Eastern from north and south on Third Street. Pedestrians now only have one lane to worry about.”
“We hope to make the road not only safer, but also to improve the area aesthetically as well,” Owsley said. There are plans to improve the landscaping of the area: adding trees along the reconstructed road and in the new median.
And the university hopes to make Eastern Parkway look more a part of U of L. “We also think that going from four lanes to two will have a calming effect, and make Eastern not just feel like another busy roadway, but like it is more a part of the University of Louisville,” Owsley said.
“We also want to make significant repairs to the bridge that runs over Floyd Street,” Owsley said. “We have been allotted another 2.5 million dollars for the fiscal year of 2009 for repairs to the bridge. We are currently working with the state in order to move that money up a year, so that we will be able to do all the intended repairs simultaneously.”
So far, the modifications have elicited approval as well as some skepticism from the student body.
First year English graduate Adam Robinson said he feels the modifications are very necessary, citing safety problems. “I don’t think that drivers are always looking out for pedestrians and pedestrians are probably crossing the street in places that they shouldn’t be,” Robinson said. “(The administration) can’t stop people from doing that obviously, but it is good that they are looking for ways to better control that area.”
Fourth year engineering student Damon Amlung approved but expressed doubt. “I’m glad to see something was done about the crosswalk situation, but I don’t know if going from four lanes to two is really going to do much, since Eastern is always so incredibly busy. I’m glad to see that the administration is at least trying to do something about it though.”
SGA President and senior Speed School student Darrell Messer said he approved of the plan but found some aspects to be perplexing.
“They want to prevent students from crossing mid-street but they want to make the street safer to cross at mid-street by reducing through traffic,” said Messer. “Doing both doesn’t make sense.”
Messer also said he thought a good idea would have been to add parking meters along Eastern Parkway, which would have narrowed the road to two lanes and added more parking. When asked about this, Owsley said the prospect of adding meters was never considered.
But according to Owsley as well as engineering Professor Dr. Mark French, student input was very much considered in preparing the new design for Eastern Parkway. French said there was a student representative, held by at least three different students, on the committee throughout the two-year process of reviewing the design options.
French said their involvement was key: the student representative gathered and presented student comments regarding proposed options at meetings and participated in traffic counts to determine how many vehicles and pedestrians were using the road at specific times of the day.
Owsley said there were 1200 responses to a Web site for U of L students to provide input.
“When we were surveying the area over by the Speed School, I would stop some students and talk to them about the changes that were going to be made,” Owsley said, “and most of them expressed great approval about what we were doing.”
Owsley said the project is currently budgeted at 2.4 million dollars, however, design plans are still being formulated. Once finished, contractors in Louisville will bid on the reconstruction project. Owsley said heavy construction will not begin until October or November, but depending on the brutality of the next winter, the project should take about six months to complete.
