Expedite project to keep pedestrians safe

By Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier

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The popular buzzwords used in community-planning discussions include “livable,” “walkable” and “sustainable.”

We don't totally grasp those terms, but we know one thing: Pedestrians and four-lane highways don't mix. The situation is not livable, walkable, sustainable or safe.

A case in point was recently when a Sergeant Bluff woman was killed trying to cross busy Iowa Highway 58 in Cedar Falls while taking a pizza back to her motel. Authorities said she misjudged the speed of oncoming traffic and thought she could make it.

She's not the first pedestrian killed along Iowa 58. Retired Waterloo police officer Gary McBroom was killed July 23, 2004, while jogging at Highway 58 and Greenhill Road.

A pedestrian and bicycle bridge is planned to begin construction later this year near there, about one-half mile north of the most recent accident site - too little, too late in this instance.

It's not the first such instance. A pedestrian underpass was built under University Avenue at Campus Street near the University of Northern Iowa in 1992 after UNI graduate student Charlotte Feild, 60, was struck by a car and killed as she was crossing University in her wheelchair in 1991.

A more proactive approach was taken when a pedestrian underpass was built under Hudson Road between the UNI campus and the UNI-Dome when that road was widened some 30 years ago.

Waterloo is facing a similar challenge right now along U.S. Highway 63-Logan Avenue in the north part of the city.

Waterloo City Councilman Harold Getty is spot on in his call for an accessible walkway along U.S Highway 63-Logan Avenue in the vicinity of the Hy-Vee grocery store.

“I've seen people walk in the highway,” Getty said. “I've seen wheelchairs, people on crutches, people carrying grocery bags in the highway because the snow plows piled the snow (on the roadside).”

Council members two years ago earmarked general obligation bonds to construct an accessible walkway along the highway from Donald Street to the Hy-Vee property, and members of the city's American's with Disabilities Act Compliance Commission have made it one of their priorities.

“You can see now that people are using it,” said commission chairman Mike Reyhons. “There's a foot path through there. ... It's not safe.”

But concerns from some adjoining property owners and a new debate over whether to build the sidewalk along the west or east side of the highway have kept the project in limbo. Building on the west side would conflict with some property owners' driveways; building on the east side might require a highway crossing signal in front of Hy-Vee to stop traffic and allow pedestrians to cross the highway. Apartment dwellers to the west on Donald may have to cross Highway 63 twice, at Donald and back again in front of Hy-Vee, to get to the store.

Whichever option is chosen, the project should be expedited. Talk it out, make the safest possible choice and get it done, before we have another case of “too little, too late” on our hands.

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