Still waiting for sidewalk along State Road 46 East
Two years ago on Labor Day weekend, Brown County resident David Sturgeon was struck and killed while crossing State Road 46 East near the Hawthorne Drive stoplight.
His loved ones went before the Nashville Town Council in February 2018, pleading for members to build a sidewalk along the highway before anyone else gets hurt.
“No progress has been made,” Annie Hawk told the council at its meeting last month.
“I go from my house in the south of the county to here or Bloomington almost every day, and I see virtually every day someone walking along 46. It’s not a safe situation.”
Hawk was a founding member of BC Paths for People, a group that developed after Sturgeon’s death to raise awareness of the need for a sidewalk along the highway which runs through town limits. In addition to the sidewalk, the group asked for crosswalks across the busy highway, like at the CVS and at the McDonald’s in Nashville.
Anna Hofstetter also was a member of BC Paths for People. She won election to town council last fall with pedestrian infrastructure as part of her platform. Her first action as a council member was to ask to get the council in line for a planning grant to study what it would cost to install such a sidewalk.
Actually applying for a planning grant has been delayed due to some staffing changes in the grant administrator company, Hofstetter said. “It’s a public safety concern and it needs to happen yesterday,” she said.
Dax Norton, the strategic direction adviser for the town, mentioned a few grant programs that could help pay for this project, including the state’s Next Level Trails program. He guessed it would cost “upwards of $1.5 or $2 million.”
Utility Coordinator Sean Cassiday said that the problem with crosswalks is that they can create a false sense of safety. His daughter was nearly hit while crossing State Road 135 North downtown a few years ago.
He wondered whether there was more the town could do on existing crosswalks to warn drivers to slow down and watch for pedestrians, like installing flashing lights.
“We are very concerned about it,” town council President Jane Gore assured Hawk.
Norton said that retrofitting a community to be pedestrian-friendly after so many years of it not being that way is a huge task, and won’t be a cheap one.
“That doesn’t mean it’s not doable,” town council member Nancy Crocker added.
The council took no official action on this matter in the meeting.
At the next regular council meeting on Aug. 15, Norton encouraged town leaders to get involved in the Salt Creek Trail Committee once it gets back together, to see if one of the yet-unbuilt sections of the trail could help serve this purpose.
Street, parking space closure requests for fall
The Nashville Town Council approved the closing of some downtown streets for two events this fall and denied blocking off parking spaces for another.
APPROVED:
- Saturday, Sept. 14: Closing West Main Street from Van Buren Street to Bittersweet Lane and Jefferson Street from Old Hickory Lane to Molly’s Lane. Streets will be blocked early in the morning Saturday; parking will be blocked off Friday night. This is for the We Care Gang’s NASHCAR outhouse races and Abe Martin’s County Picnic.
- Saturday, Sept. 21: Closing Molly’s Lane to traffic between Van Buren Street and Honeysuckle Lane for Big Woods’ Quafftoberfest.
DENIED:
- Saturday, Oct. 12: Blocking off all parking all day on Jefferson Street from Molly’s Lane to Old Hickory, and from West Main Street to Bittersweet Lane for a large wedding happening at the Methodist church. Council members said this was too many spots to give up downtown in October. They voted 5-0 against it. Wedding guests can use the Pittman House Lane or Washington Street parking lots. The council did offer to give the wedding party just the parking spots in front of the church on Jefferson if they wanted them for their getaway car.
