“This sudden shift to say that the plan we did - working hand in hand with TxDOT - was no longer going to be possible was pretty surprising to us.” “We had been working with TxDOT since 2016, when the initial concepts for Broadway were being developed,” McBeth says. Not only that, says David McBeth, assistant city engineer for the Public Works Department, but the city had actually had meetings with TxDOT about the project over the years, and was proceeding on the understanding that the road would be returned to city ownership once a project was complete. Years prior, even before the bond referendum in San Antonio, TxDOT had initiated a “ turnback program” meant to let cities take control of state roads that the department no longer wanted to maintain. Broadway was actually State Loop 368, the department said, and no lane reductions would be allowed. Its final design called for two of the six driving lanes to be converted to protected bike lanes - one in each direction - with wider sidewalks, new street trees and other safety improvements.īut earlier this year, the Texas Department of Transportation put the brakes on the plan. The Department of Public Works spent parts of the last four years planning the project, holding community-engagement meetings and designing the flow of traffic. Among the projects funded in the bond was a “complete street” redesign for a two-mile stretch of Broadway, a north-south arterial with three vehicle lanes in each direction.
In 2017, voters approved a bond measure to fund a range of public-realm improvements, including 200 miles of new sidewalks. Like a lot of other big cities, San Antonio has tried to make some of its streets safer for bikers and pedestrians. And it’s true in San Antonio, where pedestrian deaths have been on the rise for four straight years.
It’s true in Texas, which has one of the highest rates of traffic deaths overall and has seen recent spikes in pedestrian deaths.
Around the country, more pedestrians and bikers are being killed and seriously injured by drivers.
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