Nov. 13. By Dave Vieser. There is some encouraging news for pedestrians and cyclists, albeit two months after a sidewalk on West Catawba was torn up. A hold has been placed on the Junker apartment project prohibiting any more permits being issued until a new sidewalk is built.
Planning Director Rox Burhans said “this is to ensure sidewalk construction remains a priority for the contractor.”
In addition Burhans said that a permanent replacement sidewalk should be installed by mid-December.
The site is the former location of White House Gardens.
The other side of West Catawba is no help since there is no sidewalk. To the west and south in where a pedestrian was struck and killed by a car.
Well, only took the town politicians two months to take action on a huge safety concern for citizens. Can’t help but wonder who it was that educated them on how to get citizens’ safety made a priority as the politic had taken zero action on such until now!
I wonder how this will affect the widening of West Catawba some time next decade.
Will they just have to tear it up again?
We all know developers hate to add anything to the infrastructure when they don’t have to.
Tear it up, they will. Just check out what they are in the process of doing with the sidewalk that was put in a couple of years ago on Westmoreland Road (that ran from near Tenders down toward the U-Haul place). Just a bunch of chunks of concrete now.
It is a shame this has taken so long for this to be addressed. The town added the pedestrian signals on Catawba and then removed safe passage to one of those signals. Hopefully the town can avoid this with future projects. If we want a walkable, bikeable, connected town, we need to make a intentional effort to protect the safety of our citizens.
Traffic to continue to get worse as town and city governments side with developers. Are there no limits?