Pedestrian fatalities have some in York County asking why aren’t there more sidewalks?
Some area residents say there aren’t enough sidewalks, and that’s having deadly consequences.
Road officials hear them. Yet, officials say sidewalk safety is complicated.
“I wouldn’t want one to take that there’s no concern,” said David Hooper, director of the Rock Hill-Fort Mill Area Transportation Study(RFATS).
The RFATS policy committee held it’s monthly meeting at noon Friday. Part of the discussion focused on pedestrian safety after several recent incidents.
Steve Yaffe and Liz Duda, leaders with an area bicycle and pedestrian safety coalition, also addressed the group.
“We don’t have pathways and crosswalks on most roads,” Yaffe said.
He and Duda referenced recent pedestrian deaths.
In January a Lancaster woman died after she was struck by a vehicle while walking on a U.S. 521 bridge. A Catawba man also died the same month after being struck by a vehicle on a road southeast of Rock Hill, just days after a pedestrian was hit and killed while walking across S.C. 49 in Lake Wylie.
A Fort Mill teen died after being hit by a vehicle while crossing Pleasant Road in Fort Mill on Valentine’s Day. On Friday, a 7-year-old girl in Lancaster County was hit by a vehicle while waiting for a school bus. As of Friday afternoon there had been no update on her condition.
South Carolina Department of Public Safety data through Friday afternoon showed 18 pedestrian deaths this year related to traffic. There were 31 through the same date last year.
Duda said Habersham subdivision residents in Fort Mill have been asking for years for a safe path from their neighborhood to nearby Pleasant Knoll elementary and middle schools, near where the teen died earlier this month on a Pleasant Road crosswalk.
Nothing has changed.
“This means that kids in this neighborhood must drive two-and-a-half miles to school instead of walk the half mile to school because it’s not safe to walk on the roads,” Duda said.
She and Yaffe say pedestrian safety should be a primary consideration in any approved project, but especially near schools and parks.
“Why can’t we walk or bike?” Yaffe said. “There’s no facilities to do so....”
The will to work, fund improvements
Yaffe points to Carolina Orchards in Fort Mill. He calls it an abomination that there was a major subdivision expansion without sidewalk installation on two major roads. Yaffe and Duda also say pavement extending road shoulders would improve safety.
“Advocate for a continuous pathway along every collector road and arterial street,” Yaffe said. “Find funds and the will to fill in the gaps between developments.”
Road officials say there is continual work toward improvement.
“Some of the past actions that have been done, that are being done, are perhaps not widely known,” Hooper said.
A mix of federal and local money allowed the South Carolina Department of Transportation to install five-foot sidewalks on River Road in front of Indian Land middle and high schools, add 2,300 feet of sidewalk on Dam Road from Stonecrest Boulevard to Coralbell Way, and improve sidewalk connections near Nation Ford High School in Fort Mill. The ongoing River and Dam roads projects combine for more than $700,000 in improvements.
RFATS already issued a resolution too, Hooper said, that whenever a new school site comes up, the school district there should work with SCDOT to provide sidewalks.
“We expect to see this,” Hooper said. “We want to see this. We’ve put it in writing.”
Transportation alternatives
As with other public policy decisions, he said, pedestrian safety issues get better. Several years ago RFATS began a regional bicycle and pedestrian master plan. On Friday the group outlined its annual transportation alternatives program grant schedule, which can pay for pedestrian improvements.
Yet so much of this area was developed years ago, much of it before current best practices were in place.
“It develops over time,” Hooper said of older areas without sidewalks, “and then it looks as though there’s a lack of concern or caring.”
Much of the public probably doesn’t know about work like the regional connectivity plan or resolution on school sidewalks, he said..
“That’s not something that captures the headlines,” Hooper said.
Fort Mill Mayor Guynn Savage said the work Yaffe and Duda do is critical. She called the Pleasant Road fatality a tragedy and said discussion is ongoing between the town, school district and parties in that area.
“It is all fair to determine what the very extensive investigation reveals in that particular situation before we jump to conclusions,” Savage said. “I think that’s only fair to all parties, including the young man that has lost his life.”
Savage said it also would be unfair to assume schools were built there without a traffic study with SCDOT. Habersham and the schools went up about the same time, Savage said. Savage agreed pedestrian connections and safety are of key importance, but also said much thought goes into addressing requests for pedestrian access.
“It is healthy to have safe passages for people on cycles and pedestrians,” Savage said. “Does that include an interstate intersection? I don’t know.”
Where vehicles travel at the highest rates of speed, Savage said, pedestrian access may need to be addressed.
“I’m not sure that’s ever going to be a safe corridor for pedestrians and for cyclists,” she said of 55 mph and higher areas. “That’s a personal opinion. That’s not anyone else’s, but I need to know more about that.”
Another issue with sidewalks involves how many groups it sometimes takes to reach an agreement. Jimmy Bagley, deputy city manager in Rock Hill, said the planning department in his city requires sidewalks on a number of properties as they’re developed, but SCDOT doesn’t want them in the right-of-way. That way the state department isn’t responsible for maintaining them.
SCDOT officials at the policy committee meeting Friday said their agency requires and installs sidewalks on larger projects, but on some smaller projects in the tri-county area where sidewalks might not naturally connect they ask for the municipality to take responsibility. There isn’t manpower now, SCDOT officials said, to maintain sidewalks in the right of way with liability and related issues.
The department will continue requiring and maintaining sidewalks on larger projects.
“We build sidewalks that we do assume the maintenance responsibility,” said Berry Mattox, project manager with SCDOT.
SCDOT officials say it’s practice rather than policy not to have sidewalks in the right-of-way. Savage said the practice doesn’t always fit with municipal requirements, and perhaps should be considered as a policy decision by SCDOT.
“That is at odds with having ordinances that require it, and people are asking for it,” Savage said.
Most people only see whether there is or isn’t a sidewalk, and aren’t going to get into complicated discussions as to who is responsible or why, Savage said.
“It puts the rest of us that are on the ground in a terrible position trying to explain how yes we agree with you on the needs, and yes we have the ordinances, but we can’t get anybody that’s going to claim responsibility for the actions that we are requiring,” she said. “The public doesn’t understand that at all.”
Part of the issue with pedestrian safety comes from the ballooning population in much of Fort Mill, Tega Cay, Lake Wylie, Indian Land and Rock Hill. York County, for instance, had almost 50,000 more residents in 2018 than there were in 2010, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics. More people mean more pedestrians and more vehicles on area roads.
It also means a constant focus on that growing number of vehicles when transportation decisions come due, Hooper said. Perhaps even to the detriment of a more pedestrian focus.
“There’s kind of a pull back and forth and no one’s really pressed this issue, candidly, because so much of our area and multiple areas in the state are growing so rapidly,” Hooper said. “So much of the focus is on the capacity side right now, of moving cars.”
