City receives grant to expand school-zone sidewalks project
By Chris Fortune
The city is gearing up to begin work this spring to make school zones safer as kids walk to and from school — now, with an extra boost in funding.
More than 82% of St. Joseph voters approved the Capital Improvements Program in August to spend $35 million to improve public safety, infrastructure and other needs in the city.
The passing of the CIP also helped the city move forward with the Safe Routes to School project to build sidewalks around local schools.
“In 2013, the Safe Routes to School Plan was originally written,” said Chance Gallagher, St. Joseph’s deputy director of transportation. “Currently, we are updating the plan, getting more socio-economic information, and going to each school in the school district and within a one-mile radius, seeing what the sidewalks look like because obviously 2013 was 11 years ago.”
The public works department is nearly done with mapping each school in the district and rating the sidewalks to prioritize which school zone is fixed first.
“Once the plan is done, we’ll have a ranking, and we’ll meet with the school district and make sure that ranking lines up with their needs, and then go from there,” she said.
Now, the sidewalk project has received additional funding after the Metropolitan Planning Organization successfully applied for a $500,000 grant with the Missouri Department of Transportation for Cook Road in December.
“That will expand that project and allow for more sidewalks at Cook Road, and give more money to the Safe Routes to School plan — kind of offsetting costs,” she said.
The Cook Road sidewalks will run from the Interstate 29 bridge to Bishop Road, with work on the sidewalk projects set to begin this spring.
“Since the CIP was just passed, we’ve been waiting until it’s time to spend the money, and then we’ll do a few schools a year for the next five years,” she said.
But that’s not the only improvement planned for Cook Road. It’s still in the design phase, but Gallagher said the hope is to make it a three-lane road.
“The city is going to get a lot of things done in the next 5 to 10 years,” she said. “Five years for this (CIP), and then hopefully again (if the CIP passes once more) in five years.”
