The Road Safety Audit (RSA) of the Business Loop from Stadium to Eastland Circle has been completed and we wanted to share some initial findings with you.
Some quick background—the City of Columbia received grant funding to hire CBB Engineering to conduct this audit with the goal of improving road safety along the corridor. CBB held public meetings; sent out surveys; met with business owners; talked with Hickman High students, parents, and staff; and had teams of volunteers walking, biking, and driving up and down the street at all hours taking notes.
The goal was to see how we could change the street to make our customers, workers, and students feel safer—and, of course, visit us more often.
Of all the folks they spoke to, 75% of the trips were mandatory (work, school, errands, or appointments) which means these are the people using our street, patronizing our businesses, and visiting several times a week. But regardless of mode of travel, people didn’t feel like the street was safe. Distracted drivers, running red lights, speeding, no crosswalks, limited sidewalks, and more all made people hesitant to come to The Loop more often. 85% of pedestrians felt unsafe but 45% of drivers did too!
Even our most loyal and regular lunchtime customers—Hickman students—felt unsafe trying to walk to school or cross the street to grab lunch. It goes without saying that young people on foot are also our most vulnerable customers so any future improvements should take into account ways to improve the blocks around Hickman so they’re easier and safer to walk.
The overall goal with our planning process isn’t to make it easier for people to speed down the Business Loop on their way to get someplace else. Our goal is to make this a better place for our customers, and aim for changes to the street that will make them return more often and stay a bit longer.
The Road Safety Audit has a lot of suggestions for improvement—many coming from our customers themselves—and the plan is to use these suggestions in our larger Corridor Plan, which we are right in the middle of drafting. This larger plan will include safety and traffic improvements but also stormwater management, landscaping, beautification, and more. The next public input meeting for that will be in late Fall so watch our website for details.
