Normal presents campus and roadway pedestrain saftey to Normal Town Council

Image taken by Bella Marello

NORMAL, Ill. – The Normal Town Council sat in on a presentation of the Normal pedestrian and roadway campus safety initiative.

According to Normal Public Works and Engineering Director Ryan Otto, the initiative strives to understand traffic concerns and improve traffic challenges.

“Ultimately, it’s about improving safety and mobility on the Illinois State campus, but also for the entire community,” Otto said. “We know that a lot of our streets that go through campus are heavily traveled by both pedestrians and cars, and it might surprise some to know that we do have intersections that have more pedestrians than cars.”

Normal has been working on this initiative for the past 18 months.

The project was inspired by the death of the Illinois State graduate student that was struck and killed by a car near Turner Hall in 2021 and the ISU faculty member that was fatally hit by an e-bike while walking on campus in the same year.

“These tragedies really show the need for some data driven understanding of the safety concerns and some understanding of where we can make improvements,” Otto said.

Otto talked about safety assets on campus but emphasized that concerns still remain.

“We have a very walkable area, but we have a lot of risks,” Otto said.

From 2019-23, over 1,000 crashes were reported on campus. Pedestrian crashes make up only 4% of traffic crashes but make up 57% of serious injury crashes.

This initiative consists of three main phases: listening, testing and recommendations.

Normal gathered public opinion through tabling, student outreach and an online survey that received over 1,500 responses.

After this community opinion gathering phase, Normal constructed seven traffic “quick-builds” around campus, temporary and cheap tests of traffic changes.

One of the biggest and most well known builds was the changes to the intersection right in front of Hewett and Manchester Halls, which most notably closed the middle of School Street.

“By closing those, we eliminated probably over 50% of the conflict zones on the intersections,” Otto said.

This quick build still stands today due to its overwhelming success, according to Otto.

Tens of thousands of pedestrians cross this intersection each day. This was one of the few intersections where pedestrian use outnumbered vehicle use. Otto referred to it as a “crash hot spot,” with the highest number of mentions in all initiative-related interactions with the community.

Otto said that some of these still remaining concerns include Main Street (a four lane road), the crosswalk near Turner Hall, the intersection of University Street and College Avenue and other possibly confusing intersections.

“I think we’ve all known that intersection with College, Mulberry and School Street has, even if we didn’t have the hard data to support it, I think anecdotally that’s something that’s always stood out,” Normal council member Scott Preston said.

Future plans of pursuing grants and implementing additional quick-builds are in the planning phase.

The Normal Town Council meets on the first and third Mondays of each month.