Janice McCrary nudged her cobalt-blue walker out into a baking, six-lane river of asphalt.
Spotting a break in the flow of semi trucks and cars speeding toward downtown, she inched out onto Gray Highway.
Clearing the first two lanes, she lifted the wheels of her walker onto a thin concrete island.
The 6-inch platform served as refuge for her to pause, take a breath and wait for an empty stretch of stillness as three more lanes of traffic whooshed by toward Jones County.
The raised concrete, called a “medianette,” is one of five recently built along the center turning lane along a stretch of highway identified as one of the county’s deadliest for people on foot.
McCrary said she feels safer using it to cross.
“I think it’s a little bit better because it helps folks get across the street,” the 59-year-old said between sips of a strawberry milkshake at Dairy Queen across the highway from her apartment at McAfee Towers.
The medianettes, though, are “more for traffic calming” than pedestrian use, but can make it safer “should anyone chooses to use them to cross,” Georgia Department of Transportation spokesperson Gina Snider said in an email.
The medianettes, first announced a year ago, are result of a better working relationship Macon-Bibb County has with the GDOT, county commissioner Elaine Lucas said early afternoon Monday at a news conference with commissioner-elect Stanley Stewart in front of Burger King beside McAfee Towers.
“We’ve lost a lot of lives in this particular stretch,” Lucas said. “We know that highways are for getting from one place to another, but when you have people in a space with cars, everybody has to be considerate of each other.”
Lucas pushed for the creation of the Macon-Bibb County Pedestrian Safety Review Board as county commissioner in 2015. The board primarily focuses on outreach campaigns and public education. The deadliness of Gray Highway and the urgent need for it to be made safer has been discussed frequently in board meetings over the years.
“The speed limit has gradually been reduced along here starting at the interchange and going on out past the Walmart,” Lucas said. “So that’s been subtle, kind of a change.”
Last year, the county applied for a $4 million federal grant to retrofit the highway with sidewalks, lighting and other pedestrian amenities. The U.S. Department of Transportation declined to fund it.
Lucas said the county is negotiating with GDOT on additional measures to make the highway safer, including a push-button crosswalk that activates flashers to stop traffic for pedestrians to cross.
The total cost of the five pedestrian islands was about $175,300, according to GDOT project documents.
Stewart, who will take Lucas’s seat on the commission come January, said the medianettes are “a win-win” for pedestrians and drivers.
One drawback Stewart noted about the medianettes is they are inaccessible to wheelchair users, who have been spotted using them as barriers instead of platforms.
“I want to make sure that we are doing the things that are necessary to continue improving pedestrian safety on Gray Highway,” Stewart said.
Snider said in an email the medianettes are “not intended to have marked pedestrian crossing incorporated into them” but GDOT plans to add pedestrian amenities along the highway at some point in the future.
“The ones for pedestrian use will include crosswalks, ADA ramps, and other features once those elements are added soon,” Snider said. “We’re working to finalize studies and permits. There is no set date for installation.”
To contact Civic Journalism Fellow Laura Corley, call 478-301-5777 or email [email protected].
