FDOT begins safety improvements project on University Avenue
Press release from Florida Department of Transportation
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Safety improvements are underway on University Avenue as construction to add raised crosswalks near NW 14th Street and Gale Lemerand Drive began today. The two raised crosswalks will promote safety and enhanced mobility by providing pedestrians with new places to safely cross University Avenue. The NW 16th Street and NW 19th Street Signalization Improvements project, which has been ongoing in the area, was finalized last week.
Vehicle and pedestrian movements will be signal-controlled through the addition of mast arms and pedestrian signals at both locations. Additionally, the raised crosswalks will serve as traffic calming devices in lieu of the temporary speed tables currently in place along University Avenue, which will be removed as part of the project.
Traffic will be maintained in accordance with FDOT standards. Beginning next week, drivers can expect to see eastbound and westbound lanes of University Boulevard reduced from four lanes to two lanes. The lane reduction is expected to be in place until fall 2023.
Anderson Columbia Construction Inc. was selected to complete this $2.6 million project by spring 2024, weather and unforeseen circumstances permitting.
Thanks for successfully lobbying to ruin University Avenue for us non-students who live here, UF! UF continues to demolish affordable on-campus housing to build more income producing properties on campus. All while pushing students off campus into what remains of the single-family neighborhoods nearby. Said neighborhoods are now dominated by overpriced college apartment buildings. One of many reasons why I will never donate to my alma mater again!
It is very sad that supposedly intelligent college students have to be babied so much. Even high schools don’t require this intensive hand holding. Are they incapable of safely crossing streets or just lazy and need to be treated like a mentally deficient child? A wall on the UF side from 13th to where ever with no turns, no pedestrians and no crossings would solve UF’s problems with its children.
I seriously can’t remember the last time you could go up and down University with both lanes open in both directions.
Agree with Slice who points out the abandonment of responsibility by UF on housing, but this section of Univ Ave has and always will have high pedestrian traffic. For safety reasons as well as increasing public and business use, this is a good thing. Go around it if you are in a bigger rush.
One would hope the thousands of college students could/would pay attention to the traffic signals and crossing lights more than their cell phones but unfortunately many can’t. That’s why some want government to intervene on their behalf.
If you do choose to take another route, either do the speed limit or get out of the way of those who want to.
Fast traffic next to pedestrians is both dangerous and a damper on public use of the space. That strip of University, where the highly populated campus meets off campus businesses, is the most natural situation for a popular public space in the entire city. Traffic is and has been the wet blanket – as well as being dangerous – and a compromise of these tendencies is in order.
I agree in principle but the main problem with routing vehicles around that area of Univ Ave is that those rerouted vehicles will now be routed through neighborhood roads/areas that surround UF. This creates much more danger and headaches for those living in the area, including actual children as well as the home owners/renters. The Univ Ave redesign should have not been allowed to move forward until auxiliary routes were created or redesigned to accompany the traffic. I guess UPD & GPD could help with safety by slowing traffic with enforcement but I don’t see that happening right now, personally. All of these changes will just push the high volume of traffic away from UF, which is what they’ve longed for for so long. So tax payers be damn once again!
By the time a pedestrian climbs 20 or so stairs, walks across the bridge while stepping over drunken psycho homeless people, then descends another flight of stairs they could have just waited for the light to change at an existing crosswalk. I don’t think these stair bridges will get much use. I do think they will become inhabited by the homeless, and provide another place to hang lgbtq banners from.
Will the Children use the crosswalks? A penalty for jay walking might help. Campus police would then have something to do.