Cross here

The installation of a new pedestrian bridge connecting Paradise Path across College Street and Paradise Creek could happen as early as November, as long as the City of Moscow is able to acquire adequate funding for the project, said Bill Belknap, Community Development Director for the City of Moscow.

Belknap said the city council has authorized the project contingent upon the identification of funding, but he expects the process to go smoothly in the coming weeks.

“The city had applied for a grant … to do some sidewalk work that included this pedestrian bridge installation as well as the installation of sidewalks in front of the SAE house on Sweet Ave.,” Belknap said.

Belknap said the city was able to fund the sidewalk installation through savings in the Intermodal Transit Center project and construction should begin within the next month.

“The pedestrian bridge is something that we were not able to do within that project, so we applied for a grant to try to fund that,” Belknap said. “We were not successful in receiving that grant, but due to some other project savings in the transit center project as well as some of the match funding … it looks like we are very close to being able to fund the installation of that bridge which we’ve estimated at about $64,000.”

Belknap said the bridge would benefit the university as well as the community by connecting the Paradise Path and improving the flow of pedestrian traffic in the area.

“It’s a fairly high traffic area and it’s also the crossing for the Paradise Path. It’s fairly heavy utilized by bicyclists or walkers that are using the path system there,” Belknap said. “Right now path users essentially have to cross College Street and use a fairly narrow five-foot-wide sidewalk and make another hard 90 degree turn to get back onto the path system.”

Carl Root, director for university parking and transportation, said the bridge will tie together the new college street design which currently includes sidewalks that dead end at the creek.

“It was clear that is was very important to have this pedestrian bridge because if you didn’t do it then people are just going to come along that side of the street and have to cross the street … and that gets to not as nice of a pedestrian circulation,” Root said.

Root said that the bridge, which was originally part of the construction plans for College Street and the ITC will complete the project.

“We’re really excited about the new building, the ITC. We’re on schedule and we’re looking at substantial completion by the end of October, so we can hopefully move in in the early part of November,” Root said. “It’s going to be a real transportation center and it’s going to facilitate better communication and better planning and I think that’s going to be a real positive thing for the campus and it’s going to be a positive thing for the community of Moscow and the county and the region.”

Belknap said that once funding for the bridge is approved, he anticipates an eight-week timeline for the actual installation of the bridge.

“There really are two or three big benefits to the pedestrian bridge,” Belknap said. “The first is improving that paradise path crossing … the second is that as part of the college street sidewalk we will be installing nice 16-foot wide sidewalks…and that sidewalk is just going to dead end at the creek on the Southside. This pedestrian bridge will provide that crossing for the new sidewalk facilities that we’re putting over on College to connect into the campus core. This provides enhanced access to the transit center as well.”

Kaitlyn Krasselt can be reached at [email protected]

About the Author

Kaitlyn Krasselt ASUI beat reporter for news Freshman in broadcast and digital media Can be reached at [email protected]

Leave a Reply

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.