Ever had issues crossing Washington Avenue in downtown Navasota? Well, that might be a thing of the past soon. At the Monday evening meeting of the Navasota City Council, strides were taken to potentially set up new crosswalks on Washington Avenue in downtown. Grayson Cox, from KSA engineers, did a study on the cross walks for formulating a presentation to TXDOT.
“What we did was look at both the vehicle volumes as well as the pedestrian volumes to see what the wait times were for pedestrians, what the criteria was related to national guidance and also what the criteria was if we met it, according to TXDOT’s own rules,” Cox stated. “We studied the crossing situation at two locations on Washington Avenue. One was Farquhar and one was 10th Street near the railroad crossing. Based on all the data and analysis, we recommend that improvements are needed at Farquhar, but they are likely not justified at the 10th Street crossing.”
While Farquhar street is likely to get a crosswalk, 10th street could get left out by TXDOT. Anyone who has tried crossing 10th street on Washington probably knows it is a somewhat difficult task. But, there might still be a solution instead of the crosswalk to make things…at least somewhat safer.
“We did look at the physical conditions of Washington Avenue. Any sort of crossing we do, we are going to recommend that you do what is called a ‘bulb out,’ and then maybe a pedestrian refuge island,” said Cox.
As for the next course of action? Well, things have to go through TXDOT for approval of course before anything can be officially done. But that is on the cards. Cox says they will reach out to TXDOT with their findings and begin the process of moving forward with the next phase.
Council eventually approved plans to go ahead and reach out to TXDOT to begin the next steps of the process. There is no set timetable yet for the potential installation of the crosswalks.
