Roanoke City residents paint Salem Turnpike to increase resident safety
ROANOKE, Va. (WFXR)– The City of Roanoke is trying to make its streets safer one brush stroke at a time.
On Saturday, May 11, Salem Turnpike got a bit of a remodel as residents from around the city painted what organizers called “pedestrian spaces” along the street.
The street mural was done as a part of the city’s Walkability Project, helping to make the streets of Roanoke safer for pedestrians and bikers. The painting takes the road from its original 40-foot width to 20 feet. Organizers say the hope is for these spaces to make the road more narrow so drivers will slow down.
“A combination of elements like street art, bollards, horizontal deflections, pinch points, curb extensions, rectangular rapid flashing beacons — all of those things together are going to make this a much more pedestrian-friendly and safe area for the community,” Robert Issem, the Complete Streets and Visions Zero Coordinator with the City of Roanoke.
It also serves as a space for people to walk or ride without a sidewalk and stretches more than half a mile long. With a new grocery store to be added in the Melrose Plaza across the street, organizers say the additions to the street were not only a vital part of transportation but also health.
“We wanted to think about health as a way of how we can build our environment in a way that helps people be healthy and make healthy decisions and have access to healthy opportunities,” said Kristin Adkins, population health manager for the Roanoke City-Alleghany County Health Districts. “We knew that Landsdowne was the most populous area in the city and needed access to the resources, but the street was wide and fast and hard to cross.”
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Residents of the area say they are happy the city is making their safety and access to fresh, healthy food a priority.
“We’ve got to look out for each other and we do have children, we have people who have disabilities, people who may not be able to move in the street as quickly as you want, and that patience is so paramount. And, it only takes a couple of seconds out of our day to be able to slow down,” said Phoenix Keesee, a Northwest Roanoke Resident and “Dreaming Big” art program assistant. “We may get there slower, but it’s totally worth it and, at the end of the day, we are inspiring each other and holding each other like these hands are, and it takes a village,”
The designs of the mural by Landsdowne neighborhood children as part of a “Dreaming Big” art program.
“You don’t want to have something that is someone else’s idea and they do it at or to a community. You want the community to select it, so in this case the kids were instrumental in designing the art,” Issem said.
He tells WFXR that this project has taken just over a year to plan as of Saturday.
“It’s taken a long time to come about because we interpreted the drawings from children to make them into stencils and take them out into the community to get their opinion on the different designs,” said Dr. Simone Paterson, the lead artist for the project.
In the end, she says the most popular were drawings of hands and the Star of Roanoke. Issem says that most if not all the painting would be done by Saturday, however, they still have more plans for the road.
Issemsay, by the end of the year, the city will be put a brand new crosswalk on the other end of Salem Turnpike. It will have a pedestrian refuge island for people to break between crossing opposite direction lanes.
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