Columbus City Council voted unanimously on Monday to approve more than $4.3 million for the construction of a little over one mile of sidewalk on Refugee Road by Independence High School and related improvements.
But it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the more than 1,400 miles of city streets that don’t have sidewalks, as revealed by an investigation by The Dispatch last year.
Dispatch investigates: How much of Columbus has no sidewalk? And here’s what you need to know about trying to get one
“We have never hidden the fact that we are woefully under-sidewalked as a city,” Council member Lourdes Barroso de Padilla, chair of the Public Service & Transportation committee, told The Dispatch. “We are certainly making strides in ensuring that we have more coverage, more sidewalks all around the city.”
The $4,326,904-million project includes a $3.9 million contract with Trucco Construction Company, and has been a long time coming. Independence High School students came to City Council in 2018 and asked for sidewalks around their school, Barroso de Padilla said.
“It’s literally in the middle of a residential area with high-traffic streets and the students there did not have a clear path to school that was safe for them,” she said.
Columbus Director of Public Service Kelly Scocco said this was not an easy project to get through the design and right-of-way processes.
Five-foot sidewalks will be built on the north side of Refugee Road from Noe Bixby Road to Blue Moon Drive and on the south side of Refugee Road from Noe-Bixby to the existing sidewalk just west of Glenbriar Street. The project also includes the resurfacing of Refugee Road from Noe Bixby Road to Falcon Bridge Drive, a brick paver parking area and stormwater drainage improvements.
In April 2024, Henry Meyer, 10, and Elliot Meyer, 7, walked home from school through neighbors’ yards along Cooke Road in Clintonville, where there are no sidewalks.
Barroso de Padilla said the city is working toward getting sidewalks across the city by requiring builders of new developments to build sidewalks and tapping funds from the recent Central Ohio Transit Authority levy. The levy passed in November sets aside about $60 million per year for building sidewalks, bike paths and trails across Franklin County.
This sidewalk project is part of the Operation Safewalks to School program, which the Council established in 2018 to build sidewalks around schools.
jlaird@dispatch.com
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus building sidewalks around Independence High School on SE Side