The City of Columbus routinely allows sidewalks to be closed off when a new building is under construction. Some residents and advocates are beginning to question the practice, particularly in the context of the city’s recent efforts to promote pedestrian safety.
In March of 2020, the City of Columbus officially declared itself a Vision Zero city, signing on to the global initiative geared toward reducing the number of fatal traffic crashes to zero.
A city press release at the time described it as the “launch [of] a holistic safety initiative that makes protecting human lives the single highest priority of our transportation system.”
A Vision Zero Action Plan was released a year later, full of action items and commitments to protect the most vulnerable road users by slowing down cars and making improvements to the city’s most dangerous intersections.
“We have examined our transportation system holistically, and from the perspectives of all who use it — pedestrians, cyclists, motorists and transit users — to prioritize safety above all else,” said Jennifer Gallagher, Director of the Columbus Department of Public Service, at the time.
To some, though, the city’s practice of closing off sidewalks seems to prioritize the preferences of construction crews and the convenience of drivers over the safety of pedestrians.
The City’s Process for Closing Sidewalks
A blocked off sidewalk – sometimes accompanied by a “detour” or “use other side” sign – can lead law-abiding pedestrians to turn around and walk to the nearest traffic light or crosswalk in order to safely cross the street, although in practice many people simply risk a quick walk in the street, where car traffic (more often than not) has been allowed to continue unimpeded.
With the amount of construction happening in Columbus – particularly along its larger corridors, like High and Broad Streets – the impact of this practice on pedestrians is not trivial.
Although the city does not maintain a database of sidewalk closures, a quick survey of development sites in the city’s urban neighborhoods reveals many that have been allowed to expand beyond the boundaries of the private property they are being built on, taking over public sidewalks and blocking access for pedestrians.
In Old North Columbus, for example, a four-story mixed-use development has been under construction for over two years at 2500 N. High St. A chain link fence has been in place around the site that whole time, blocking access to the sidewalk on the east side of High Street between Tompkins and Wilcox Streets. A sign tells pedestrians to “please use other side,” and directs them with an arrow to the other side of High Street, although the closest crosswalk is two blocks to the north (at Hudson Street). For pedestrians coming from the south, they’d have to turn around and walk three blocks to Patterson Avenue to get to a marked crosswalk.
Construction crews are not allowed to do this by right; they need to apply to the city for a right-of-way permit, a process that is overseen by the city’s Temporary Traffic Control office.
Debbie Briner, spokesperson for the city’s Department of Public Service, told Columbus Underground that staff examine each request on a case-by-case basis, taking into consideration a wide range of factors, including “pedestrian volumes using the sidewalk, accessibility and convenience of nearby pedestrian crossings, vehicle volumes of a travel lane, and whether construction may require use of a travel lane.”
City staff also follow the rules laid out in the Ohio Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) and the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act, she added.
The end result of that process is a “maintenance of traffic plan” that either allows the builder to block off the sidewalk completely; instructs them to maintain a path for pedestrians; or, in some cases, calls for a lane of the street to be blocked off from car traffic in order to accommodate people walking past the site.
Apart from blocking off a lane of the street, there are other ways to maintain safe pedestrian pathways during construction that are common in some cities but rare in Columbus.
At the northeast corner of Gay and High Streets Downtown, scaffolding was erected in front of the Madison’s and White Haines buildings, creating a walkway and maintaining sidewalk access safely at a time when those historic buildings were empty and a plan to renovate them had stalled. The scaffolding was removed late last year, though, when work on the buildings actually began, and the sidewalk on the east side of High was blocked off completely between Gay Street and the mid-block COTA bus stop.
In early January, Briner said that permits were issued for the pedestrian scaffolding but that the applicant “didn’t request their permit be modified for the sidewalk closure…Temporary Traffic Control is addressing this with them and will put a [maintenance of traffic] plan in place that accommodates the high volume of pedestrian and vehicular traffic here.”
On February 16, a lane of High Street was blocked off to allow pedestrians to walk past the buildings safely.
In the case of the High and Tompkins site, Briner said that the developer was granted the use of the sidewalk for the “duration of the project.” The level of pedestrian activity in the area was determined to be “low relative to locations that typically require a sidewalk diversion be maintained,” and the Hudson crosswalk and curb ramps at Wilcox Street and Blake Avenue were deemed sufficient for pedestrians needing to cross High Street.
The Tompkins development, though, is located within a “community of interest” as defined by Vision Zero Columbus, and that stretch of High Street is labeled as part of the city’s “high injury network,” which is defined as the corridors with “the greatest number of fatal, serious injury and/or vulnerable user crashes per half mile segment.”
Briner also cited heavy car traffic along that section of High Street as a justification for allowing the sidewalk to be closed; “There is an evening peak hour parking restriction for northbound High Street in this area due to high vehicular traffic volumes using both northbound travel lanes.”
It’s this focus on maintaining multiple lanes for rush-hour drivers – at the expense of any sort of access at all for pedestrians – that puts the city’s priorities in clear focus, according to pedestrian advocates and residents affected by the decisions.
The Impact of Sidewalk Closures
Harvey Miller, Director of OSU’s Center for Urban and Regional Analysis, said that he is “not impressed by invoking the Ohio MUTCD since those guidelines favor driving above all other street uses.”
“Sidewalks are transportation infrastructure, not decorative features of private property,” he added. “We need to treat them with the same respect we treat street and road space for cars.”
“There seems to be a disconnect right now between the city’s intent and language with the Vision Zero program and the actions they’ve taken to prove that they’re serious about it,” said Stephanie Pasamonte, Vice-Chair of the local advocacy group Transit Columbus.
And for people who regularly rely on sidewalks to get around, the unexpected closing of one can have a big impact on their daily lives.
Elise Porter is a Clintonville resident who lives near High Street, north of North Broadway. She frequently walks several blocks south to the Clintonville Resource Center – located on High Street – where she is active in Village in the Ville, an organization for older adults in the area.
Because of construction at the southwest corner of the High/North Broadway intersection, portions of the sidewalk were closed off for months at a time, she said. And because of repairs happening elsewhere, sometimes sidewalks on both sides of High Street were partially blocked off at the same time.
“It’s not very convenient,” Porter said. “The whole reason I live here is to be in a walkable neighborhood…I don’t want to have to get in a car or bus just to go a few blocks somewhere.”
The problem is made worse by the fact that High Street is so wide in that part of Clintonville – with two lanes of car traffic in each direction, a center turn lane, and two lanes for on-street parking.
“There just aren’t enough crosswalks,” Porter added, explaining that most people aren’t going to take the time to backtrack and find a safe place to cross.
Vickie Starbuck, another Village in the Ville member, lives in the University District and spends a lot of time walking in the neighborhood. She sees sidewalks blocked all the time – for new development, for water main breaks, and for all types of road construction projects – and thinks the city should be more considerate of the needs of walkers.
“They seem kind of comfortable in blocking off one side of the street, with the idea that you will cross the street, particularly when it comes to main arteries,” she said, “and that’s kind of not acceptable…it’s dangerous.”
Advocates Push for Change
Pasamonte, of Transit Columbus, said that the city deserves credit for some recent infrastructure improvements that will make roads safer, like traffic calming devices on Miller and Ohio Avenues. And a “tactical urbanism” project on Mount Vernon Avenue – part of the Vision Zero effort – appears to have been successful in slowing down cars along a key stretch of that Near East Side street.
However, by allowing sidewalks to be blocked off so routinely for construction projects, the city has failed to apply the Vision Zero philosophy to its everyday operations.
The recent winter storm provided another example of this disconnect, Pasamonte said, since it showed how the city prioritizes the clearing of ice and snow from streets, while sidewalks and crosswalks are left to private property owners to deal with.
“In the worst cases, the plows have even pushed the snow from the streets onto the sidewalks, making it more difficult to get to bus stops or even to walk a few blocks down the street,” they added. “This forces many folks to walk, bike, or use mobility scooters on the roads.”
Another point of contention is the Walk Safe on Cleveland website. Part of a $1 million communications campaign funded through the Vision Zero initiative, the site features messages that are geared toward pedestrians – telling people, for example, not to listen to music while walking, to always cross at a crosswalk or traffic light if possible, and to look both ways before crossing the street.
Advocates argue that this type of campaign has not been proven to be effective in lowering deaths or serious injuries from vehicle crashes, and cite it as an example of the traditional approach to the issue – which the Vision Zero movement is working to disrupt – that expects perfect behavior from individual pedestrians, and designs streets around that expectation.
Guidelines published by the national Vision Zero Network organization explicitly discourage any approach that puts the emphasis on individual responsibility, instead urging cities to “prioritize roadway design” and “focus on speed management” in their plans.
“If the city wants to take Vision Zero seriously, it’s going to take a lot of hard work and education, both internally and for the general public,” said Pasamonte.
“It’s going to mean following through with projects like the Indianola Complete Streets project – not just in places like Clintonville, but also on the Near East Side, the Hilltop area, the South Side, in South Linden – all the areas that have the highest need for these types of life-saving changes.
“Obviously an initiative like Vision Zero in a car-centric city like ours is a big undertaking, but there are many things that can be done now to improve the situation for pedestrians and cyclists.”
To lodge a complaint with the city about a specific blocked sidewalk, residents can contact 311.
