A young mother struggles to push a stroller and her toddler-aged boy through the rutted mud at the northwest corner of Statesville Road (U.S. 21) and Gilead Road. As the light turns green and she begins to cross Statesville, the driver of a black BMW makes a right turn on red, narrowly missing the mother and son.
A few minutes later, an employee at the nearby Baskin Robbins-Dunkin Donuts leaves work and strides south to the same intersection and takes a right on Gilead. She walks about 50 yards down the northbound I-77 ramp before crossing, making sure she's in no danger of being clipped by a vehicle turning from Gilead.
Minutes later, a young man in gray dress pants, a black jacket, spotless black shoes and carrying a black briefcase over his right shoulder squints against the dust stirred up by passing traffic as he traverses the concrete I-77 overpass.
While there are no sidewalks or crosswalks in this busy stretch of Gilead Road — from Statesville Road across I-77 to the Rosedale development — more and more people are negotiating the route on foot.
And doing so at their own peril.
The section of roadway was designed and built when the area west of I-77 was largely cropland and pasture. But now, I-77 is but a brief interruption in the booming development that has made Huntersville one of the fastest-growing municipalities in the state. The same is true two miles up the interstate at Exit 25, where dense development now spills west over I-77 and all the way to Lake Norman, but where pedestrians have no designated crossing signals, crosswalks or sidewalks at the interchange.
"I see more and more people walking across the interstate," says Huntersville native and Vermillion developer Nate Bowman, whose daily runs have included crossing the Exit 23 overpass since the days before development west of I-77. "And many of them are going to and from work."
That's an important distinction, because many of those local workers walk out of necessity.
"It's scary for the people who don't have a choice but to walk," Bowman adds. "It's not a safe place to walk. The biggest danger is (drivers) on their cell phones and people turning right" on and off the I-77 ramps.
The situation is much the same in Cornelius at Exit 28. Sidewalks extend east from I-77 for the full mile of Catawba Avenue through downtown, and west from the interstate for 2.5 miles to Robbins Park. But there is no sidewalk extending across the I-77 overpass, and no crosswalks at the on and off ramps.
Exit 28, however, will soon become more pedestrian friendly, when the N.C. Department of Transportation rebuilds the overpass in a so-called diverging diamond configuration, which includes a protected pedestrian pathway.
The future of pedestrian access along the I-77 corridor through Huntersville is less clear, and interstate overpasses aren't the only challenges.
Disconnectivity
When Birkdale Village was completed nearly a decade ago, it was hailed as a model of New Urbanism — a self-contained combination of residential and commercial development whose appeal was punctuated by its walkability. Yet potential hazards await for pedestrians at the edge of this Disney-esque development, where rows of shops are topped by second-story apartments, and in some places by empty shells with lights strategically placed inside windows that open into nothing.
While nearly a mile of sidewalk extends along Sam Furr Road (N.C. 73) from the newly opened McDowell Creek Greenway (which runs for 1.5 miles along the eastern edge of Birkdale Village) to Kenton Place, there are no crosswalks or pedestrian signals at Birkdale Village Parkway or Lindholm Drive, the two main roads leading in and out of Birkdale Village. In fact, pedestrians crossing those two roads at Sam Furr actually must weave through stopped traffic because the white lines that signal where cars must stop for a red light are more than a car length ahead of where the sidewalk funnels foot traffic.
"A car just missed hitting one of our coaches a few months ago as he tried to cross Birkdale Village Parkway," says Kristin Harris, co-owner of Fleet Feet Sports, which leads training groups for runners and walkers from its Birkdale Village store. "He and the other runners had a green light, and the driver tried to turn right on red. She looked left for traffic, but never looked right for pedestrians."
But because of the intersection's design, pedestrians can easily become an afterthought for drivers leaving Birkdale Village.
"Our area is becoming much more connected, which is a wonderful thing," says Harris. "But, in many cases, it's happened so fast that we have lots of walkers and runners taking routes that weren't designed to accommodate pedestrians. Until we catch up with the infrastructure improvements to complement that connectivity, pedestrians won't be as safe as they should be."
'Don't trust anybody'
But in many cases, it's basic connectivity that is lacking. There are hundreds of hotel rooms within two blocks of Birkdale Village, along Northcross Drive. The trip from those hotels to Birkdale Village's restaurants and shops would be a convenient walk — except that there are no sidewalks connecting Northcross and Birkdale.
"As new development has occurred since 1997, sidewalks have been required along the street frontages where no imminent street widening was going to occur — we don't want sidewalks installed only to be torn-up," says Huntersville Planning Director Jack Simoneau. "When that happens, sometimes the sidewalks do not connect to anything for the time being. However, with the speed at which we have grown over the last 15 years, I'm glad we got what we did."
Some of those gaps will likely be addressed in a pedestrian master plan Huntersville will be developing in the next several months, Simoneau adds.
In the meantime, Bowman has some advice for pedestrians left with no choice but to be pedestrians.
"I don't trust anybody," Bowman says. "I actually direct traffic and tell them where I want them to go."
The real question is, when will pedestrians have a place to go?
