Mending fences

Southeast Missourian

Within earshot of a calm residential neighborhood street where three boys play basketball on a portable goal, several diesel trucks growl and hiss down a stretch of Highway 74 between the intersections of West End Boulevard and Sprigg Street in Cape Girardeau.

As the gears grind and the tires moan, the 18-wheelers send out warnings in their own language. Don't get in our way, they seem to say.

Five-foot tall chain-link fences are all that separate back yards from one of the city's most important arteries. Although there are no posted signs, the message is clear: Don't tred on this road.

But residents of the neighborhoods along that stretch ignore the signs. Their actions express a conflicting message that, yes, this is a place for pedestrians. And, for them, these fences are nothing more than a nuisance.

As a result of residents climbing the fences, sections of the chain-link barrier have been damaged. They've been repaired or replaced several times only to be climbed over and bent down again.

Bridge building

The Missouri Department of Transportation's has come up with a solution for fence jumpers, and the pedestrians are excited about it.

In the works is a new pedestrian bridge that would reunite two neighborhoods that were split apart about six years ago when Highway 74 opened.

The project will be totally funded by the state, and officials estimate a cost of about $200,000. However, MoDOT transportation coordinator Steve Duke said he won't know the exact cost of the footbridge until a bid is accepted. That should happen soon, he said.

If all goes well, the walkway could be in place before the end of the year, Duke said.

Highway history

Route 74 opened in February 1996. By the fall of 2003, when the Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge is scheduled to be completed, the highway will connect the bridge with Interstate 55.

City planner Kent Bratton said the new corridor already has relieved traffic along William Street and in the downtown area.

And once the bridge is opened, traffic on Highway 74 -- also known as Shawnee Parkway -- will increase dramatically.

The road is part of the overall bridge plan. The current bridge is so narrow, trucks have been known to smash mirrors when passing in opposite directions. The new bridge will be four lanes wide with shoulders. City officials say the increased traffic flow generated by the bridge will likely boost the economy of the city.

But progress comes with a price.

And for the neighborhood residents south of the highway, that price was being cut off from their neighbors and, basically, the rest of the city. The only way out of the neighborhood -- which consists almost exclusively of old homes, some of which have been turned into duplexes -- is by way of Sprigg Street or West End Boulevard.

Some residents were cut out all together as 56 houses were purchased and demolished as part of the $20 million highway project. Most of the houses were owned by landlords, but more than 40 families were relocated by the state. Before the houses were demolished, houses were boarded up and police tape surrounded properties to prevent trespassing. At first the area looked like a crime scene. Then, when the demolition began, it looked like a war zone, or as some residents put it, a wasteland.

Other routes were considered, but after weighing costs and benefits, the state decided the best place for the highway was through this residential neighborhood.

Now the neighborhood south of the highway is an isolated peninsula of sorts with Sprigg, Highway 74 and West End surrounding three sides. There are no convenience stores, no grocery stores, and no barber shops on the south side of Highway 74.

Transient neighborhood

People in the vicinity, as has been the case for many years, tend to regularly move in and out of the rental property so many weren't living there before the highway was built. They can draw no comparison to what the neighborhood was like before it was built.

Still, relationships between residents on both sides of the highways do exist.

For those who drive cars, the highway has very little consequence. In a car, a two-block drive takes just a few moments, and the new route helps them get to their destinations to the commercial parts of town quicker than before.

But for pedestrians, like Brian Harris and Ben Allen, the new highway could mean an extra 20 minutes out of the way if they stroll down to the cross walk.

"That's a long way around for real," said Harris, 17. "I've got a cousin that lives over there, and I've got family who have lived all around here. We hop the fence all the time, me and my fellas."

Harris said he climbs the fence almost daily.

Allen also has some cousins and other relatives on the other side of the road.

"You've got to go in a complete circle to go one place," he said. "You used to go just straight across. I jump over the fence all the time."

Lana Burton, who lives on Burton Street, doesn't walk much anymore because she now owns a car. But she used to walk with her three children -- ages 8, 2 and 1 -- several blocks out of the way when she needed to cross the highway.

"I always went around to the lights," she said.

Geoffrey Spears, who works at Don's Store on Sprigg Street, walks to work, but doesn't climb the fences, he said.

He can understand why some would.

"With me walking to work, I just have to go one block out of the way," he said. "Some people have to go two or three blocks."

Spears thought the proposed bridge walkway was the perfect solution.

Shelley Williams can't wait for the pedestrian bridge, but not because she will use it all that much. Highway 74 basically runs through her back yard, and she fears for her children's safety.

"I get strangers in my yard all the time from jumping that fence," she said. "It's especially bad in the summertime."

Harris said he doesn't give much thought to the destruction of the fences, but he doesn't complain about the situation either, other than the pants he's torn while climbing. It's simply become a way of life.

He's one of many who hop them, and he said he doesn't feel guilty about it.

Patrolling the fence

When Allen crossed the fence one morning, he made sure to look both ways and behind him before doing the chain-link leap. He was looking for police officers.

But there's nothing much the police can do about the situation, says Cpl. Ike Hammonds, a Cape Girardeau police officer who has been involved with the location of the proposed bridge.

There is no jay walking statute among state laws, Hammonds said. The only way a person could be convicted of a crime, he said, is if it could be proven that he did damage to the property.

But Hammonds isn't worried about the law so much as the safety of those crossing the highway.

"Oh, it's especially dangerous at nighttime," he said. "I've stopped them on two or three occasions since the fence went up. You just tell them it's really dangerous and that the fences are being damaged. But they're not going to listen to that. All you can do is give them a warning about what could happen to them."

Although adults have been seen hopping the fence, it's usually juveniles unable to drive who brave the highway on foot.

But Harris doesn't think it's all that dangerous.

He said the people he's seen do it are all old enough to know how to look for cars and cross the highway. He said the youngest people he knows who cross the highway are about 13 or 14 years old.

Hammonds said he believed that if MoDOT made the fence taller that it would prevent some foot traffic across the highway.

The new pathway

Some MoDOT officials met with Hammonds one day last spring to assess where the pedestrian bridge should go. While they were looking it over, a man, walking north on Ellis Street, nonchalantly climbed the fence to cross the highway.

That helped make the decision. It will be placed near Ellis Street, about 360 feet west of the Sprigg Street intersection.

Hammonds said he thinks the bridge will alleviate the problem.

"We'll have to wait and see," he said. "But once the Emerson Bridge is up and running, people are going to think twice about crossing that highway. If the traffic coming off that bridge has a green light, they're going to be moving. You and I both know they're going to be doing 55 and 60 through there."

Bratton was a bit more skeptical on the bridge's usefulness. He said it's possible that some will continue to climb the fences with "human nature being what it is."

The crossover will have rails that will prevent people from jumping or falling off, said Duke, the planning coordinator.

Duke said the project development stage is almost complete, and revised plans have been sent to the general headquarters office for final review.

In the near future, he said, bids will be sought for the construction of the project.

The pedestrian bridge will be totally state funded with the use of federal discretionary enhancement money, called TEA-21 funds.

The program normally requires a 20 percent local match, but the transportation department has offered to waive that.

The city will only be responsible for maintenance of sidewalks to be built to the crossover.

bmiller@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 127