COLUMBIA — The Columbia City Council will vote on whether or not to implement a new pedestrian safety ordinance at their meeting on Monday.
According to a council memo, the ordinance would make it illegal for pedestrians to loiter in medians that are:
- less than six feet wide
- on a road that has more than 15,000 vehicles pass throughout a day
- on a road with a speed limit of 35 mph or greater
It comes after a pedestrian safety study that recommended 47 different locations in Columbia be monitored under new regulations.
The ordinance states that the failure of a pedestrian to leave the median after two consecutive opportunities to do so will be in violation unless their mobility is restricted.
The CoMo Renewal Project has been advocating for increased pedestrian safety and panhandling regulations for the last year. Bonnie Steinmetz founded the local advocacy group and started the conversation with council about a year ago.
"I spoke in front of council and brought photographs of people on medians, and a lot of them had part of their body hanging off the medians, some of them were passed out or sleeping," Steinmetz said. "So, I just brought it to council's attention that this is unsafe, and they needed to address it."
Steinmetz says that council hired an outside consulting firm, CBB Transportation, to conduct a pedestrian safety study. The report shows that different factors, such as speed limits, median width and daily traffic levels, contribute to the overall safety of a median.
"I think it's important to note that in their report, they said it's unsafe to loiter in medians of any type. So, areas in traffic should just be a temporary refuge for people who are waiting to cross," Steinmetz said.
However, other groups in mid-Missouri are arguing that the ordinance is not about increasing safety at all.
ACLU of Missouri, CoMo Mobile Aid Collective, Local Motion, and Missouri Jobs with Justice are partnering in an online campaign to encourage Columbia residents against the ordinance to make their voices heard at Monday's meeting.
In a Facebook post, the groups argue that the bill rather "threatens safety by targeting marginalized community members and criminalizing poverty, while failing to address the root causes," the post read.
But the memo reads that ordinances have been implemented in other cities with similar conditions, and that it aims to increase safety without focusing on any particular group.
"Some people say this is trying to ban panhandling. There's nothing in the ordinance that even says panhandling," Steinmetz said. "It's about safety, it's common sense."
Michael Carmody is a co-founder of Safer Streets for STL Region. He says the proposed ordinance in Columbia won't make the streets safer.
"Columbia knows what already works; lowering the speeds, improving intersections, adding safe crossings, pedestrian scale lighting," Carmody said. "When inconvenience, driver annoyance, aesthetic and nuisance concerns are a priority over safety, something is wrong with the ordinance."
McKenzie Ortiz with the Pedestrian Pride Project says the ordinance would make sidewalks more crowded for other walkers.
"What it does is push people off medians and into the same tight areas walkers already use," Ortiz said. "When those spaces get crowded, it becomes harder to move around, and you end up closer to traffic." Ortiz also said she's concerned that police might enforce the ordinance unfairly for people who have a low socioeconomic status or are of color.
"Somebody is going to get hurt. I don't want to be the driver who could hit a pedestrian. I can't even imagine how awful that would be," Steinmetz said. "And it's preventable."
The meeting will be held at the Daniel Boone City Building at 701 E. Broadway, starting at 7 p.m. on Monday.