It’s not often you can say a sidewalk project is a pressing matter, but along Gardere Lane, it’s life or death. There have been several pedestrian and bicyclist deaths on the 1.5-mile stretch of road in recent years. It has no sidewalks and is mostly shoulderless and sandwiched between steep ditches.
It also cuts through a neighborhood lined with rows of low-income housing. While there aren’t numbers to show how many residents here own cars, a mere drive down Gardere will show you the dirt footpath trodden into the grass alongside the road over the years.
Reginald Brown says they look like “goat trails.” He’s an organizer for the Gardere Initiative, which has amplified the need for sidewalks in the neighborhood. “It’s important for the city-parish to show that we care about the residents’ welfare by providing a safe path to walk along,” Brown says.
In 2015, leaders secured local funds to add sidewalks, a $1.3 million project. After a lengthy design process, the consulting group working on the project with DOTD says it could break ground early next year.
Civil Solutions Consulting Group’s Kahli Cohran says it will include a 5-foot-wide sidewalk on Gardere’s south side and a pedestrian and bike path on part of the north side.
Future phases the city might consider would connect the paths to the levee bike path near L’Auberge Casino & Hotel in one direction and up to Highland Road in the other direction, Cohran says.
2. Bike and pedestrian path to connect downtown and North Baton Rouge
BREC has long been working toward tying together all the disconnected bike and pedestrian paths around the city. It announced in August a $3.7 million federal grant that will help create a multi-use path from Memorial Stadium Sports Complex to the Scotlandville Parkway Park in the first phase and the Downtown Greenway in the second phase, though a timeline was not announced.
“This is a real game-changer and eventually, this trail will make it possible for residents to go between Southern University and LSU on their bicycles or on foot,” BREC Superintendent Carolyn McKnight said in a prepared statement.
3. Subdivision stops access to a cut-through sidewalk
The Stanford Oaks Property Owners Association voted in June to close off public access to a sidewalk that cuts through its gated subdivision. The sidewalk is technically on private property but had been open to pedestrians since the subdivision was developed in 2011, providing residents in the Southdowns neighborhood behind it an easy shortcut to the LSU lakes across Stanford Avenue.
The decision upset many nearby residents. In a written statement reported in Daily Report in July, the association said it made its decision based on “criminal activity and nuisance concerns.”
Perhaps it’s the result of poor planning over the years that Whitehaven Street in Southdowns, which would otherwise provide a mile-long straight shot to the LSU lakes, now ends at a gated subdivision with only 800 more feet left to reach the popular greenspace.
Still, the city-parish planning department conceded to Daily Report the subdivision is acting within its rights. “There is nothing I can do,” Planning Director Frank Duke said. “If they don’t want people walking on their property, they’ve got a right to tell them no.”
This article was originally published in the September 2017 issue of 225 Magazine.
