After years of near misses and student complaints, Drake University and the City of Des Moines are taking major steps to improve pedestrian safety along Forest Avenue, where fast traffic and limited crosswalks have long put students at risk.
The project, set to roll out over the next 18 months, will narrow the roadway, add new crosswalks near student parking lots and introduce flashing pedestrian signals similar to those on University Avenue.
Scott Law, Drake’s executive director of public safety and operations, said the changes aim to slow speeding drivers, improve visibility and make it safer for students and visitors to move between campus buildings.
“We’re going to, similar to what’s on University Avenue, reduce the Forest Avenue drive from 31st Street to 24th Street,” said Law. “We’re going to reduce that to three lanes of traffic, so one lane in each direction and a turning lane down the middle. There’s going to be some work done to the crosswalks we have.”
Drake’s facilities team has been addressing another concern near Forest Avenue — the visible steam coming from underground vents and escaping onto campus.
Kevin Moran, executive director of facilities planning and management, said in an email that the heat coming from the steam from the manholes poses the largest safety concern. Maintenance for the steam vents is regularly scheduled for break times to cause the least disruptions to campus operations.
“We do have a steam shutdown scheduled for Thanksgiving week,” Law said. “A lot of work was done this summer in conjunction with the Olmsted project by our facilities team to help prepare some of the places we have steam leaks on campus, and it has greatly reduced it, but they need one or two additional valves put in, so that work is going to be done over Thanksgiving break. And the hope is that that will solve the problems that we’re still seeing.”
At the beginning of the fall semester, Scott Law notified the Drake community in an email that parking along Forest Avenue was no longer permitted. This change caused some students to purchase parking passes to utilize Lot 33, located across the street from the first-year dorms.
The crosswalk is not directly adjacent to the parking lot and many pedestrians cross Forest Avenue at their earliest convenience.
“Pedestrians are a greater issue on that road, especially at night,” said Katie Tschirren, a junior who parks in Lot 33 to walk to classes. “Because I do stress about hitting somebody because there is little visibility and people walking out willy-nilly.”
