New Pedestrian Walkway along Collins St in Bethany
Posted by Leslie Kopp & Christi Arndt on Friday, July 12th, 2024 at 12:52pm
Credit to: Coastal Point, Sam Sandler
A new pedestrian pathway was recently constructed in Bethany Beach along Collins Street, a portion of Kent Avenue and Wellington Parkway. While the project took approximately three months to be completed, many years of Bethany Beach Town Council discussions and subsequent planning were required to bring this new passageway for pedestrians and cyclists to life.
Bethany Beach Town Council Member Mickey Hinman is a strong advocate of the recently completed project, and he says this is just one of many steps he and other members of the town council hope will improve overall pedestrian safety in Bethany.
The recent improvements to the corridor allow cyclists and pedestrians to be separated from traffic, which eliminates a large percentage of risk that is present when cars share roadways with them. The heavily traveled corridor was continually putting cyclists and pedestrians at risk, as they often found themselves in near-miss situations with cars traveling along the narrow road.
According to Hinman, who is on the Town’s Bicycle & Pedestrian Safety Committee, the new path is a result of six to seven years of discussions within the town council, in which close calls were mentioned on numerous occasions.
Hinman said the new and improved passageway “services about somewhere between 33 to 40 percent of all Bethany Beach proper, who could use that as their primary route to the beach, including Bethany West, Turtle Walk and homes on Collins and homes near the library on Kent Avenue. That is a lot of people trying to get to the beach who would prefer to walk on that pathway instead of on Route 26.”
“This was the most used walkway that did not have a pedestrian walkway associated with it in the whole town,” he said. “We had a couple outside studies over the past 15 years, with outside consultants that have said, given the number of people going up and down that corridor, you need something, which becomes the question of what is a plausible solution.”
When the walkway was originally approved a few years ago, it was criticized for only improving pedestrian safety on Collins Street, not on Kent Avenue and on half of Wellington Parkway. Hinman said, “At that point, it was only going to be 5 feet wide and on Collins Street. Now, you have this continuous way to give people two options of how to get to the beach.”
“That was the real driver — large numbers of people without a pathway, where there was a free-for-all between cars and people, which scared many people after seeing many near-misses between cars and people, especially during the summer season,” Hinman said. “We wanted to give people a safer approach to get to the beach that lowered the level of risk, which is the goal in the world of safety.”
Recently, with the Fourth of July holiday, the pathway was heavily utilized by individuals walking to the various events in downtown Bethany.
“I walked there and back to Wellington with hundreds and hundreds of other people,” Hinman said. “I was with my family, talking on the walk, and all of the sudden I looked back and realized just how many people were on the new path. That’s the intent, and there’s no more of a success story of what we were able to achieve than that night.”
To those who think pedestrians are already safe and that additional infrastructure is not required to better protect walkers and bikers, Hinman said, “We are always limited by space, as this is not a new community that we are building from scratch. But at the end of the day, if we have people who are using roads for bikes or for walking, they deserve due consideration if there are near-misses and close calls on those streets, as those are the leading indicators that something worse could happen. We do not want to be in a situation where we sit back and wish we had done something.
“We must identify our priorities and make a justifiable decision,” he said, noting also the improvement of Route 26 to create the center turn lane, sidewalks, bike lanes and better drainage, “which achieved many things in one project similar to the Collins Street project.”
Over the course of the following years, Hinman said, he hopes to continue with other initiatives to help increase the safety of every pedestrian in Bethany Beach. He said he hopes to work with other municipalities to learn what is working well in their communities and what can be modified to protect individuals on the roads.
In the near future, this summer, an additional flashing crosswalk will be installed by DelDOT on Route 1 at Ashwood Street, to allow people from Bethany Proper to more safely cross the road to reach the beach.
Hinman is also hoping to ensure that traffic flow is also optimized. By finding a balance, he said, everyone is kept safe, which is his ultimate goal. He added that periods of discussion, such as the meetings that led to the Collins Street passageway, are crucial “to getting as many people in the community involved to actually help us chart our path for what are the key things we want to work on in 2025 and beyond.”
With the passageway project, Hinman noted, residents on Collins worked with the Town to ensure that the new walkway would not disrupt the remediation of water after storms.
“The pervious paving allowed the water to remediate better, which made the project a little bit different,” he said, “but it was a great upgrade and suggestion from the residents on Collins.”
Hinman asked community members to more frequently share their opinions and thoughts on projects such as these.
“We received a lot of feedback at the beginning of that project, but I would love to solicit more feedback and to hear what people like and do not like about the corridor.”
He said other projects are already being planned to further protect pedestrians.
“Council Member Theresa Keil and I are leading the committee for bicycle and pedestrian safety, and we have a whole series of things that we are working on, both this year and where we want to go moving forward in the future, with other recommendations and thoughts.”
Now that the new corridor project is completed, Hinman said, “I want to give a lot of credit to the homes on Collins, Kent and Wellington that were impacted by this big-time construction project. It was a significant inconvenience to people that live on those streets, and people have every right to be frustrated by the project.
“As a community member, I want to thank all of those people who made those sacrifices over that time, as it allowed us to get to where we are now. I firmly believe we came out in a much better spot for the community.”
Hinman said, “Residents, owners and renters should all become more actively involved in sharing their ideas and, ultimately, providing an environment that lowers the level of risk for pedestrians and others.
“The real key to that is finding ways to get people involved and engaged with programs like WAVE,” he said, referencing the Town’s pedestrian safety initiative that encourages people to Wait/Watch, Assess, Verify and Engage/Enter when using a crosswalk, “as we are trying to get people to think about the decisions they make when being pedestrians and driving in their cars.” By creating more informational videos and spreading awareness of how to stay safe, Hinman said, he hopes that the Town can ultimately make Bethany Beach safer for everyone.
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