The Town of Normal's engineering and public works director on Friday shared more details about temporary measures to address traffic safety coming soon to the Illinois State University campus.
Eight locations will see temporary measures implemented starting Sept. 3. These measures could help to calm traffic, improve crossing safety and limit accidents across the 1,180 acres that make up the ISU campus.
“We hope to have another big chunk of information come out for the campus community the last week in August before Labor Day,” said Ryan Otto, the town's engineering and public works chief. “And so we'll have details on exactly what's going to happen at each intersection as well as the exact timing.”
Project locations
Otto said "slip lane" closures at the intersection of College, School and Mulberry will be the first project that crews begin work on.
Currently, the slip lanes [or short, curved turn lanes] work both as a way for vehicle traffic to turn onto eastbound College Avenue off of School Street, or off of Mulberry Street onto northbound School Street right before Mulberry rejoins College Avenue. These slip lanes also have a crosswalk, and drivers seldom slow down enough for pedestrians attempting to cross.
“It really shortens the crosswalk almost by 50%,” Otto said about closing the slip lanes.
Curb extensions will be installed at the intersections of Beaufort Street with Fell and Broadway. These crosswalks are some of the widest on campus, with no stop signs for drivers on Beaufort at the Broadway intersection. This measure also shortens the crosswalk.
“The pedestrians will have more area that's safe to be in, and then they can cross traffic much quicker, so less time in traffic? Safer intersection,” said Otto. “It also provides visibility, because the pedestrian is further out into the intersection, and motorists can see them easier.”
The Constitution Trail crossing on Locust Street will also be altered. Long high-visibility plastic posts, known as traffic bollards, will be placed at the crosswalk to narrow the road slightly. This will encourage drivers to slow down more to make it through.
No projects are planned for West Campus, where Tri-Towers and most ISU Athletics facilities are.
“I think it is just a little less traversed by through-traffic. So College Avenue, if you're walking from the Tri-Towers under Main Street, you have the underpass, and so you don't really start getting into those heavy pedestrian, bicycle, vehicle conflicts until you get to College and University,” said Otto.
Unsafe pedestrian conditions
According to study findings, half of all trips beginning and ending within campus are made by people biking or walking. For 14,796 off-campus students in the 2024-25 school year, in addition to faculty and staff, there were 2,013 parking permit spaces available. Nearly 15,000 students living off-campus were enrolled last school year.
“There's not nearly that many parking spaces,” said Otto. “So it makes sense that people are parking on the outskirts of campus and then walking to their destination.”
There has been a steady increase in the rate of crashes since 2020 on campus, with 6% of the crashes involving either a pedestrian or cyclist, while elsewhere in McLean County and in the State of Illinois the rate is 2%.
While the rate drops to 4% when not including cyclists, pedestrians are involved in 57% of crashes with a fatality or severe injury sustained. This makes them 40 times as likely as motorists to be severely injured or killed if involved in a crash on campus.
Implementation
Town staff plans to allow for further community feedback as the temporary projects are active. Staff will also be observing how traffic flows in these areas.
“We plan to have some QR codes on the sidewalk near these intersections,” said Otto. “They can scan the QR code, give their input on what they're seeing, how they're experiencing it. We definitely want to hear from people what their experience is while these pilot projects are in place.”
“Our hope is that we learn how these work so we can apply those lessons to other intersections throughout the community. We're looking at these as a very temporary basis. Some may last.”
