It's the five o'clock rush on Wilkinson Boulevard in west Charlotte. A bus pulls up to a stop near Remount Road, and a woman steps off carrying a plastic bag with some leftover lunch.
"I'm going home. I just got off work," she says.
She works at the airport and only gave her first name — Denise. She's about to make the most dangerous part of her daily commute: crossing seven lanes of traffic to her home in the Camp Greene neighborhood.
She stands on the edge of the sidewalk, scanning the traffic. There's no crosswalk at the bus stop. Finally, she sees her chance.
"Okay, it's time to cross the street — before the traffic comes!" she says with a nervous laugh. "I have to do this every day. I'm so scared of this road."
She hurries across four lanes, stops on the small concrete median, then crosses three more lanes to the other side.
"When it's raining, it's even worse, because you can hardly see, and people can't see you jogging out in the street," she says.
She was almost hit twice, once by a driver she was certain had seen her.
"I mean the guy looked at me and saw me crossing," she says, "I'm like didn't you see me?"
Her concerns are well-founded. A person was killed crossing this stretch of Wilkinson Boulevard in 2016, and another was seriously injured in 2019.
Both were hit within 400 yards of the bus stop, which is across the street from a neighborhood, a restaurant and a Dairy Queen, and down the street from a liquor store and a barbecue joint.
It's one of three bus stops in west Charlotte where a combined 10 pedestrians have been killed or seriously injured in nearby wrecks since 2016.
Balancing pedestrian and driver needs
Angela Berry is the city of Charlotte's traffic safety manager, and said she was aware of the problem.
"I actually self-appointed myself to CATS' bus stop committee for this very reason," she said. "I kept finding they were putting bus stop pairs in on thoroughfares like Wilkinson but not providing any infrastructure for the pedestrians to get across the street safely."
She said she was working to make Wilkinson Boulevard safer for pedestrians, but stated there were challenges. For instance, Wilkinson Boulevard, like many major arteries in Charlotte, is a state-maintained road.
"So we have to get the state to agree to install new infrastructure," Berry said.
That includes new pedestrian crosswalks or wider medians. Berry said the city and state also want to balance pedestrian needs with the need to keep traffic flowing.
"And trying to balance those two needs is a really challenging thing here at CDOT and one that I literally wrestle with every day," she said.
She's determined to find solutions, because residents along Wilkinson Boulevard and in the city's six Corridors of Opportunity are more likely to lack access to a car and to depend on the bus, walking or biking.
In addition, many of the city's high-injury roads — where serious crashes are concentrated — overlap with the Corridors of Opportunity, including stretches of Freedom, Wilkinson, Beatties Ford Road, Central Avenue and Albemarle Road.
5 pedestrians hit near Freedom Drive intersection
One of the deadliest spots for pedestrians in west Charlotte is near a pair of bus stops a few miles north on Freedom Drive.
These stops are separated by nine lanes of traffic, about 80 yards from where Freedom Drive intersects Ashley and Tuckaseegee Road.
Three pedestrians have been killed between the bus stops and two seriously injured at the intersection. That fact doesn’t surprise Frederick Washington.
"I've known two guys that have lost their life right here," he said.
Washington is homeless. He said the two men he knew were panhandlers trying to cross between the stops. There's a crosswalk half a block away at the intersection, but he said many people cross here because it's quicker to the fast food place or the shopping center behind the two stops.
He pointed to a man a few feet away.
"See what he's trying to do? He's trying to go across, but he's not going to use the walkway. The walkway's right there. But — see how he's running? That's how it happens. They run into traffic," he said.
Meg Fencil, a road safety advocate with Sustain Charlotte, said this is human nature.
"Human nature says there’s a bus stop here, there’s a shopping center here, there’s a Wendy’s across the road, there’s homes over there. Most people will take the shortest route between their point A and point B, and especially if the weather’s bad, if it’s really hot or really cold, right? We’re all in a hurry to get where we need to go," she said.
Freedom Drive is also a state-maintained road, just like Wilkinson Boulevard, meaning any changes would need state approval. Fencil thought changes were needed.
"Everyone certainly has a responsibility to interact safely with the street, but we also need to consider people may not know how to be safe on the streets, and so let’s really design with safety as the priority," she said.
Fencil thought the road could have a wider median or fewer lanes. Angela Berry thought relocating the bus stops could help, though doing so might require changes to the bus route.
After a young girl was killed, a crosswalk was installed on West Boulevard.
In the past, the state has shown willingness to improve pedestrian safety on state-maintained roads — like on West Boulevard near a pair of bus stops next to the Reid Park neighborhood.
The city installed a pedestrian crossing signal next to the stops in July 2022. That's after two pedestrians were seriously injured and another killed crossing the street.
Coco Lenell works at the shopping center across from the bus stops. She remembered when a young girl was killed crossing the road with her little sister.
"The younger sister made it across, but the little girl — which they both lived in the corner house — the little girl got hit by an SUV. She was eleven years old," she said.
After that crash, Lenell said neighbors petitioned for a pedestrian crossing, and now, Lenell sees older adults and families using the crosswalk with flashing lights, as well as neighborhood kids getting off the school bus.
"After the kids get off, they'll walk up, press the button, and come over here and get snacks and stuff," she said.
Lenell said she was glad the pedestrian crossing was installed, and hoped it would prevent future tragedies.
"I'm grateful for it, and I just pray that everybody makes up in their mind to use that and think of their own safety," she said.
The city has said that pedestrian improvements will be a big part of its investment in the six Corridors of Opportunity. A spokesperson said more than half of all corridor projects funded by $10 million in bonds will include pedestrian enhancements.
Some of those projects are underway. Many more will come over the next five years of the initiative.
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