MARIETTA, Ga. — Crews are installing a new crosswalk near a Cobb County elementary school, following safety concerns from parents.
Channel 2 Cobb County Bureau Chief Michele Newell was in Marietta, where the old crosswalk students used was further away from the school.
Parents walk their children up a hill to safely cross the street, but have had to walk down the hill to get to Westside Elementary School.
Concerned about safety, parents took the issue to the Marietta city government.
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Months later, crews are making sure a street with over 5,000 drivers using it daily is still safe for students to cross.
“The kids walk down this sidewalk, so we put the crosswalk here,” Marietta Public Works Director Mark Rice told Channel 2 Action News, showing the section of Polk Street where the work was being done. “This is the closest, safest place we could get it.”
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The crews are working on it now to make sure everything is ready before the school year starts after summer break.
Part of the new crosswalk includes a more modernized approach to stopping drivers in the road to make sure students can cross.
“It won’t just be the signs on the side of the road that will light up and flash, they’ll actually be lighting in the road itself that will also flash to get the drivers’ attention,” Rice said.
Those lights were installed Thursday. Rice said there are 14 different lights, mostly built into the ground, making it more advanced than traditional crosswalks.
“It’s fairly new, the very first one that we understood that was installed in the area was at the middle school,” Rice said. “The company actually had to bring in the factory reps to help everyone get it installed and wired properly.”
The City of Marietta spent about $143,000 on the crosswalk. There’s another one like it at Wellstar.
Work on the crosswalk at Westside Elementary is expected to wrap up sometime next week.
Polk Street will reopen Saturday, but a detour is in place to help drivers go around it in the meantime.
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