After parking his car in the Central Avenue lot, graduate student Clinton Watts opened his umbrella and began to walk to the University of Memphis.
Like so many before and after him, the 24-year-old Watts decided not to use the crosswalk and tried to jaywalk through Central. But he never made it to class.
It was May’s first heavy rain in 2004, and a fog had rolled over the campus. While paused in the middle lane, a Buick driven by a 79-year-old woman struck him at 35 miles an hour.
He died the following morning.
For the past two weeks, large-clawed machines ripped through the center lane, where Watts last stood. The construction has slowed the morning commute for many students, but these are the final steps in the safety project which Memphis city officials debated, rescheduled, funded and unfunded for more than a decade.
The Central Avenue Safety Initiative went from multi-million dollar ideas like duel bridges or pedestrian tunnels to where it is today, a median with trees, extended sidewalks and an iron fence which hopes to deter students from cutting across the street.
As early as the 90’s, many news outlets reported cars hitting jaywalking students on Central. In 1995 a 22-year-old foreign exchange student from Malaysia was killed while crossing the street.
Yet, it wasn’t until several more jaywalkers were hit by cars that city officials designated $50,000 for a study to see what could make the busy street safer in 1999.
The first plan was to build bridges over the busy avenue. Unlike the bridge planned for Southern Avenue, student fees were not going to be raised to build the central walkways.
The projects price was set at $3.28 million. The Tennessee Board of Regence set aside $1.2 million from federal grants for the project in 2002. The rest would have to come from the city.
Debate raged at city council for years. At a budget hearing, council members totally scraped the plans to build a bridge on Central due to the cost and the belief that students might not use them. Just a few days after this meeting in 2004, Watts was killed on Central.
Ten years after his death, the city’s plans to make Central safer are almost complete explained Chee Chew, senior design engineer for the city. He said the project will cost about $1.4 million. Just under a half million dollars will come from the city, while TBR and Tennessee Department of Transportation have set aside $1 million each.
Chew said the project should be complete by early December.
