From The Eudora News:

In an effort to see more sidewalks throughout Eudora, officials from Eudora USD 491, the city of Eudora, citizens of Eudora and Safe Kids Douglas County have formed the Eudora Pedestrian Safety Committee.

The group first met early in the spring and met again May 23 to discuss grant applications for the areas of Eudora that most need sidewalks.

The committee would like to one day see a safe path for students to go over Kansas Highway 10 to the high school and middle school, but the construction of such a bridge currently is cost prohibitive. Dreese also said it would be difficult just to coordinate the required cooperation between the many organizations both private and public that would build the bridge.

Eudora Schools Interim Superintendent of Schools Don Grosdidier said it also would be unwise to build sidewalks along Church Street until there was a safer way for students to cross K-10.

“Until that bridge situation is taken care of, it’s not real feasible to put the sidewalks in there because you’re encouraging more kids to walk and it’s not really a safe place to walk and cross there,” he said.

After the May 23 meeting, the committee decided to pursue grant money that would go toward the installation of sidewalks along Elm Street between NES and the Eudora Community Center.

“We want to be as smart about this as possible and do what we can with the money we have,” Dreese said. “Our idea now is to get everybody together in Eudora and not only deal from a safety perspective, which is what most of this grant money is for, but also from a health and recreation perspective. The idea is that you’ve got a growing little town, so you plan ahead.”

Oct. 8 is International Walk to School Day for students in kindergarten through second grade, and the committee plans on having a communitywide summit sometime that month.

“We don’t want to just have a meeting, we want to make things happen and move forward,” Dreese said.

Read more from The Eudora News: Pedestrian safety committee formed