Norton set to begin safe route work

City of Norton

“A project years in the making is about to begin in Norton, Va., and will ultimately make walking from downtown to community facilities safer, city leaders said. The $4 million project will transform the sidewalk at the intersection of Park Avenue Northwest and Park Avenue Southeast on U.S. Highway 23. It started as a Safe Routes to School project, which is a federal program to help make walking to school safer, said Norton City Manager Fred Ramey. The sidewalk leads from downtown Norton to the city’s elementary and middle school complex as well as a community center and recreation fields.

And as officials started work on the sidewalk — which currently is narrow and separated from the road by a chain link fence — they discovered that the rocks in the hillside above were unstable. The area had been part of a surface mine, Ramey said. So the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy got involved and the two projects have merged, Ramey said. The DMME is paying $3 million of construction costs and the Virginia Department of Transportation is picking up $1 million of the tab, he added.

The sidewalk will expand from 4 to 10 feet wide. ‘That allows it to be a multi-use sidewalk,’ Ramey said. ‘Two bikes could pass on it.’ A wall will separate the sidewalk from the road, and a terraced wall system will stabilize the slope, he said.”

~Writes Allie Robinson Gibson of the Bristol Herald Courier

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