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FDOT will study Busch crosswalks again after death of 17-year-old Chamberlain High student

 
Flowers, stuffed animals, notes and candles surround a telephone pole Wednesday morning near the site where 17-year-old Alexis Miranda was struck and killed Tuesday morning.
Flowers, stuffed animals, notes and candles surround a telephone pole Wednesday morning near the site where 17-year-old Alexis Miranda was struck and killed Tuesday morning.
Published Oct. 8, 2015

TAMPA — Twenty-four hours later, Chamberlain High students returned to school Wednesday, and local officials returned to the question they ask whenever a teen like Alexis Miranda dies walking to school on a busy road:

What, if anything, can we do to prevent this?

The Florida Department of Transportation said it was gearing up to study — for the second time in two years — whether Busch needs more crosswalks.

The state also will take a hard look at the center turn lane where the 17-year-old was killed: Are too many motorists trying to use it as a passing lane? If so, should FDOT consider a median there?

"We're taking it very seriously," FDOT spokeswoman Kris Carson said. "It's horrific what happened."

Hillsborough County commissioners on Wednesday called for safety recommendations they could pursue, perhaps in tandem with the city of Tampa. The City Council is likely to follow suit.

"We can't continue to have our young kids get killed trying to cross the street," City Council Chairman Frank Reddick said. "Every measure that the DOT can come up with needs to be done to secure the safety of these kids."

Yet others said there's only so much engineering can do.

"I don't know how we deal with that," Mayor Bob Buckhorn said. "It's obviously a tragedy. By the same token, folks need to understand that you can't walk in the middle of a five-lane highway.

"I see it all the time when I'm out there," the mayor said. "People darting in and out of traffic. Moms pushing strollers through the middle of, not the crosswalk, but the middle of the street."

Tampa police said Miranda died about 7:15 a.m. Tuesday after a Cadillac going west in the center turn lane struck her as she headed to school.

The Cadillac's driver, Belovedofgod Chiza Ndegwa, 33, has not been charged or cited. Tampa police plan to forward their investigation to the Hillsborough County State Attorney's Office, which will decide whether to file charges.

A couple of local officials said they were shocked to read that Miranda's family said her grandmother let her and her friends out of the car on Busch after getting stuck in traffic.

"Who drops their child off in the middle of a busy street?" County Commissioner Victor Crist said at Wednesday's meeting. "There's a level of personal responsibility that, no matter how much information we provide, we aren't going to fix."

The FDOT's study will look at pedestrian crash reports for Busch from about Florida to Armenia avenues, count the number of people trying to cross that section of Busch on foot and determine where they are crossing.

In 2013, after the death of an 8-year-old girl trying to cross Busch about 1½ miles away, the state looked at adding two "mid-block" crosswalks near Chamberlain.

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But what it found, Carson said, was that most Chamberlain students crossed Busch at the existing crosswalk at N Boulevard. And that, the state determined, was the safest place for them to cross.

However, local businesses said that students often ignore the crosswalks and walk across Busch in between waves of cars. A Tampa Bay Times reporter and photographer observed that same phenomenon when school got out Tuesday afternoon — hours after Miranda was killed — and again the next morning when school started Wednesday.

The new FDOT study will consider whether pedestrian activity has changed since then. If safety can be improved through physical changes, that will be recommended, Carson said.

Opportunities for education and enforcement also will be considered. Collecting the data could take a couple of weeks.

"What the study will show us is where are the pedestrians crossing," she said. "We don't want to put in a crosswalk just randomly."

One reason why not, officials said, is that if they put in too many crosswalks, and pedestrians don't use them, then motorists start ignoring them.

One idea that seems unlikely is a pedestrian overpass.

Overpasses like the one over Fowler Avenue between the Museum of Science and Industry and the University of South Florida can cost up to $1 million.

Moreover, they need a lot of right of way to accommodate ramps that comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. And, Carson said, building one doesn't guarantee that pedestrians won't try to cross the highway somewhere else nearby.

Typically, they are only recommended for spots where many pedestrians follow a clear path to cross the road from one spot to another.

On a highly commercial urban road like Busch, where pedestrians cross at many different spots, that single clear path is less likely to exist.

Times staff writers Caitlin Johnston and Katie Mettler and staff photographer Will Vragovic contributed to this report.