‘Cupcakes and Crosswalks’ spark safety conversation

MACON, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT)– Anthony Harris, a regular at Taste and See Coffee Shop in downtown Macon, said he enjoys coming and getting coffee but the traffic outside worries him.

“It’s become a sort of speedway, or racetrack,” Harris said. “There’s a lot of fast driving.”

Harris says he spends a lot of time in downtown Macon and believes walking at night poses a risk.

“Just at night time, a lot of times at night time when the bar scene starts kicking,” Harris said. “I haven’t really noticed it so much during the day. Most people seem to pretty cautious as far as on either end, the drivers and the pedestrians, but at night and definitely on weekends it’s a little more hectic.”

Executive Director of Bike Walk Macon Rachel Umana hopes to address the concerns of people like Harris through a series of events called Cupcakes and Crosswalks.

“You’re supposed to wait for pedestrians to cross the street but we still have cars just consistently going through because the crosswalk’s not elevated enough to let people know that there’s a crosswalk where you’re supposed to stop for pedestrians,” Umana said. “We have some ideas that we think help with that.”

Bike Walk will focus on the crosswalks at Poplar Street and Cherry Street this week. Cupcakes and Crosswalks came about as part of the Love Your Street project by Bike Walk.

The project hopes to empower Macon residents to improve their neighborhoods by providing funding and support for low-cost installations that will help solve pedestrian safety issues.

Bike Walk requests the community’s help with Cupcakes and Crosswalks to solve safety issues.

“There’s a bunch of different ideas and we don’t know the right one, but we want people to come out and say what you think would work best for improving the crosswalks in Macon and making them safer and more welcoming in downtown.”

The organization will ask the community to fill out a survey in exchange for a cupcake from Felicia’s Cake Factory.