Advocates for safer streets are inviting community members to walk, skate, bike or roll during the Uptown Walk Around on March 20th to show support for safer streets in the neighborhoods surrounding the University of Cincinnati (UC).
The Uptown Walk Around event will start at 4 p.m. at Sigma Sigma Commons on UC’s main campus (West University Avenue). Participants will be greeted by organizers, as well as other community leaders, who will lead them along an approximately 2-mile route through and around campus to a rally point in front of University Pavilion (2618 University Circle). Prior to the walk Councilmember Mark Jeffreys and University of Cincinnati Student Body President Isaac Smitherman will speak briefly. Participants in the Uptown Walk Around event will have crossing guard volunteers at each intersection will help pedestrians navigate the route. Participants are encouraged to make and bring signs indicating what safer streets would mean to them.
The route includes crosswalks across Martin Luther King Drive and Jefferson Avenue – the sites where UC employee Patrick Bolton and UC freshman Cayden Turner were struck and killed as pedestrians in traffic crashes in February 2023 and September 2022, respectively. Cincinnati as a whole saw 270 pedestrian-involved traffic crashes in 2022.
