Crossing new dimensions of school safety

OTTAWA — The busy street in front of Ottawa's Sts. Peter & Paul Catholic School is safer for students to cross now, as a 3D crosswalk appears to float above the Locust Street pavement in front of the school buildings, giving drivers more reason to tap their brakes. The crosswalk functions as an optical illusion, appearing to drivers as if there is an impediment in the roadway. The goal is to make drivers more cautious as they approach the crossing. In an additional benefit, the making of the new crosswalk became part of what educators call a cross-curricular lesson. It covered civics, government, writing, speech, math and design drawing. It all started with a third-grade class reading an article last spring about 3D crosswalks in that venerable publication, Scholastic News. It hit home for the students and their teacher, Missy Bellman. "You always worry about the kids' safety, having to cross the road so many times a day," Bellman said. "We just thought, 'This is something our school really needs to do to help keep our students safe.'" "The kids notice that people drive kind of fast through here throughout the day," said Gwen Closson, a sixth-grade teacher. Just east of the heart of downtown, Locust Street links Main Street with Walmart, other businesses and Ottawa-Glandorf High School. "It is very heavily traveled," Bellman said. Bellman and her class approached their principal, Connie Niese, who supported the idea. The next step was going to city hall. It was all perfect timing: The students were learning about local government and were going to be taking tours of local government offices. Their 3D crosswalk idea would enable the rubber to really hit the road. "So, we met the mayor, had a little speech written up that we presented while we were there," Bellman said. "It's a way for them to learn about local government in action and how it all works, steps you have to take to get something to happen." Mayor J. Dean Meyer approved the project, with the village paying for the paint. "Then we passed it off to the older students in our school to help figure out all of the math behind it, how you do all the shadowing and all of that," Bellman said. The plan was for junior high math students to draw diagrams and develop measurements for the crosswalk. Then the coronavirus pandemic hit, closing school and putting the project on hold. But it was a great idea, and it would have been a shame for all the lessons to not come to fruition. Niese and the teachers decided to enlist the help of high schoolers who had graduated from Sts. Peter and Paul School. They drew diagrams and developed measurements for the crosswalk. Then came the work of creating the 3D effect on the pavement. "That took a lot of measuring and chalk lines," Closson said. From a point 16 feet out from the crosswalk, chalk lines were drawn to the corners of white blocks painted on the pavement. Those chalk lines determined the angles to paint gray markings and then black shadows. Together the white, gray and black painted markings create the three-dimensional visual effect for motorists. The painting of the pavement was done by teachers and former students.