Pedestrian safety a concern in Fenwick Island as town sees its busiest summer in decades

Fenwick Island is focusing on ways to increase pedestrian safety at crosswalks as the town experiences the busiest summer season in recent history.

Fenwick Island Mayor Gene Langan spoke with WGMD’s Mike Bradley, stressing the need for improvements at crosswalks.

“This is the busiest summer I’ve ever seen,” said Mayor Langan. “We’ve been down here 34 summers and I have never seen this many people. We desperately need to do something with our crosswalks across Route 1.”

One of the most dangerous crosswalk intersections in Fenwick Island is the one found at Bayard Street, according to Mayor Langan, who explained the dangers pedestrians face at that specific location while navigating their way across the highway.

While both North-and-Southbound traffic on Route 1 poses a risk in its own right, vehicles making U-turns, and narrow medians also jeopardize the safety of pedestrians at that particular intersection.

“You come across and what you face is traffic on Route 1 going north and south, but you also face people doing U-turns that are heading north and doing a U-turn south,” Mayor Langan stressed. “A person walks across there and there’s no safe landing place for them in the median other than to hold onto a fence or a sign and we have to fix that, we really do.”

Mayor Langan vowed to increase safety at all crosswalks throughout Fenwick Island before the start of next year’s summer season, saying it was one of the tasks he ran on during the recent municipal election.

“We’ve got to move forward with doing something,” Mayor Langan said. “Even if we have to pay for some of it ourselves, we’re going to do it.”

At Fenwick Island’s Town Council meeting on Friday, August 23 officials passed a measure to increase signage at crosswalks throughout the beach town to make motorists aware of high pedestrian traffic in an effort to increase safety.