A precious, irreplaceable little girl was struck and killed by a motor vehicle yesterday morning in Texas City as she waited for her school bus to arrive.
Christina Lopez, age 11, photo screengrabbed from this Galveston County Daily News article. |
The road was narrow and unimproved, with no sidewalk.
Municipal Shame", I showed a dash cam screengrab of a young boy who d*mned-near fell under the wheels of my own car because his foot slipped off the curb as he was walking. There was no sidewalk available at this densely-populated location in the City of Webster, and he was doing the best he could to walk in the narrow strip of grass between the street and this adjacent private property - but it almost cost him his life, and here once again is my memorable photo of that event:
I still don't have an answer to who the hell in League City approved the plans for the Sportsplex WITHOUT a sidewalk in front of it to connect with the other sidewalks that already exist in front of Star Toyota and also re-commencing at West Walker. How F-ing difficult is it to require sidewalks?! This is NEW CONSTRUCTION - this should have been a no-brainer. Which one of our municipal wizards was asleep at the approvals wheel when this particular development design was rubber-stamped? |
Wrap your head around this, now: Those people come from other neighborhoods so that they can avail themselves of our one isolated sidewalk segment which I nicknamed Centerpointe's "Bridge to Nowhere".
A week and a half ago, military personnel apparently asleep at the wheel failed to stop a Taliban attack that cost American taxpayers $200 million. We as a country effectively p*ss away that kind of money in the blink of an eye, and yet we can never seem to find the kind of funds that would provide the most basic public infrastructure - simple sidewalks - for our little children and adults. It *disgusts* me.
Those of you who are reading this who hold political positions: Please take note of what I'm saying and the importance of it, because the decisions you make today could very well indirectly factor into the death of a child tomorrow, unless those decisions are well made. This is not a joke or a hypothetical scenario. Galveston County residents are needlessly put at risk of their lives for lack of basic infrastructure such as sidewalks in residential areas. They die because, without sidewalks, they have to share the road with motor vehicles and, in a conflict for space, the motor vehicles always win. It's not right.
My heart goes out to the Lopez family for their incalculable loss. I'm the mother of a daughter just a few years older than Christina was. My daughter, too, takes a school bus each day. My daughter has access to sidewalks now that we live in Centerpointe, a sidewalk available for her and the other subdivision children as they wait for their bus, but that was not at all the case when we lived in Old Town League City. When we lived in Old Town, she waited on the open unprotected street pavement just as Christina did yesterday. What happened to Christina yesterday is not right. For the sake of our people, I hope we can each contribute something to fixing those inexcusable underlying infrastructure conditions that so obviously contributed to her unthinkable death.
Screengrab from this post in which I talked about the phenomenally high number of people killed in our area in traffic events. The map shows an excerpt from the ITO database of traffic fatalities, 2001-2009. The blue ones are pedestrians. |
Thank you for including and thinking of my daughter. We have full intentions of attending the school districts open forum demanding the funds to provide safe bus stops for our school bus stops. If Texas City can have the funds to redo 6th st and provide safe covered bus stops for public transit why not invest in our children's safety?
ReplyDeleteGodspeed to you and your family, Mrs. Lopez. Christina will remain in the hearts and prayers of countless people. Let's hope some of them are local politicians who can actually help make something happen to fix these unsafe conditions.
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