Though the Notre Dame class of 2028 once again broke the mold of admissions selectivity, the road to the dome actually just got a little easier — that is, if you are a pedestrian or cyclist.
Notre Dame Avenue reopened to traffic at the end of Sept. after construction, slightly delayed from its original plan to be open by the Notre Dame football team’s first home game. The project is part of South Bend’s Northeast Neighborhood Plan, which also include improvements to South Bend Avenue and Hill Street.
According to the project’s principal planner Michael Divita, the project was jointly funded by hotel and motel tax revenues, the city of South Bend, Visit South Bend, Mishawaka and a contribution from Notre Dame.
“One of the goals of that plan was to create a more walkable, bikeable area, but more specifically, to link the University to downtown South Bend with a high quality bike path connection,” Divita said. “When you make those trips comfortable, you encourage more people who maybe in the past would say, ‘I'm just going to drive’ to instead say, ‘this is really easy and fun even to do that.’”
In the words of the project’s senior engineer, Charlotte Brach, the city has carried out “top to bottom reconstruction” of the street.
This includes water main replacement, separating a storm sewer, reworking curbs and implementing a protected bike lane with raised intersections.
That last feature, Divita explained, is now along the entire route between Notre Dame and South Bend.
“Rather than what a typical intersection is, where if you are a pedestrian, you would ramp down to the streets across the street, back up on the other side, here pedestrians go straight across, and the car is ramping up to the sidewalk level and then back down,” Divita said. “That lends to the priority of the people outside the motor vehicle, so it helps from a safety perspective, again giving pedestrians a little bit more presence there.”
Brach stressed the potential of improved safety between the University and downtown South Bend.
“One of the things that kind of blew my mind when we started this process, looking at the route, was learning that it's only a mile and a half,” Brach said. “Hearing that mile and a half [figure], that's an easy walk, but it doesn't didn't feel easy before just because there wasn't that safe space for pedestrians and cyclists to be. And now I will say I've noticed that it feels much shorter.”
