If you own a car on campus, you have probably experienced the terror of driving on and around campus after dark on a weekend. Driving in Mansfield is like playing a much less entertaining version of Mario Kart, where instead of dodging bananas and shells, you’re dodging inebriated young adults on a winding and pitch-black road.
While navigating these roads is nerve-wracking for drivers, the conditions are even more precarious for the students walking alongside them. When the police bust off-campus parties, it creates a massive wave of students walking on the poorly lit outskirts of campus. Ride shares on Uber or Lyft are often unavailable or prohibitively expensive due to the influx of requests, and students are forced to wander down the shoulder-less roads of Mansfield to find a spot where they can be picked up.
While it would be easy to blame the students who drink before walking around campus and run across the road, the real problem is that the roads surrounding the University of Connecticut are ill-equipped to handle the pedestrian traffic that comes with being a college town. Mansfield and Connecticut must prioritize effective lighting and strategically placed sidewalks to protect students and drivers alike.
In the past three years, UConn and the Town of Mansfield have proposed and secured funding for pedestrian and cyclist safety projects, including projects on the three main roads that lead into campus: South Eagleville and the Four Corners intersection of Route 195, which are owned and managed by the Connecticut Department of Transportation and Discovery Drive which is owned by UConn. The South Eagleville improvements came in the wake of a pedestrian fatality in 2021, but weren’t completed until 2025.
While I recognize that gathering funding without frustrating taxpayers is difficult for Connecticut’s representatives, UConn pedestrians and drivers cannot wait years for projects to be started and completed. Storrs and the surrounding area already represent a hotspot in crash data.
As UConn’s population continues to increase, and as off-campus housing demand increases, more pedestrians will rely on measures to keep them safe. It makes no sense to wait for a tragedy to start construction. One pedestrian injured or dead is one too many.
In addition to the multi-use path planned for Route 195 at Four Corners, pedestrians would benefit from increased lighting on Hunting Lodge Road around the intersection with North Eagleville, which is owned by the Town of Mansfield. Several fraternity houses line this road, and in my experience, students and members tend to gather there at night.
Additionally, Ubers are frequently called to the location, creating a situation ripe for disaster. The situation in this area is so dire that I am aware of some fraternities that assign risk management team members to stand in the driveway and prevent students from wandering into the road.
Simply adding streetlights and crosswalks is not enough. During the night and on poorly lit roads, uncontrolled crosswalks (crosswalks without traffic control devices) are hidden behind hills and are haphazardly placed in non-intersection areas, particularly on Route 195 and North Eagleville Road.
According to the United States Department of Transportation, these types of crosswalks represent 72% of pedestrian fatalities. To follow the Federal Highway Administration recommendations and better protect students, UConn should evaluate these existing crosswalks for additions like flashing lights to indicate use and pedestrian refuge islands. Crosswalks are only useful when drivers know that they exist.
UConn, CTDOT and the Town of Mansfield have already identified the need for increased pedestrian safety and more pedestrian infrastructure, but student safety is not something that can wait.
The voices of students and residents should be heard in prioritizing construction and funds, so that road owners can implement changes in a timely manner. Whether students are walking home from a party or a late-night study session, they deserve to make it home safely, and drivers deserve to navigate at night without fearing that someone will appear in their headlights.