Pedestrians being hit on streets with no sidewalks in Cape Coral

Pedestrians are getting hit, hurt and often killed by drivers in Cape Coral.

A man was hit Thursday morning on NW 1st Terrace near Pine Island Road and Santa Barbara Boulevard. In the neighborhoods where this continues to happen, there are no sidewalks.

If you want to walk in many Cape Coral neighborhoods, there is no place to go but onto the street or someone else’s yard. So walking your dog or just taking a walk alone can be dangerous.

Persides Zambrano is the city’s public works planning manager. She said the city is working to add more sidewalks but it won’t happen all over the city right away. The city’s long-term goal is to add sidewalks with pedestrian and bicycle facilities to major roads in the next 20 years.

“Most recently, the focus for council has been to retrofit the roadways leading to schools to make them safer,” Zambrano explained.

Cape Coral has added sidewalks in areas south of Pine Island Road for the last five to six years. Zambrano said the city gets most of its funding from grants, and those are hard to come by.

“The process is getting more competitive every year because other jurisdictions also have their needs,” Zambrano said. “We’re competing for very limited funding.”

Putting in a sidewalk may look like it’s simple, but it’s incredibly expensive – $300,000 per mile to be exact. That’s just for one side of the road.

“If funding wasn’t an issue, we would do everything at once,” Zambrano said. “But that’s not the case at this time.”

Mario Bassabera didn’t see the crash on NW 1st Terrace Thursday, but he heard the aftermath.

“The screaming, my wife hear (sic). I go outside and see, we see the neighbor, we see Louis, the neighbor, on the floor bleeding,” Bassabera said.

A neighbor was hit by a car while walking his dog.

“In this moment I can only pay attention to Louis and call for the 911,” Bassabera said.

Investigators who worked the scene are trying to determine what caused the crash, and neighbors believe the lack of sidewalks is at least partly to blame.