Story of a visually impaired leader

After almost being struck by a car while crossing Glendale Boulevard at Calumet Avenue last spring, Julia Young wondered if there is a safer way for the visually impaired to cross busy intersections.Young, a retired special education teacher, frequently walks to Walgreens and to the nearby bank with her greyhound Suzy. Legally blind as a result of macular degeneration, Young can't see what color the traffic signals are or rely on the normal crosswalk signals used by sighted people.

While in San Francisco visiting a cousin recently, Young was waiting to cross a street when she heard an odd warbling sound. She asked her cousin what caused it and was told it was an audio signal to let the visually impaired know when to cross the street. Young thought it would be wonderful if Valparaiso had something like that.Back home, she called the county courthouse and asked who she should talk to about her suggestion. They referred her to Stuart Summers, executive director of the city's Redevelopment Commission.

She called him at 8 a.m. recently, and Summers asked if he could call her back in a few minutes."He called back, and I was so impressed," she said. "I told him about the warblers, and he said it sounded like a wonderful idea and to let him put it in front of the commission. I figured that would be the end of that."The idea was presented to both the city's Traffic and Safety Committee and the commission. The committee wasn't ready to make it a citywide policy just yet, but the commission quickly voted 5 to 0 last week to include the warblers on all their intersection projects. Fortunately for Young and others like her, the commission has a lot of intersection projects.

Most of the road reconstruction work being done in Valparaiso these days is being done by the commission. It's downtown streetscape project is improving all the intersections on Lincolnway from Napoleon Street to Morgan Boulevard. The commission also is reconstructing Lincolnway from Roosevelt Road east and building Vale Park Way between Campbell and Valparaiso streets.The warblers cost about $350 each and eight are needed for each intersection.

With the cost of new signals for an intersection starting at about $100,000, the commission decided the $2,800 for the warblers was a small price to pay, literally, to help the visually impaired. The commission also will look at putting them in intersections already completed.The Calumet and Glendale intersection and the Campbell and Bullseye Lake Road intersection were done last fall, but they were funded by the city using economic development income tax revenue.

City Engineering Director David Pilz said the commission would have to look into whether it is willing to fund the warblers for those intersections too.The Traffic and Safety Committee balked at requiring them for all intersections because of the cost of retrofitting the systems and because of the potential liability it would create if some intersections are done and others aren't. Pilz said the Indiana Department of Transportation has similar concerns.