ALBANY, Ga. (WALB) — Two bicyclists have died in separate crashes in Albany over the past month, prompting new questions about whether the city needs more sidewalks and safer crossings along its busiest roads.

A 40-year-old man died Aug. 18 after he rode into the path of a southbound vehicle in the 600 block of North Westover Boulevard, police said. On July 19, nearly a month earlier, another victim died and was struck by multiple vehicles near West Oakridge Drive and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard intersection.

The Aug. 18 crash happened along a stretch of North Westover Boulevard that falls within the city’s Westover Triangle project area, though it has not been confirmed whether it occurred at the specific intersection targeted for upgrades.

Why sidewalk construction seems slow

Albany City Commissioner Chad Warbington, who represents Ward IV, said the city is already working to expand its sidewalk network, though the work is costly and slow.

“It is expensive,” commissioner Warbington said. “It could easily be $100,000, $200,000 a mile. And if you look at whether it’s Dawson Road or even going Broad Avenue, those get into the millions of dollars when you start doing that length of sidewalk.”

A sidewalk, road construction happening in 2027

The city’s largest current project runs along Broad Avenue, where a sidewalk will eventually stretch from the Flint River to the Walmart in East Albany.

“That is a very high-pedestrian street,” Warbington said. “East Broad will be a project that should be taking force and moving dirt and starting to get sidewalks installed on Broad certainly next year in 2027.”

Beyond Broad Avenue, each of Albany’s six wards has identified roughly one to two miles of sidewalk to add based on safety data and engineering recommendations, Warbington said. But covering every street in the city isn’t realistic.

“To put sidewalks everywhere on every street in the city is unattainable,” Warbington said. “There’s just not enough money to do something like that.”

Dawson Rd construction next in line

Warbington said Dawson Road is the city’s next major sidewalk study, expected to go before the Albany City Commission within the next year or two.

“That is a very high traffic, five-lane road that there is a good bit of walking,” Warbington said.

Warbington said the city has also changed its ordinances over the past decade to require developers to build sidewalks with new commercial construction and new subdivisions.

“I wish we had done that 20, 30, 40 years ago,” Warbington said. “But now you’ll see anything new is built with a sidewalk now.”

That’s also why some streets have visible sidewalk “gaps,” Warbington said — stretches where a new business or subdivision built a sidewalk but the older, surrounding property never did.

Intersection upgrades underway

Beyond sidewalks, Warbington said the city is also upgrading pedestrian crossings at some of its busiest intersections. Improvements include marked crosswalks with hatch markings, ADA-compliant ramps and pedestrian signal timing.

“Sidewalks, sometimes, they’re kind of out of sight, out of mind to motorists,” Warbington said. “But it is important for the city to continue to make progress with sidewalks — not just sidewalks, but even pedestrian crossings.”

What’s next

Final design plans for the Broad Avenue sidewalk project are expected to be reviewed in the coming months, with construction likely to begin in 2027, Warbington said. Construction on a $1.1 million Westover Triangle project is also slated to begin in 2027.

The Albany Police Department’s traffic unit continues to investigate both bicycle crashes. No further details have been released.

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