Seven years ago, Denise Fries’ husband had a massive heart attack in which he had minutes to live. First responders were able to act fast, arrive at their house in Bryan and save his life.
Due to the medians that now line Texas Avenue in Bryan and College Station, Fries said she no longer believes that a first responder vehicle could get to their house fast enough to save her husband if there were another medical emergency.
“We were told in the hospital that the difference between life and death for my husband was two minutes,” she said. “I don’t feel confident any longer that emergency vehicles could get to our home because vehicles cannot get down Texas Avenue.”
Fries joined the BCS Median Survey Team, a citizen-led initiative to remove certain medians from Bryan and College Station streets. The organization is three months old and has been gathering information from the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) and from citizens answering surveys. Currently, the team has received around 1,800 responses from residents in three months.
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For anyone interested in learning more about the organization or sharing their ideas, the BCS Median Survey Team will host a meeting at Larry Ringer Library in College Station from 2:30 p.m. to 4:45 p.m. Saturday and at Clara B. Mounce Library in Bryan from 5 p.m. to 6:45 p.m. Tuesday.
“We hope to have citizens come together and express their opinions on [the medians],” she said, “If they feel that they would like to join our organization and help us, they could take fliers to different businesses, ask people to participate in the surveys or sign a petition. … There’s about five of us on the team right now and we need help.”
Fries said the ultimate goal of collecting information and petitions is to present it to local politicians to gain support for no new medians being installed in the city.
“It makes no sense to us to spend a lot of taxpayer money on a lot more medians,” she said. “It’s going to be a challenge to get TxDOT to listen to us, but we believe they will listen to the mayor of Bryan or College Station. We also believe they would listen to the Chamber of Commerce transportation committee.”
According to the information the team has received thus far, there are five main concerns from residents regarding local medians. The first is response times of first responders, the second is increased risk from U-turns, the third is economic damage to local businesses, the fourth is increased travel times and the fifth is danger to residents and neighborhoods.
While the BCS Median Survey Team is against certain medians, Fries said the team is not against all medians.
“It’s easy for people to get riled up and want to eliminate all the medians, but to me, that’s just as short-sighted as saying we want to put in medians everywhere,” she said. “We can use statistics and logic to determine which medians are helping and which are hurting. To me, it’s very obvious from the statistics that there are a number of these medians which are hurting and should be removed.”
Fries said she wants the BCS Median Survey Team public meetings to be a cooperative time for citizens to come together and take action against medians instead of complaining and doing nothing.
“Let’s not just rag on elected officials or think this is all about the money,” she said. “I would like to think that people truly thought they were doing something that was going to be helpful and safer. I think this is the unintended consequence of overkill.”
Alongside being a citizen, Fries is also the owner of Fries Financial Services and said many local businesses have lost customers due to the medians because accessibility to their location is more difficult.
“These places are getting less business because people can’t get to them. Therefore, they’re making less sales which means less sales tax that’s collected for the city,” she said. “You can barely get to the Sonic in College Station near the Bank of America. I used to take my grandchildren there every Friday.”
For the upcoming meeting, Fries said she wants business, citizens and anyone interested to visit and create a civil conversation on how to create a safer community.
“We can be as unhappy about the medians as we want. If we don’t get Bryan and College Station city council to see this, then they will never be removed,” she said. “It’s very refreshing and impressive to me that we have people who are interested in the same thing and interested in working together.”
