Group wants to make Coast sidewalks safer after ‘preventable’ deaths. One step: A flash mob

Preventable deaths on the sidewalks of U.S. 90 have led Cynthia Walker and a group of private citizens to emphasize the importance of pedestrian and bicyclist safety.

Walker helps run the Harrison County Act of Living Initiative. The group’s goal is to create awareness of the need for safer pathways, along with enhancements in aesthetics, attractiveness and wellness components for the road’s sidewalks.

Walker said Biloxi needs to be “more inhabitable for the ones that come after us, and it’s more of a quality of life concern than even legislative.”

She wants to make sidewalks more accessible for those with disabilities and improve the boardwalk.

“We (Biloxi) have great natural resources and beauty and half of our citizens can’t get to it,” said Walker.

“I’ve always been an exercise person - walking, doing biking, and so when accidents started happening, then I began to understand that it’s a problem here on the Coast. The pathways are not safe. We lost Lee Brumfield who was just walking on the beach along 90. More and more and more there became evidence that somebody needed to do something,” she added.

Brumfield, 64, was a Mississippi Coast businessman, property developer, and philanthropist who was hit and killed by a vehicle on the morning of Feb. 9 off U.S. 90.

On Friday evening, Walker and more than 40 others attended the Initiative’s “Flash Mob” event held on U.S. 90 in Pass Christian.

The event was to continue to raise awareness regarding pathway and sidewalk safety and had numerous people on lighted bikes ride along the highway.

Walker’s goal from the flash mob was to “point out, there are a lot of people that ride bikes on the Coast, and we’re going to follow that up with the city mayor and city planners.”

The Act of Living Initiative worked with others to propose an over $1 million bill with the Legislature to help accomplish their goal. However, the Mississippi House of Representatives this year rejected the proposal without much explanation.

“They said it was a decision of the legislature, (there was) no proper or full explanation given”, said Walker.

She says the group is currently working on multiple grants, which they plan to propose in the near future. Walker believes one of the most vital components of increasing tourism in southern Mississippi is by improving infrastructure.