Walking across U.S. 98 in downtown Foley is about to get safer for students and other pedestrians as the city advances a long-planned round of crosswalk improvements at several busy intersections.
The Foley City Council has approved funding for pedestrian safety upgrades at Cedar Street, Oak Street, Pine Street, Chicago Street and the crossing at the Perry Wilbourne Antique Rose Trail. The intersections are used daily by children walking to and from Foley Elementary School, Foley Middle School and Florence B. Mathis Elementary School, making the upgrades a priority for city leaders.
Planned improvements include flashing pedestrian beacons at several intersections that will alert drivers when someone is waiting to cross the busy federal highway. The project also calls for raised medians, enhanced signage and upgrades to driveway access, all aimed at making the crossings safer and more accessible for pedestrians of all ages.
City officials say the construction contract has already been awarded, with work expected to begin in September and wrap up before the end of the year. That timeline would put the improvements in place well before winter, when shorter daylight hours can make roadway crossings even more hazardous for students walking to school.
The need for the upgrades is underscored by traffic data. According to 2025 Alabama Department of Transportation counts, more than 8,700 vehicles pass through the Cedar Street intersection each day, a stretch of U.S. 98 located near both Foley Elementary and Foley Middle schools.
A state highway with local stakes
Because U.S. 98 is a state highway, the project requires close coordination between Foley and the Alabama Department of Transportation. ALDOT maintains the highway itself, while the city is responsible for the municipal streets that feed into it, meaning any changes to the crossings need sign-off and cooperation from both sides. That arrangement shapes the pace of nearly every improvement Foley makes along the corridor, from signal timing to striping, and it is one reason the crosswalk project has taken several years of planning to reach the construction stage.
Foley City Engineer Taylor Davis said the project is the product of years of planning. “We’ve been working on these improvements for a long time, and it’s rewarding to see them move forward,” Davis said.
What the improvements do
The flashing beacons at the heart of the project are designed to break through the visual noise of a commercial corridor. When a pedestrian presses the crossing button, a high-visibility light pattern begins flashing on the signage above the roadway, telling approaching drivers that someone is about to enter the crosswalk. Studies of similar installations around the country have shown sharp increases in the percentage of drivers who yield, particularly when the beacons are paired with the kind of medians Foley has planned.
Raised medians give pedestrians a protected place to stand while crossing one direction of traffic at a time, which matters enormously on a four-lane highway like U.S. 98. Instead of judging gaps in two directions of traffic at once, a walker only has to clear one side, wait in the median, and then cross the other. For elementary school children, whose smaller stature makes them harder for drivers to see and whose judgment about vehicle speed is still developing, that two-stage crossing is one of the most effective safety features a roadway can offer.
The enhanced signage will mark the crossings further in advance, giving drivers more time to slow down, while the driveway access upgrades are aimed at the conflict points where cars turn in and out of businesses directly across from the school crossings. Driveway conflicts are a persistent problem on older commercial corridors, and smoothing them reduces the sudden turning movements that put pedestrians at risk.
The routes students walk
The intersections selected for the project line up with the paths children already take to three schools. Foley Elementary and Foley Middle sit near the Cedar Street crossing, where the ALDOT traffic count tops 8,700 vehicles a day, while Florence B. Mathis Elementary serves families on the city’s north side whose walking routes feed into the same corridor. Crossing guards, sidewalks and school-zone signage already exist at points along the way, but the crossings themselves have long been the weakest link between the neighborhoods and the schoolhouse doors.
The Antique Rose Trail crossing
The fifth location, the crossing at the Perry Wilbourne Antique Rose Trail, serves a different mix of users but shares the same safety concerns. The trail follows a former rail corridor through the heart of Foley and has become one of the city’s signature recreational assets, used by joggers, cyclists and families on an everyday basis. Where the trail meets U.S. 98, trail users must cross the same heavy traffic the schoolchildren face, and the addition of flashing beacons and median protection there extends the safety upgrades beyond the school day to evenings and weekends.
Named for Perry Wilbourne, a Foley city clerk remembered for his service to the community, the trail connects neighborhoods to downtown shops and to special events that draw visitors from across Baldwin County. City planners have long treated the trail as both a recreation amenity and an alternative transportation route, which is why the crossing was folded into the pedestrian project rather than left for a separate effort.
Foley’s rapid growth raises the stakes
Foley is one of the fastest-growing cities in Baldwin County, which is itself among the fastest-growing counties in Alabama. New residential subdivisions continue to spread out from the historic downtown, and each new roof adds children to the school rolls and vehicles to the U.S. 98 corridor. Traffic volumes that were manageable a generation ago now run through the center of town in volumes that ALDOT’s own counts put at well over 8,000 vehicles a day at a single intersection.
City leaders have responded in recent years with a string of pedestrian-oriented projects downtown, from sidewalk extensions to trail expansions, reflecting a planning philosophy that treats walking as a daily transportation need rather than an occasional leisure activity. The crosswalk project fits squarely into that pattern, and officials have described it as one piece of a longer-term effort to make the city’s core navigable on foot.
What happens between now and December
With the contract awarded, residents can expect to see crews setting up work zones at the five locations over the coming weeks. Work of this kind typically proceeds intersection by intersection, with lane closures confined to off-peak hours to keep school-run traffic moving. City officials have said the schedule calls for all five crossings to be finished before the end of the year, and the September start leaves room for weather delays without pushing completion into the winter months.
What drivers should know
Once the beacons are active, drivers on U.S. 98 will be required to yield when the lights flash, and police typically increase enforcement at new crossings during the first weeks of operation to build the habit. Motorists are reminded that a flashing pedestrian beacon is not a suggestion: state law requires drivers to stop for pedestrians in a crosswalk, and the beacons exist precisely because unmarked yielding on a busy highway has proven unreliable.
For families in the neighborhoods around Foley Elementary, Foley Middle and Florence B. Mathis Elementary, the changes should be noticeable the first time a child walks to school after installation. A crossing that once required a running start across four lanes of traffic becomes a two-stage crossing with a signal that drivers can see from a distance, and that difference compounds every school day, twice a day, for hundreds of students.
The project also reflects how Foley works with its state partners. Even though the city is paying for the improvements and managing the contract, every element that touches U.S. 98 itself, from the beacon poles to the median openings, has to conform to ALDOT’s design standards and receive the department’s approval before construction. That review process is invisible to most residents but essential to the timeline, and city staff have credited the cooperation of ALDOT’s southwest region office with keeping the project on schedule for a September start.
Safety engineers often note that no single device solves a dangerous road on its own. The value of the Foley project lies in the layering: beacons that announce the pedestrian, medians that break the crossing into halves, signage that warns drivers earlier, and driveways redesigned to stop sudden turns. Each measure covers a weakness the others leave open, and together they change the arithmetic of every walk to school along U.S. 98.
For now, the September start date puts Foley on track to have all five crossings improved before the first cold snap of the season, a deadline city leaders chose deliberately so that students spend the darkest months of the school year crossing a safer street. Parents with questions about construction timing near a particular school can follow updates through the city’s regular announcements, and drivers are asked to use extra patience in the work zones while the improvements are put in place.