Tinley Park and Cook County officials say they want to work together to resolve a decades-old issue affecting the safety of Tinley Park High School students.

The village and county both say they are willing to share the costs of improving 175th Street east of Ridgeland Avenue, including adding a sidewalk that would discourage high school students from walking in the road.

Building a sidewalk, however, would also require installing storm sewers. Tinley Park says it is willing to take over maintenance and jurisdiction of that portion of 175th Street if the road is improved.

“A jurisdictional transfer would make sense to do at this time,” Village Manager David Niemeyer said.

In an unrelated deal, the village announced in July the county had agreed to share the costs to improve 175th Street between Oak Park and Ridgeland avenues and Ridgeland between 175th and Oak Forest Avenue. Tinley Park will assume jurisdiction of those sections of road as part of the agreement.

That agreement led to additional discussions with the county about improving 175th Street east of Ridgeland, he said. There's no sidewalk on the south side of the street, and students routinely walk along the road as traffic zooms by a few feet away.

Usually, they walk in a single file and stick to the narrow shoulder. But sometimes they walk two or three abreast, and some students stray into the traffic lane.

“We're aware of the situation,” Niemeyer said.

There is a sidewalk on the north side of the street, along the Panduit property. But being teenagers, many don't bother to take the extra steps to cross the road to the sidewalk. A geometry teacher might say the kids are simply proving the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

“We are in compliance,” Tinley Park High School Principal Theresa Nolan told me. “There is a sidewalk and a marked crosswalk.”

Still, she understands why a couple dozen students trek along the road after school lets out at 2:55 p.m.

“If high school kids can save 10 steps by walking across everyone's parkway they'll do that,” she said.

The speed limit along 175th Street west of the high school is 40 mph, but there's a 20 mph school zone speed limit when pedestrians are present. Traffic is fairly typical. Most drivers slow down, but some don't. Motorists move to the center of the road when they can to give room to pedestrians walking along the shoulder.

But when there's oncoming traffic, drivers can only do so much on the two-lane stretch of road. They have to pass within feet of the pedestrians.

School, village and county officials know it's a safety concern. Still, a solution has eluded them for decades.

“It's not just a simple, ‘Put a sidewalk in,'” said Kevin Workowski, Tinley Park's public works director. “You need storm sewers and pipes to fix the grading to go along with the road project. It's a very high expense.”

Google Maps indicates the stretch of 175th Street between the high school and Ridgeland Avenue is about a third of a mile, roughly 1,700 feet. The road has no curbs, gutters or storm sewers.

Yards in front of some homes on the south side of the road have a sloped drainage ditch, while others have a flatter grade where lawns extend to the edge of the road.

Judging by the location of fire hydrants, there appears to be plenty of public right-of-way where a sidewalk could be built. Tinley Park lacks jurisdiction, though, and until recently it was difficult to cut through red tape with county transportation officials.

“We have a new long-range transportation plan and these are conversations we want to have. We're very open to these types of partnerships,” said John Yonan, superintendent of the Cook County Department of Transportation and Highways.

Building a sidewalk essentially would require rebuilding 175th Street so storm sewers could be installed. The county is willing to add the project to its list of priorities and share the costs of rebuilding the road, Yonan said.

“We would look to the municipality to share the costs of building a sidewalk and to be responsible for maintenance,” he said. That would include keeping the path clear of snow and ice during the winter. “We can't be in the snow removal business (for sidewalks) when we've got to worry about keeping roads clear.”

If the roadway is improved, homeowners along the south side of 175th Street would bear no increased costs for the sidewalk, storm sewers or other upgrades, Niemeyer and Workowksi said.

Teens have been risking their lives by walking on 175th Street for generations. Tinley Park High School opened in 1961. It's the second of four schools in Bremen High School District 228. In addition to Tinley Park, the school's 1,282 students live in Oak Forest, Markham and Country Club Hills.

Students seem to be aware of the risks of walking along the road. As I watched a couple dozen walk down the road this week, they all walked quickly and purposefully, as if they wanted to get off the road as soon as possible.

None of them carried a phone or other mobile device, and no one was distracted by texting or tuning out their surroundings by listening to music through headphones.

The walkers likely live in nearby residential neighborhoods. If they lived more than a mile and a half from the school, they'd be eligible for bus transportation.

In addition to the everyday pedestrians, student-athletes training for track and cross-country teams sometimes run along the shoulder on the south side of 175th Street.

“They do that sometimes,” Nolan said. “They're not told to do that, but they do.”

A sidewalk on the south side of the road would improve safety and reduce the risk of a student being struck by a vehicle. It seems obvious, yet 55 years after the high school opened there's still no sidewalk.

I think under Yonan's leadership, the county transportation department is particularly receptive to projects like 175th Street that would resolve safety concerns.

I think it's up to Tinley Park elected officials and administrators to take advantage of this opportunity.

I urge village officials to make these improvements a higher priority and to work with the county on a plan to fund engineering and construction costs.

tslowik@tribpub.com

Twitter @tedslowik