JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 The ribbon was cut on Wednesday morning on a new site aimed at helping student pedestrians navigate roadways safely in Jacksonville. The Blue Zone Project\u2019s first memorial traffic garden was built at Ed White High School in honor of a student athlete, Alaysha Williams, who was killed in a traffic accident in 2024. <\/p>\n
\u201cShe was on her way to school, trying to run after the school bus. She was hit by three cars trying to make it to the bus stop,\u201d Williams\u2019 mom Tiereny Williams explained. <\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n The student athlete played basketball and flag football. <\/p>\n A traffic garden is a painted mimic of streets to help students practice walking or cycling. The garden\u2019s co-artist was proud to paint it in Alaysha\u2019s honor. <\/p>\n \u201cIt just adds more meaning to the project, and as anybody doing anything, you want to do something meaningful for the community,\u201d artist David Nackashi said.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen students can come out to these locations and actually walk through a crosswalk, what the markings of a crosswalk look like, what a stop sign looks like, how we yield might work together through that information. Not only are they better for when they become drivers, but they\u2019re better backseaters,\u201d Marlo Zarka, public policy lead at Blue Zones Project Jacksonville, added.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: <\/b>Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/b><\/a>]<\/b><\/p>\n The memorial garden\u2019s construction comes at a time of eye-opening statistics. Jacksonville was ranked 16th in the deadliest Metro areas for pedestrians by Smart Growth America.<\/p>\n \u201c2025, I think it\u2019s gonna be the lowest year in about a decade for pedestrian fatalities, and that\u2019s even with the population growth, so we\u2019re doing something right. We don\u2019t want to celebrate too long, though we know that there\u2019s a lot of work to do,\u201d Matt Fall, Jacksonville Bike\/Pedestrian safety coordinator, said.<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: <\/b>Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/b><\/a>] <\/b><\/p>\n Click here<\/b><\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/b><\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 The ribbon was cut on Wednesday morning on a new site aimed at helping student…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":697889,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5136],"tags":[12189,291909,5229,291911,269547,12187,291908,3188,723,11561,291910,7310,425,291913,291912,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,2612,177391],"class_list":["post-697888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-action_news","tag-alicia_williams","tag-america","tag-blue_zone_project","tag-dekoto","tag-duval_county","tag-ed_white_high_school","tag-fl","tag-florida","tag-jack","tag-jack_zan_dakota","tag-jacksonville","tag-local","tag-project_blue_zones","tag-smart_growth_america","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-williams","tag-zion"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116330976169933174","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=697888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/697889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}