Liberty gets street-smart

The City Council approves the formal change of street names on campus

 

STREET SIGN — On Jan. 10, the Lynchburg City Council voted to change seven of the road signs on campus. Photo Credit: Amber Tiller

STREET SIGN — On Jan. 10, the Lynchburg City Council voted to change seven of the road signs on campus.
Photo Credit: Amber Tiller

In order to update city address databases used by emergency responders, the Lynchburg City Council approved the formal change of seven street names on Liberty University’s campus at their meeting Jan. 10.

Although several campus street names have changed over time as the university has grown, Lynchburg’s digital database of addresses did not reflect those changes.

The updated databases will not have a physical effect on the campus.

However, the changes will better enable Lynchburg’s first responders to reach students at the correct address in case of an emergency, said Melissa Foster, the director of Lynchburg’s Department of Emergency Services.

“As Liberty University grows, they’re adding additional streets, and some of the street names are changing over time,” Foster said.

“It’s important for us to keep our systems updated so that when we receive calls for help, we’re able to send the responders to the right location.”

Foster said that despite the incorrect information in the city’s database, the Liberty University Police Department (LUPD) has always worked closely with Lynchburg’s Emergency Services to ensure that they have correct addresses.

“If there was ever any question about where the person might be, LUPD has been right there to assist and make sure that there wasn’t any kind of unnecessary delay,” Foster said.

While LUPD manages law enforcement activities at Liberty, the Lynchburg Fire Department handles any fire or medical emergencies on campus.

According to Rachel Frischeisen, planner from Lynchburg’s Department of Community Development, LUPD and the City Assessor’s Office discovered the discrepancies while they were working together to reconcile the university’s addresses with the city’s databases.

“During the process of attempting to match up our addresses with the addresses on the ground, it became apparent that as the university has grown, the streets on campus have changed over time,” Frischeisen said.

Most of the streets changed were located around Regents Parkway and University Boulevard.

Evans Boulevard, Hershey-Esbenshade Drive and parts of Champion Circle and Mountain View Road were formally changed to Regents Boulevard.

Additionally, part of Champion Circle was changed to University Boulevard, part of Regents Parkway was changed to Hershey-Esbenshade Drive, and part of Williams Stadium Road was changed to Liberty
University Drive.

Frischeisen said because Liberty’s private streets are not managed by the city, the gradual changes happened over time without any formal requests to the City Council.

“Generally, the process would be somebody submits a street renaming request, council approves it, and then it gets changed both on the ground and in our system,” Frischeisen said.

However, once the differences were discovered, LUPD worked with the city to submit formal requests to change the street names.

The requests went through several committees from the city’s staff before being approved by City Council, Frischeisen said.

“Even though they are private streets, City Council obviously still has an interest in making sure those streets are not being renamed arbitrarily,” Frischeisen said.

Foster said the main purpose of these updates is to make sure Liberty students and staff have full and immediate access to Lynchburg’s safety resources.

“People call 911 because they have an urgent need, and we don’t want there to be any kind of unnecessary delay,” Foster said.

“We’re partnering (with LUPD) to make sure folks are receiving the services that they need in an expedient manner.”

COVEY is a news reporter.

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