A fence meant to help with pedestrian safety went up in the middle of a busy Anchorage road. Will it?

Earlier this month, a new fence appeared in the median of a heavily traveled stretch of Anchorage’s Minnesota Drive. It was about 6 feet tall, metal and dimpled with holes. It had the appearance, one person wrote on Reddit, of a “cheese grater.”

Reaction was swift: “Bad, bad design,” Daniel Volland, an Anchorage Assembly representative for a district that includes downtown and is bordered by Minnesota Drive, wrote in a public social media post.

“DOT, tear down this wall” added Anna Brawley, an Anchorage Assembly representative who represents the Turnagain and Spenard areas.

Some city leaders say the fence goes against an effort by state highway authorities to mend neighborhoods split by fast, high-volume roadways. Others say the fence will not alleviate the pedestrian dangers of the spot. At its November meeting, the Spenard Community Council is planning a resolution asking for the fence to be removed, said Meg Mielke, the council president.

“From my perspective, the fence just doesn’t get at the core issue, which is the desire of folks to be able to cross safely between two different commercial centers without having to cross three streets,” Mielke said.

The fence is part of a project that kicked off this summer to preserve pavement and make pedestrian safety improvements along Minnesota Drive, said Justin Shelby, regional operations manager with the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, in an interview last week. The state received funding from the Federal Highway Safety Improvement Program to add lighting down the section of Minnesota Drive between Benson Boulevard and Northern Lights Boulevard, Shelby said.

The lights are meant to “make pedestrians and bicyclists more visible to drivers throughout the year,” Shelby said.

Because of the location of existing utilities, the lighting needed to go down the middle of the road, and to protect it from traffic accidents, the state put in elevated concrete footers a few feet high in the middle, he said.

The fence was added to discourage people from crossing the busy street, with nowhere to easily escape traffic in the middle.

“That area already had a history of pedestrian safety issues,” Shelby said. “With that footer there, there’s no longer a refuge in the middle of the road,” he said.

The department “had to do something to alleviate the safety impacts.”

The stretch of street has a history of pedestrian collisions, especially during the dark months of the year, Shelby said: There were 10 bicycle or pedestrian crashes on Minnesota Drive between Benson Boulevard and Northern Lights Boulevard between 2008 and 2012. Among those, five involved major injuries.

The state transportation department didn’t immediately respond to a question about whether more recent data showed the same pedestrian danger, or whether the project was funded based on the older data. There are no plans to erect similar fences along other areas of the Minnesota Drive corridor, Shelby said. DOT understands that not everyone likes how the fence looks, he said.

“Some of the concerns being raised are very understandable,” Shelby said.

Lindsey Hajduk, a Spenard resident and former community council president, watched the construction along the road unfold all summer.

“When they put the fence on top of it … it just turned it onto a very clear barrier wall separating the neighborhood,” she said. “Which is what we’ve been trying to advocate against, for many, many years. It really was outrageous to see. Especially because it didn’t improve the pedestrian challenges.”

In biting October wind, Anchorage Assembly member Anna Brawley stood on the sidewalk outside the Carrs Aurora Village grocery store looking at the wall. Semitrucks rumbled by the narrow sidewalk. The fence, she said, is a relic of a type of car-centric planning that characterizes much of Anchorage.

There, at the intersections of Minnesota Drive and Northern Lights and Benson Boulevard, a person trying to cross from the Walgreens to the Carrs must take a circuitous route through three crosswalks and three lights, she said. It’s dangerous, but it’s no wonder people try to run across mid-block, she said.

“Mid-block crossings on roads that are this large are all dangerous, but it is a rational behavior when you look at how far you have to walk to cross the road,” she said. “I think if we want to address pedestrian safety, then we need to design our roads around (pedestrian use) just by erecting barriers by doing things like slowing down our speed limits, creating more crosswalks.”

Until that happens, she said, expect a dangerous Minnesota Drive with a fence through the middle of it.