CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — A large police presence could be seen at the 5400 block of Leopard Street near North Padre Island Drive on Monday morning after a man was hit and killed while trying to cross the street.
According to CCPD officials, the man, 67-year-old Sergio Mercado, had tried to cross in the middle of the block.
CCPD Traffic Lt. Mike Peña says to be safe everyone needs to cross at an intersection.
”Even though there aren’t any markings, where you’re supposed to cross is at an intersection," he said.
Along this stretch of Leopard Street near NPID there is only one old and faded crosswalk. There are no other crosswalks, safety caution signs or traffic signal controls to help residents safely make their way through this area.
When 3NEWS went to both City of Corpus Christi and TxDOT officials to ask them why there was a lack of safety features in this area, they each said it was the other’s responsibility -- a stand-off so to speak that’s lasted since 1965.
Back then, the state and City agreed to transfer maintenance of Leopard Street to the City, but Public Works Director Ernie De La Garza says that didn’t mean the City was going to put in any safety features along the roadway.
"What we don’t do is we don’t go from one end of TxDOT’s right of way to the other and do full-blown safety studies to see how we could take City budgets and add infrastructure to that because it all belongs to TxDOT," he said.
De La Garza gave 3NEWS that memorandum of understanding with TxDOT to back his claim.
TxDOT used the same document to back its belief that crosswalks and other safety improvements are the City's responsibility.
Now, the City wants to do the safety work and it sent a request to TxDOT officials last December asking for them to turn that responsibility over to them.
"We’re still waiting for that to happen," De La Garza said. "Once that is done then of course we will invest in that corridor."
We requested an on-camera interview with someone from TxDOT to explain why they hadn’t responded and why after 59 years they never made any safety improvements here. Instead, we received this statement about the issues:
"The Municipal Maintenance Agreement (MMA) between the city of Corpus Christi and the Texas Department of Transportation clearly indicates that the maintenance and operation of Leopard Street is the responsibility of the city. You have the map that shows this. Regardless of ownership of the right of way, under the MMA, the transportation infrastructure on Leopard is maintained and operated by the city. If, under its responsibility for conditions on Leopard, the city evaluates the situation and determines safety improvements are needed on Leopard, the city is free to make improvements or it can request that TxDOT partner with the city. As always, TxDOT wants to be a safety partner with all our communities and we are willing to work on requests the city might bring forward."
The two sides are still at odds and that's doing nothing to help the safety concerns along Leopard Street.