CRETE, Neb. - Right now, there’s no safe way for anyone without a vehicle to cross from the more rural, residential north side of Crete to the south side, which houses nearly all of the city’s businesses and services.  

But that’s all set to change now that the city has been awarded a grant to help start construction on a pedestrian bridge, which will literally help Crete bridge a major geographical and sociocultural divide for its citizens, helping them gain access to jobs and city services.  

“There is not a safe way for anybody to cross from the north side of the tracks over the highway and get anywhere. We have in excess of 20 trains a day that go through here, so there isn’t a safe way that anyone can navigate that at all hours of the day or night,” Crete City Administrator Tom Ourada said. “The only real solution is the really expensive solution. We got a $6 million estimate seven or eight years ago, and that price tag has escalated dramatically. If we did not have this opportunity [to get a grant] we would not be able to do anything like this, and we would still have those challenges with the community being divided and no safe way of [traveling] besides possibly by vehicle.” 

“A lot of the people that come to the city looking for resources walk here, even during winter,” Crete City Clerk Nancy Tellez said. “They’re having to cross the railroad track, the highway...There’s a huge need for providing a way to connect to the south side in a safe way.” 

The proposed bridge is all made possible by the city being awarded a Reconnecting Communities Grant from the Nebraska Department of Transportation in December. That grant bequeaths the city $288,000 to begin the bridge’s planning process – essentially, it's a grant to help the city acquire more grants in the future, Ourada said. 

“If you have a $20 million project and get an 80/20 deal, then that’s four million dollars that we’d have to supply,” he said. “But these grants can be zero match grants, meaning federal funding can pay for all of it, and that’s very appealing to a community like us that doesn’t have a lot of disposable income. We couldn’t do it otherwise.” 

Ourada has a map in his office in Crete’s City Hall that shows the layout of the roads in the city in the late stages of the 19th Century. And though he hasn’t been involved with the city for quite that long, he’s played a part in many projects like this in his role as City Administrator. And a key objective in efforts like this pedestrian bridge project is to balance the need for progress with the pressure to minimize cost – financial, physical and otherwise – incurred by the city and its taxpayers. 

“A benefit isn’t really a benefit if it’s really painful, or burdensome,” he said. “We were very cognizant of that. People won’t have to judge if the cost/benefit was worth it because, locally, there’s little to no cost, and all benefit. So arguably there is no reason why anyone would not support it.” 

December’s grant to help build the pedestrian bridge was actually the second awarded to Crete by the NDOT in 2024 – the first was a Networked Communities Grant in the summer that will help the city rework the roads around the Crete middle and high schools, part of a national Safe Routes to School campaign.  

In Crete, a safe route would look like installing two roundabouts further along 13th Street and Iris Avenue, while also constructing a pedestrian underpass in conjunction with the roundabouts – all of which is designed to ease the traffic congestion that comes with a school system the size of Crete’s. The schools, meanwhile, are “all-in” on the idea, according to the city. 

“In non-school times, the roadways function fine, but in compressed time periods it’s very hard to navigate traffic to and from the schools,” Ourada said. “It’s a complex problem, and we think the solution, which is itself complex, is constructing two roundabouts to keep traffic flowing and minimize traffic stacking, and to provide a safe way for children, pedestrians, to access both schools between the roundabouts without having to rely on traffic features like stop signs. The topography lends itself well to that kind of a solution [an underpass].” 

As for the pedestrian bridge – which is years away from completion – Crete’s current plan is for it to run along Boswell Avenue, over and across the oft-used railroad tracks and Highway 55 on the north end of the city. The north side of Boswell Avenue was just repaved late last year in a separate project, and the south side lands right near Crete Plaza, which houses essential services like a restaurant, a laundromat, and bigger national chains like Pizza Hut and Dollar General. North of the railroad tracks, none of that exists – just houses, farmsteads and one or two factories and landfills.  

That plan isn’t set in stone – literally or otherwise – because the next step of the process is for both state and federal transportation officials to make a site visit, assessing project plans, progress to this point, and overall viability. Ourada says these assessors could conclude the bridge would be better suited to be built along Hawthorne Avenue, a couple blocks west of Boswell. That would accomplish the same objective of connecting north to south, but the city’s concern is that bridge would be a lot longer and thus more expensive than their proposed plan.  

Once those federal evaluations are complete, then, and only then, construction on two solutions aimed to address inequity and alleviate issues can begin.