For the past year, engineers, politicians and other community members have envisioned a pedestrian bridge that connects Hawthorne Avenue and goes over the railroad tracks and U.S. Highway 97.

This spring, students from Summit High School’s engineering class were tasked with putting that vision on paper, and they presented their work last week in the studios of Ashley & Vance Engineering off Franklin Avenue. Meredith Volz, Noah Smith and Django Wardlow envisioned a bridge that would start at First Street and Hawthorne and end where Hawthorne Avenue currently connects with Highway 97.

Instead of elevators or a ramp with steep switchbacks, the team designed a unique triangular ramp, which they say saves space, keeps the grade low enough so it’s easy to travel up, and provides space for a food cart pod in the center.

“We wanted to provide a safer and more efficient way to travel,” Smith said.

The bridge would be made of steel, painted red and designed to be a tourist attraction in itself, said Volz, a junior.

“When you look around, you’ll see all of Bend’s sites,” she said.

This is the first time engineering students at Summit High School have focused on a local building project, said Erika Strauser, the engineering and science teacher. The idea was born out of a partnership with Andy Coughlin, technical director of critical structures and facilities at Structural Integrity Associates Inc.

Students were not only asked to figure out how to design the bridge, but to do other necessary work around public projects, like looking at financing, community surveys, reducing carbon emissions and considering safety standards, Strauser said.

Before this project, many of the students didn’t even know where Hawthorne Avenue was, Strauser said.

“It’s allowed to get them involved with the community in a way they had never done before,” she said.

Coughlin said the student competition was a way to get unique community input into a public project that doesn’t get included. Often, when public infrastructure projects seek feedback, the same people with the means and time to visit public meetings or presentations show up, he said.

“In this competition, we are bringing people who would otherwise not be a part of the process into the process,” he said. “In this stage of the midtown crossing feasibility study, it’s an opportunity to give the real grown ups, so to speak, some real input they could take to heart and maybe some new ideas that otherwise wouldn’t make it into the designs.”

The proposed pedestrian bridge at Hawthorne Avenue is still undergoing a feasibility study, according to City Manager Eric King.

Building or renovating crossings are a part of the Bend City Council’s larger goal to improve east-to-west connections in the city for pedestrians and bicycle riders.

About $20 million so far has been allocated through the general obligation transportation bond funding, state money and other city money to go toward not only the Hawthorne crossing, but to improve under crossings at Greenwood and Franklin avenues, King said.

The overall estimated budget is around $35 million, King said, but the results of the feasibility study will likely refine that estimate in the next couple of months. After the study is released, the City Council will decide how funding should be prioritized for which crossings, he said.