CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Five-thousand cars zip through Third Ward daily; add to that the growing number of Johnson and Wales University students walking to class every day and you could have a recipe for disaster.

Johnson and Wales senior Matt Pecora knows all about it.

“As soon as I come out of my apartment, I come right to the middle of a connector street and it's really hard to cross sometimes because there's lights on both ends,” he said.

Now there’s a city plan to make the street of Third Ward, which is the area bounded by Trade Street to the north, Tryon Street to the east, the John Belk Freeway and Interstate 77, and the Wesley Heights neighborhood safe for pedestrians and bicyclists.

The plan includes reducing Fourth Street from four lanes to two from Johnson and Wales to Tuckaseegee Road in order to slow down drivers.

City engineer Joe Frey said other goals include wider sidewalks set farther back from the street, more landscaping and more continuous bike lanes.

“There's a lot of pedestrian activity with students moving around so it's not really fitting to what's going on in the area,” Frey said. “We're looking to eliminate those high-speed turn lanes, make it a regular intersection to calm traffic a little bit and hopefully improve the crosswalks and things like that as well.”

The Third Ward project is part of a larger center city project in the works. Residents can expect to see more streets in uptown modeled after Tryon Street, with wider sidewalks and more landscaping.

Also, some one-way streets may be transformed into two-way streets to increase traffic flow.

The transitions are complicated, but construction could start in about two years. Frey said it’s just another step to handle growth in the center city.

“It's never going to look like Chicago or New York City like a lot of people are thinking, but some of the smaller areas, certain blocks, are. We're hoping to have people moving around more on foot,” he said. “It's going to happen naturally because it's going to get too hard to drive around. You're not going to want to drive around."

Engineers emphasize the plan is in the early stages. The project may be on the ballot for funding in November.