CHAPEL HILL - A plan to dot emergency call boxes and additional street lights in spots where students and other pedestrians travel was the subject of a Tuesday night question-and-answer session.

Held at Town Hall, the meeting offered residents the opportunity to question a town police officer, a traffic engineer and members of a student safety committee about the $80,000 project, which would be paid for by fees levied on UNC-Chapel Hill students.

To pay for the extra security measures, the student government has been setting aside money from student fees for the past several years. Currently, the student safety and security committee is proposing that 20 percent of the fees earmarked for the project go toward the blue call boxes, and the rest go toward pedestrian street lighting.

Sgt. Jack Terry of the Chapel Hill Police Department and town traffic engineer Kumar Neppalli presented the recommendations, with a few students from the committee.

Extra street lighting is proposed for the Northside neighborhood, the Cameron Avenue-McCauley Street area, and Rosemary Street between Hillsborough and Boundary streets.

The call boxes are proposed for Church and Short streets, the Mallette Street-Cameron Avenue area, and at Ransom and McCauley streets.

Direct line to 911

The blue call boxes appear similar to those at the Raleigh-Durham International Airport parking deck. They're tall poles with bright lights at the top and telephones with push buttons that dial 911 directly.

A few people were concerned that the proposal excluded some areas that need more lighting and, possibly, call boxes.

But Don Stanford, who lives on Mallette Street, questioned whether the "time has passed" for the call boxes since so many people use cell phones nowadays. He said he was "uneasy" that some call boxes could stop working, or the lights at the top of the boxes could break.

Terry, the police officer, countered this notion. He said a surprising number of people still don't have cell phones.

Plus, he said, it has been shown that the presence of the blue call boxes deters criminals. The town currently has them at park-and-ride lots and the town operations center.

"It's a big issue of making sure that we, as students, feel safe," said Jordan Myers, a senior who's a member of the Student Safety and Security Committee. "That, you know, if anything goes wrong, there is that safety mechanism."