Why can't there be a national fund for pedestrian transit?
How hard is it to have sidewalks along all the major thoroughfares of a city. I mean, I go to school in Leander, a town of almost 35,000 now, and walking from the high school to the library, there's no sidewalks! What's up with that?
This is walking down the side of a 4 lane, with turn lanes road, with very steep embankments! Our world is not only car-centric, it's pedestrian-hostile, at least in the suburbs!
Installing sidewalks should not be anywhere near the expense of building a new LRT system from the ground up, shouldn't it? I'm not asking for a complete transit system, just a safer way to walk!
Don't get me started on this. You should take a bus and see where most residents in this town in wheelchairs live. Then go walk the sidewalks around their neighborhood. It's just sad.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it has to do with cost. It's a status thing. No one uses sidewalks right? And if they did you wouldn't want them in your neighborhood.
My mother once advocated against sidewalks on Davis road right next to her house because "no one uses the sidewalk on the other side of the street". At this point I was living with her and using that sidewalk to walk to the bus stop every morning to get to work.
Yeah, this being the area around the high school, which is the last age group which uses public transportation or walking by default, I have always thought that this road (Bagdad) should have a sidewalk.
ReplyDeleteTo ME, they actually make the road look nicer, and cleaner. Old subdivisions without them sometimes look more ratty.
Wow. I'm sorry...
Oh and Leander has no local bus service either; don't even get me started on Cedar Park!
Yeah, this is sooooo freaking true.
ReplyDeleteI live in Portland now, and this problem really doesn't exist. The city is vastly superior to almost all other in this country (San Francisco, New York, and Chicago are some exceptions).
Sidewalks are fundamental to good livable neighborhoods and rarely do they exist today. Even in the 50s when suburbs were being created like mad, those intial suburbs almost always had sidewalks. But as Americans got fatter and lazier with their new cars, new sprawl removed them in lieu of the fake and over manicured lawns.
Absolutely disgusting.
Hat Tip: Just walk in everyones yards. :) Grass is always soft on the feet. :o