Slate: “America’s Pedestrian Problem”
This morning – after returning from a walk in my new neighborhood – I stumbled on a series published in Slate: “America’s Pedestrian Problem.” It’s subdivided into 4 articles: “The Crisis in American Walking,” “Sidewalk Science,” “What’s Your Walk Score” and “Learning to Walk.”
The author, Tom Vanderbilt nails the issue in the first article:
…Having taken all this information in, we would gingerly step into the marked crosswalk, that declaration of rights in paint, and try to gauge whether approaching vehicles would yield. They typically did not. Even in one of America’s most “pedestrian-friendly” cities—a seemingly innocent phrase that itself suddenly seemed strange to me—one was always in danger of being relegated to a footnote.
Which is what walking in America has become: An act dwelling in the margins, an almost hidden narrative running beneath the main vehicular text. Indeed, the semantics of the term pedestrian would be a mere curiosity, but for one fact: America is a country that has forgotten how to walk.
…And since our uncommon commitment to the car is at least in part to blame for the new American inability to put one foot in front of the other, the transportation engineering profession’s historical disdain for the pedestrian is all that much more pernicious. In modern traffic engineering the word has become institutionalized, by engineers who shorten pedestrian to the somehow even more condescending “peds”; who for years have peppered their literature with phrases like “pedestrian impedance” (meaning people getting in the way of vehicle flow). In early versions of traffic modeling software, pedestrians were not included as a default, and even today, as one report notes, modeling software tends to treat them not as actual actors, but as a mere “statistical distribution”, or as implicit “vehicular delay.” At traffic conferences like the one in Savannah, meanwhile, people doing “ped projects” tend to be a small and insular, if well meaning, clique.
Do tell. Back when we lived in the Tri-Cities, we used to walk to nearby stores and businesses: Safeway, Walgreens, Gold’s, Rite-Aid, Starbucks and a number of restaurants were just a 15 – 20 minute stroll from our house. Nonetheless, we were among the very few who made the attempt. Most of the above businesses were either on Hwy 395 or Clearwater Ave… and you could look for a loooonng way down both roads without seeing anyone else on foot (other than the random person waiting at a bus stop).
Whyfor? Well, I’m sure part of the reason was that it wasn’t a particularly pleasant walk. Although there were sidewalks, traffic went roaring past (at least once we reached 395). It was noisy as hell and you had to be extra careful when crossing various parking lot entrances (Panda Express’ was the worst). Ditto crossing at the corner of 395 and Clearwater – drivers turning right rarely bothered to check for pedestrians, “walk” signal be damned. The streets and businesses were designed for cars… you could walk, but it was clear that you did it at your own risk.
I’m glad to be living where I am now: our immediate neighborhood is quiet, hilly, green and quite scenic… it’s inviting to take a stroll. And the downtown area (which we frequent almost daily) is quite pedestrian-friendly – right down to the network of enclosed “overpasses” that connect the central buildings (on Friday, for example, I walked from the bus plaza to Riverpark Square, where my car was parked, without touching the ground once, lol). Not surprisingly, I see lots of walkers in both areas – when you don’t have to compete with cars, it makes it easier – and waaay more inviting – to get around on foot.
At any rate, the series is wordy, but worth a read. Check it out.
And then go for a walk!
