Walkability has plummeted. It’s too dangerous for me to even walk from my house to the gas station about a mile away because there are no sidewalks and cars come hurtling down the road I would have to walk down.
I live in a small city/large town now. I used to live in L.A. and, unlike a lot of people, I walked all the time. And took the trains. I miss being able to walk to the supermarket or down to the donut shop for breakfast and coffee.
I feel like I live in the least walkable city in the US. I live 2 miles away from work and I’ve walked it a few times and here’s the annoyances I have to deal with:
- Sidewalks are blocked by obstacles such as overgrown vegetation and cars.
- Sidewalks are broken up so badly they aren’t safe to walk on.
- Segments with NO sidewalks around blind curves.
Basically you have to walk in the road most of the trip.
But fuckin’ hell, we need to increase taxes to pay for that new jail! I really hate my town.
This would be funny if it wasn’t so relatable.
My kids have friends about a block away, and both ways to get there have massive spots of missing sidewalk with almost no space on the edge of the roadway. My neighborhood has decent sidewalks, but we’re a little island surrounded by areas with huge gaps in the sidewalks. In some areas you can stay on the sidewalk if you keep switching sides of the road though…
It’s like whoever designed the roads forgot that people live in residential areas…
I live in a midwest city (not even a small one), and it’s so frustrating that sidewalks will just end suddenly. There are no obstacles, it just ends. Or the sidewalk stops on one side of the road and literally picks back up on the other side of the road. But the road is a 4 lane road with a 45mph limit (so everyone does 55+) so it’s too dangerous to cross.
Last year there was a bunch of construction near me to build a brand new sidewalk down a long stretch of road. …and they just ended it a half block away from the next light so you have to walk in the grass.
Between stupid garbage like that and bad bike infrastructure (which here is actually not the worst I’ve seen), you definitely feel like US cities hate their citizens.
As someone not from the US, the idea of non-walkable cities is so alien to me.
Before learning to speak English and reading about the US, I wouldn’t even imagine it’s a thing.
The town I grew up in was very walkable, and I’d like to move back there one day if housing ever gets cheaper, but until then I’m stuck in this town where they want us all to drive everywhere.
It doesn’t help that our streets, stroads, and roads are frequently unwalkable.
I was waiting for my car to get its brakes fixed yesterday, and decided to go across the street to a starbucks. It took like 15 minutes to cross the street as I had to wait for two sets of lights to cross the intersection. At least there was an actual sidewalk. Later I walked over to a different strip mall to get some lunch. No sidewalk at all. Multilane road with lots of traffic, no sidewalks. The few pedestrians out were, like I was, using parking lots as pathways to avoid getting run over.My neighbors drive to the gas station for snacks and beer in my excessively walkable town. Said gas station is close enough to my apartment to throw a snowball to.
Sad diabetes noises
Ok, put simply, if you lived here at the ponds there would be many days where your car is parked farther than the gas station is to your apartment.
deleted by creator
I thought it was bad where I live, but when I was in OKC it was so much worse. I’ve never been anywhere so hostile to pedestrians. Sidewalks were jagged and broken and just ended randomly wherever they thought they could squeeze more parking in. Despite being a small city there were highways EVERYWHERE. You could never escape the roar of traffic. My buddy who lives there is in a gated community and even if there was anything around (there wasn’t) you couldn’t walk anywhere anyway because the gate is pressure sensitive to the weight of a car so you can’t actually leave unless you’re driving. I can only hope the next generation of planners can mitigate some of the last generation’s damage in our lifetime
And it’s not only gated communities. So many neighborhoods in the US, especially in the burbs, trap you at the entrance to the neighborhood. Unless you’re in a car, you simply can’t leave. There are no sidewalks and no bike lanes and nothing connecting you to the neighborhood down the road. It’s ridiculous. Hate it.
The key in that chart is terrible. Why does it get darker then lighter?
Did they fix it? I don’t see that at all now. It starts at light blue and proceeds to dark blue.
Must be a bug at my end!
Weird. I see this
on ios safari
Makes me appreciate my very walkable neighborhood.
Americans are fat and lazy. Its not all because of car centric infrastructure.
