Walking Is Transportation

More on pedestrian access to Staten Island's Greenbelt

Sculpture: Victoria Bellinger, Silver Lake, S.I. ( victoriabellinger.com/index/html )

Unfit for pedestrians

Last August, I walked from home to the perimeter of Staten Island's Greenbelt, whereupon all pedestrian amenities vanished and I was forced to continue my walk in a gully at the side of the road, along with the beer cans, bottles and other assorted trash thrown there. Drivers whizzed by, leaving only a very few feet between me and them. It was scary and I was mad.

Here's some of what I wrote about that incident in a post dated August 27:

"Walkers have right of safe access to the Greenbelt, just as those who arrive in cars do. We represent a fraction of the footprint of a car, in terms of the space we occupy and the impact we have on the environment. Yet cars, often with only one occupant, are provided roads that are built and maintained by the tax dollars of walkers as well as drivers. For our tax dollars, we get a narrow, dangerous strip of deteriorated macadam.

"Sidewalks should be installed bordering every main road, street or avenue in the Greenbelt. I understand the legitimate concern of those who see only another encroachment on the Greenbelt's 'Forever Wild' mandate. But providing a means of access for those who walk rather than ride is a matter of fairness and equity--a pretty fundamental ideal."

A meeting with the Greenbelt's administrator

I learned later from fellow blogger Steve Patterson of Urban Review STL.com that there is a national organization called Complete the Street which is promoting precisely this idea--but a better one than mine because it provides for cyclists as well as pedestrians.

I intend to state the No Safe Access for Pedestrians problem and suggest the Complete the Street solution at a meeting tomorrow evening of Staten Island's premier environmental organization, Protectors of Pine Oak Woods, of which I'm a member. The Greenbelt's administrator is scheduled as guest speaker, so I'll be directing my questions and comments to her.

I'll report on the meeting in a day or two.

Walking as a disaster preparedness strategy

Perhaps a year ago, perhaps more, blue and white street signs began cropping up on Staten Island (and, I assume, in the other boroughs) directing drivers, in case of an emergency, to the nearest disaster shelter.

Are the disaster planners (an unfortunate term, but you know what I mean) seriously relying on private cars to shepherd New Yorkers to safety? In the aftermath of a disaster, designating private cars as a principal means of mobility is folly. Especially in parts of Staten Island and the other outer boroughs, where local roads are often three-lane former cowpaths or the equivalent. It's a prescription for Road Rage on Steroids.

When disaster struck downtown on 9/11, people didn't wait in vain for a cab or waste time looking for their car keys, assuming they had any; no, those who could, walked or ran from disaster as fast as their feet could carry them. Uptown, downtown, across bridges and onto ferries with 6,000-passenger capacities. Any way they could get away.

GIVE WALKERS MORE LEG-ROOM

The lesson here is that walking should be a central element of the city's disaster preparedness strategy. Which means that we should be doing much, much more to promote walking--not only as a good health strategy, but as a transportation option just like a bike, a bus, or the train.

But there's got to be more to the effort than feel-goody public service announcements. And what's needed is not only more space, but more access:

•In too many outer-borough neighborhoods, the roadway is for cars and the space on either side of the road is somebody's lawn you're not supposed to walk on. Install sidewalks on streets that have none, and maintain them for active use

•Every East River bridge has a pedestrian walkway, all in active daily use by walkers and bicyclists. It's long past time to retrofit all major regional bridges with pedestrian walkways to maximize access and egress for those who don't drive or own automobiles. I'm a Staten Islander, so the Verrazano, the Goethals and the Outerbridge Crossing are the three that come immediately to mind, but I'm sure there are many others.

Because they enhance citizens' ability to cope in an emergency situation, these projects should be paid for, in my opinion, by Homeland Security and/or other appropriate funding sources (FEMA?).

Your thoughts?

Is driver intimidation of cyclists and pedestrians getting worse?

In a report entitled "Biking the Mean Streets of L.A." in the September 6 STREETSBLOG (http://www.streetsblog.org), contributor Jason Varone quotes from a Los Angeles Times story on the alarming rise of violence directed against bicyclists in L.A. by automobile drivers:

Scott Sing has had a tire iron hurled at him, a water bottle thrown at his head and been bombarded with racial epithets. And all he was trying to do was ride his bike on Los Angeles city streets.

His cycling and running brethren tell similar tales -- of being peppered with flying objects, cursed or otherwise assaulted -- and those don't even include the stories of near-misses and actual collisions.

To any pedestrian who's been yelled at or even threatened by a furious driver for not crossing quickly enough--or, worse, for failing to defer to the driver's assumed "right" to proceed across an intersection before the pedestrian does--Scott Sing's story has a very familiar ring.

Bicyclists who ride on city streets are certainly more physically vulnerable than pedestrians/walkers. But both groups share a common characteristic in the driver's mind. They--we--are impediments many drivers tolerate, but barely. We are a foot on their brake pedals, forcing them to slow down or stop; forcing them to take account of something other than other cars. When what they want to do, of course, is exercise their right to accelerate and roar off down the street--a right that countless TV commercials tell them is inalienably theirs. We are what stands between them and their ability to exercise that right.

My expectation, I'm sorry to say, is that as more and more people choose transportation modes other than the private car--and as they become a larger and more vocal constituency, demanding an equitable balance in how sidewalk and roadway space is apportioned--intimidation and outright violence directed toward bicyclists and pedestrians will worsen.

And you? What has your experience been? What are your expectations?

Staten Island Greenbelt to walkers: "Get some wheels or get lost."

According to the Google pedometer--thanks again to the readers who recommended this useful service ( http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/ )--I walked a total of 14.165 miles yesterday. High Rock Park in Staten Island's Greenbelt was my destination, and I got there--a total of 7.176 miles, one way--in two hours (3 1/2 miles/hour--not bad).

The first two-thirds of the walk were uneventful. Neighborhoods went from old to middle-aged to almost new. Complexions and spoken languages changed and changed again. Approaching the Greenbelt there were large institutional buildings on grassy "campuses." But once I was inside the Greenbelt, the last leg of the trip, everything changed. Wide sidewalks ended abruptly, leaving a walker only a narrow strip of macadam, demarcated by a not-always-visible white line (and sometimes, not even that). I could hear many of the passing cars slow down as they approached, and many gave me wide berth. But many whizzed by, fast and scarily close.

Walkers have right of safe access to the Greenbelt just as those who arrive in cars do. We represent a fraction of the footprint of a car, in terms of the space we occupy and the impact we have on the environment. Yet cars, often with only one occupant, are provided roads and other facilities built and maintained by the tax dollars of walkers as well as drivers. For our tax dollars, we get a narrow, dangerous strip of deteriorated macadam.

No fair.

Sidewalks should be installed bordering every main road, street or avenue in the Greenbelt. Those who walk should not be shunted off to the side of a shared roadway where drivers have every advantage and walkers have none. Greenbelt purists may be mortified, at first, at the idea of sidewalks encroaching on the Greenbelt's 'Forever Wild' mandate. But providing a means of access for those who walk rather than ride is a matter of fairness and equity a pretty fundamental American ideal.

But as things stand now, at a time of dwindling energy resources and accelerating climate change caused in part by a transportation system based on the automobile, the message sent by the Greenbelt's roadways couldn't be clearer: Get some wheels or get lost.

Walking and class

Until I began reading Rebecca Solnit's extraordinary Wanderlust: A History of Walking (Viking; 2000), I wasn't aware that those magnificent English estate gardens created in the 18th and 19th centuries served a purpose beyond horticulture or design. As much as anything else, they were places made for walking.

"The walkers in the garden," writes Solnit, "had been anxious to distinguish their walking for pleasure from that of those who walked for necessity, which is why it was important to stay within the garden's bounds and not to walk as travel . . ." (emphasis added).

The importance of walking only for some secondary purpose (weight loss, cardiovascular health, spiritual enlightenment) continues in our own day, not very different from the perambulations of Solnit's walkers in the garden, who strolled for the secondary purposes of contemplation, conversation and aesthetic delight.

To walk endlessly on a treadmill or around an air-conditioned mall is touted as an effective fitness strategy. But if you walk from here to there--and, nearly as bad, if you're seen boarding a bus to do anything other than get to work--it must be because you can't afford to own a car. There is no clearer mark of class identity than that.