Monday, November 21, 2011
City Looking For Ways To Make Streets Safer On Foot
SRTC staff works with the City of Spokane and representatives of other jursidictions and groups on several movements to make getting around without a car easier. Two of those movements, Complete Streets and the City's Pedestrian Plan, are addressed in this Spokesman-Review article. Everyone admits that the City is lacking such things as sidewalks that make it easier and safer for pedestrians to get around but the snag seems to be how to fund them and where do you draw the line?
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8 comments:
Well I live about half way between Rogers High School and Whitman Elementary School so every day there are students walking both ways. Three of the 6 blocks along Helena have no sidewalks on two of the blocks and only a sidewalk on one side of the third block. This is a very old neighborhood and most all of the east west streets have sidewalks, while the north south streets have few sidewalks. At the Hillyard Steering Committee meeting last week we voted no money for sidewalks based on few people using the sidewalks, and everyday you can see the Rogers students walking down the middle of the streets even if there is a sidewalk available. I do have a problem with the city burying the sidewalks when they snowplow, so they need a parking strip to plow the snow onto.
We observed school dismissal at Salk Middle School a couple years ago and observed the same thing- kids walking down the middle of the street when there were sidewalks on either side. Kids will be kids, I guess.
Generally when a construction project is in the works, City engineers visit the individual neigbhorhood council meetings in advance to run the plans past them. So if the neighborhood isn't interested in putting money into sidewalks that can be taken into consideration. Hopefully everyone is on the same page about it.
We started out with $30,000 for sidewalks, but many more rounds of discussion on the needs of the area, we ended up with no money for sidewalks, so we are interested in sidewalks, but ran out of money to allocate to sidewalks.
Process of prioritizing huh? Just like making your own budget at home- start with paying for what's most important and when you're out of money you quit paying for things. Sorry, didn't mean to imply you 'weren't interested' in general. These days you just really have to decide what's most important and take care of those things.
Great quote in Mia Birk's book Joyride (about her experience helping build Portland's bike network): "Whatever we do induces demand in that direction. If we provide on-street parking, people will park cars. If we provide a bike lane, people will bike."
She wasn't talking about sidewalks but I'd add, "If we provide a sidewalk, people will walk."
I commented at length on the Spokesman story so I won't repeat it here. I'll just point out that EVERYONE who uses the transportation system at some point has to get from the vehicle (bike, bus, car etc.) to the end destination. Unless you're teleporting, that means we ALL use sidewalks.
More of my issues here: http://bikestylespokane.com/2011/11/12/dont-settle-for-incomplete-streets-2/
Like we always say around here, everyone is a pedestrian at SOME point. What's encouraging to me is that we're at least debating it these days. It was only about seven years ago when I got into the transportation field, and at that time the occasions that I'd hear someone request bike or walking facilities were pretty few and far between.
Also poor timing by the city of Spokane. A few hours before our meeting they sent an E-Mail that if we funded any sidewalks they needed the sidewalks picked and sent to the city engineer by the first week of December, so the sidewalk committee got the notice at the meeting and really were not prepared for such short notice as always before they had till February to pick the sidewalks
Ugh, I hate it when that happens, but unfortunately in government it happens sometimes. We get notification sometimes that there is money available for various items, but the way our Board meetings fall, and other factors, sometimes make for extremely short deadlines. That's why we're trying to be proactive and develop lists of priority projects in advance so next time we'll be ready. If someone asks what we would like funded, we already have a list ready.
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