Sidewalks Make Safe Places

Recently here at WalkBoston we had an internet and phone outage that left me, trusty intern, without my usual work to do. Fortunately it so happened that I had been reading Jane Jacobs' prolific book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities during my bus commute to Boston, so I have that to share with you. Jacobs, who rejected the orthodox city planning of her time (1950s-60s), discusses at length the uses of sidewalks with what would be considered even today very progressive thinking.

Sidewalks are not just spaces that should be designed with safety in mind, Jacobs argues, they are safety-creating devices. Cities, unlike towns and suburbs, are literally full of strangers. However, sidewalks, when operating well, create an environment that makes you or me feel safe sharing the street with the city's strangers.

Jacobs speaks quite approvingly of Boston's very own North End neighborhood, writing that its streets are some of the safest one could ever experience (and the North End was quite different in her day). Its sidewalks work so well because they are populated at all times throughout the day. People in the North End use the sidewalks before, during, and after the work day; they use them for pleasure strolls, performing errands, socializing, and going out for a meal, a drink, or a pastry. The North End is what planners call a mixed-use neighborhood—many activities perform there, all in close contact. As a result, there are almost always what Jacobs calls “eyes on the street.”

A place like the North End rarely needs closed-circuit television monitoring or doormen to watch the street. Instead, through its day-and-night activity, the North End has built-in eyes—the activity all along its sidewalks.

It's the middle of February; how's your winter going?

You wouldn't expect your neighbor to clear the snow on the street in front of his house, so why would you depend on him to clear the sidewalk in front of it?

(From Phil's Blog)

In Massachusetts, we get most of our snow in February and March, so I'm anticipating some big storms in the next few weeks, but we've had a couple of notable ones already this year. Last week's dud notwithstanding, last night walking home from Davis, before most of my neighbors had shoveled their walks, I found myself slipping and sliding all over the place! That's not exactly the kind of excitement I'm looking for on my walk home.

How is your neighborhood doing on snow clearance? Does your city have a snow clearing ordinance?

The Built Environment, Activity, and Walking

This weekend's incredibly gorgeous weather forecast has me eagerly anticipating a lot of time in the sunshine, and thinking about what a huge impact the built environment can have on people in innumerable ways.

Today, a friend sent me a link to Not Just Child’s Play, an article in BU Today about a study that has found that renovated playgrounds appear to improve the MCAS math scores of kids who attend those schools. It may be that a nice playground makes kids feel more invested in school, or more valued, or it may mean they're more likely to run around and be active over the course of the day. Who knows, but whatever the cause, there seems to be a connection between the built environment around schools and kids' ability to learn.

Similarly, another friend send me a link to Brain Gains, a feature focusing on the huge benefit to learning that physical activity provides. Many of us live in environments that don't encourage, or actively discourage physical activity and movement over the course of the day, and an increasing body of research suggests that this is bad for our physical health, mental health, learning, productivity and mood.

Is your physical environment encouraging you to be active? Do you have sidewalks or trails where you can walk? Can you easily cross streets and do you enjoy greenery and clean streets in your neighborhood? Are there places to walk to, if you want to run errands on foot?

Increasingly, it appears that the answers to these questions have implications not merely for how much you walk but also for how you feel, how friendly and welcoming your neighborhood is, how much crime takes place there, and the price of homes there. We at WalkBoston often wrestle with the perception of walking as a "pedestrian" activity that people take for granted, but pedestrian advocacy is important because it connects to almost every element of our lives.

Give my sidewalks dignity

Last Friday, I was at the Congress for New Urbanism's New England chapter for their Sustainable Urbanism Summit in Portsmouth, NH. There was an excellent series of speakers who offered a number of insights, thoughts, and perspectives on the future of urbanism and sustainability in coming years. Check out the links if you're interested in learning more!

A lot of what was discussed captured my thoughts, but in particular, I've been mulling over Jason Schrieber's comments on what makes people take public transportation. As an avid walker, I am also an proponent of public transit, so I care a lot about this issue, but I also found part of what he said to be directly relevant to walking planning and infrastructure, too.

We all know that people are more likely to take public transit if it provides gains in time, cost, goes where people want to go; that's all pretty intuitive, right? But Jason talked about a fourth factor that's often overlooked: dignity. That is, even if I were going to save time and money and be delivered more or less door-to-door by public transit, I might still choose to take a private vehicle if the transit option is unpleasant, or makes me feel lousy, undervalued, or unimportant.

How many of us have decided to take transit somewhere only to find the bus stop poorly marked, wait forever for a bus that never showed up, have transit employees be unhelpful or unfriendly, poorly maintained and cleaned facilities, broken escalators, and delays that are never explained. If you take public transit even occasionally, you've probably had one or more such experience. Folks who take it every day run into this kind of thing a lot, and, of course, some systems are worse than others. For people who have a choice in how to travel, this kind of thing discourages use of public transit. For people who are obligated by economic or other constraints to rely on public transit as their primary or only means of travel, this sort of thing can reinforce the cultural idea that they don't "deserve" better service. That's bad for all of us, I think, but that's a longer, larger discussion.

This point about dignity is an important one, however, and it extends beyond public transit. Pedestrians are often subjected to incredibly lousy walking conditions, but because we don't think of sidewalks as services in the same way that we do public transit, we may overlook this. But it's one of the primary areas that we at WalkBoston focus our attention. When sidewalks are in poor repair, are too narrow, are dirty, feel (or are) unsafe, we are discouraged from walking, and those who do walk, either by choice or by necessity, are cast as second class citizens. When these conditions exist alongside expensive and well-maintained roads, we demonstrate our greater interest in cars than in people.

Many of us take the walking infrastructure as-it-exists for granted. It's just what is, and that's that. But sidewalks, pathways, and other public areas don't spring up out of nowhere. They are the result of intentional or unintentional decisions on the part of policy-makers, funders, communities and individuals. As walkers, we can request and even demand a walking environment that is not only functional but also dignified.

Snow Legislation: what happened?

Back in January, I asked you to call Governor Patrick's office in support of a house bill in support of making changes to snow clearing legislation. This would have made a variety of changes to how municipalities could handle snow and snow clearing, including by increasing the possible fines, adding teeth to enforcing those fines, and removing liability from residents who do clear snow from their walkways. Unfortunately, Governor Patrick vetoed this legislation, much to the great disappointment of many. Thank you all for your calls, and I'll be keeping you updated on next steps relating to the possibility of this legislation being refiled and/or other things WalkBoston will be doing to improve the state of snow clearance on pedestrian ways in Massachusetts.

Enrique Peñalosa on Urban Happiness

Last Thursday, I attended a lecture by Enrique Peñalosa, former mayor of Bogotá, who was visiting Boston through Livable Streets, and Institute for Transportation and Development Policy last week. He also visited the WalkBoston offices for a couple of lively lunchtime conversations.

What I found most engaging about Peñalosa was not any particular design suggestion he made for cities. Most of us who are interested in urbanism are familiar with ideas like creating more open space, making bigger sidewalks, bike lanes, and the like, and most of us who are working in the field in Boston know better the streets that would most benefit from an overhaul. What Peñalosa offers, however, is a way of thinking that represents a true paradigm shift in how we approach the politics of urban design.

In essence, what he proposes is that the city be considered habitat for humans, and that people should be the primary focus for urban design. We have Environmental Impact Reviews, he pointed out, but not Human Impact Reviews. Cities planned for cars are cities that institutionalize class-based inequality, as they prioritize the transportation of people who can afford cars over the safety, enjoyment, and transportation of people who can't, or who choose not to. Therefore, reorienting the city towards pedestrians is a move toward equality.

To this end, we should see sidewalks not as relatives of streets, whose job is to get people from here to there, but instead as relatives of parks, which are all about people's pleasure of place. At intersections, the sidewalk should remain at a level, making cars come into pedestrians' space rather than make pedestrians step into the car zone to get across the street. Sidewalks should come first, then room for public transportation, which is a public good, and only if there's room should there be street space for private vehicles in the public way.

What would our cities look like if they put people first?

Break ice while the weather's nice!

Today, it's supposed to be over 40 degrees here in the Boston area. This is a great chance for those folks who've fallen behind on sidewalk clearing to get ahead of tomorrow's snow! There's nothing so treacherous as pitted ice under a camoflaging layer of new snow, so you'll be doing your neighbors and neighborhood a good deed if you have a chance to get out there and clear old ice this afternoon.

I know it's hard to stay on top of the snow this year, but it makes a big, big difference to both individuals and communities for everyone who's able to do their part.

Who are we accomodating: people or cars?

As I walked to the T this morning, I observed several snowplows getting a jump on clearing the streets as the first couple of inches of snow (4-6 predicted for Somerville, where I live) had fallen. Somerville does a great job of keeping the streets well-cleared.

Similarly, some of my neighbors had gotten a jump on the snow by clearing the first couple of inches off their sidewalks before heading to work. As in many cities and towns in Massachusetts, Somerville residents are required to clear their sidewalks of snow within a reasonable time after a storm stops or face fines (and cranky neighbors).

As anyone who's been walking around the urban and semi-urban areas around Boston this month has no doubt noticed, however, sidewalk-clearing policies still result in spotty walking conditions. In my neighborhood, where there's a high volume of foot traffic, I see a lot of people (myself included!) giving up on sidewalks and simply walking in the street.

Every time I see this, I think about how much we need to change the prevailing approach. Why does the city clear streets but not sidewalks? (Some cities do plow sidewalks with small plows, either throughout the city [Brookline] or in commercial areas [Belmont].) In more rural areas where few people move about by foot, this may be a sensible distribution of resources on the basis of people's use of sidewalks, but in areas with high numbers of foot traffic, it simply doesn't make sense.

People should be the beneficiaries of municipal policies, and in densely populated areas well-served by public transit, that includes people on foot as well as in cars. It's past time to realign our narrow, car-centric thinking to a more inclusive approach.

Unshoveled sidewalk? Make the call

With winter in full swing, I'm thinking about snowy and icy sidewalks on a daily basis. Over the weekend, I saw a number of problem spots in Cambridge and Somerville. Of course, there's the typical sidewalk that didn't get cleared after snow, and has been packed down by pedestrians into an uneven, pitted layer of slick ice. These are a pain both for people walking by and for the homeowner who suddenly realizes that it's now or never to clear that ice before the next storm, and I saw (and thanked) a lot of people who were out chipping ice during the day on Saturday.

I also saw a number of crosswalk push-buttons buried behind a big pile of snow, meaning that in order to reach the button to get a walk phase at that intersection, I had to climb up on an icy pile of snow. In most cases, this was due to the city's snow plowing, and Cambridge should know better!

However, the thing that jumped out at me most was businesses that hadn't cleared their sidewalks. This stood out to me because I have an easy action item coming out of it: when I see an uncleared or poorly cleared sidewalk in front of a business, I can either pop in and tell them that I'm concerned about the state of their sidewalk, or call them later to complain.

I've started doing this with the business at the end of the street where I live, which rarely clears their sidewalk on my street, and I was delighted to see that this morning, for the first time this winter, they'd shoveled along my street! Now, I'm going to call them to say thanks.

Call Governor Patrick TODAY!

Please call the Governor's office TODAY (617-725-4005) to ask Governor Deval Patrick to sign House Bill #4883-08.

This bill would allow municipalities to increase fines for people who do not clear their sidewalks and also establishes that an owner's good faith effort to remove snow or ice will not make that person liable for injuries due to a fall (full text is shown below).

Your friendly reminder phone call need take no more than 30 seconds.

Section 5. A municipality may by ordinances and by-laws provide for the removal of snow and ice from sidewalks within such portions of the municipality as they consider expedient by the owner of land abutting upon such sidewalks. Such ordinances and by-laws shall determine the time and manner of removal and shall affix penalties, not exceeding $200 for each violation thereof. Such ordinances and by-laws shall be specific as to the width of the area to be cleared and the standards for clearance.
An owner, lessor, occupant or other person in charge of real property or an agent thereof who, in good faith, removes or attempts to remove snow or ice from a sidewalk abutting his property shall not be liable for personal injuries allegedly caused by the snowy or icy condition of the sidewalk resulting from his act or omission unless the alleged act or omission constitutes gross negligence.

Let it snow?

Today, I'm surly.

It was a beautiful, cozy weekend to welcome the official start of winter with a couple of big snowstorms in the Boston area. I really love snow, both being out in it and also being inside and watching it fall while sipping a hot drink and enjoying the sight from the comfort of my living room.

What I don't love, however, is dealing with navigating through the complete mess our sidewalks become once the snow is done falling. If this were my personal blog, this post would be full of obscenities, so please feel free to fill them in wherever seems appropriate as you read.

This morning, I mentally praised my neighbors who have done even a moderate job of clearing the snow from their sidewalks in the last few days. Unfortunately, this was largely overridden by muttering about the people (and businesses!!) who haven't even begun clearing their sidewalks, making the sidewalks effectively impassable for pedestrians on their way to ... well, anywhere, really. This meant that nearly all the pedestrians I saw today were walking on the street, which is narrower than usual, due to piles of snow on either side, meaning cars have less room to maneuver around people on foot. This isn't safe or comfortable for anyone!

Also, the street is slippery, as I learned when I had my foot slide right out from under me, so surely some of my grumbling is due to having taken an unpleasant spill first thing today. Fortunately, the cab that was approaching was going slowly enough that there was no risk of my getting run over while I picked myself up.

Nevertheless, this is a great opportunity to remind everyone that snow clearing is an issue of vital concern to all of us. Please check out our snow/sidewalks page to see what WalkBoston has to say on the issue.

And if you have time, why not take a shovel out to the corner and dig a connection between the sidewalk and the street where the plows have left nearly impassable mountains of slush? If you do this and send me a picture, I'll praise you publicly and buy you a pony! Or a coffee. Whichever you'd prefer.

Who uses sidewalks?

Who uses sidewalks?

We first think of walkers when we think of sidewalks, and typically able-bodied walkers at that. We might think of people of different ages, and with different goals to their activities -- some are on an errand and in a hurry, and some are just out for an aimless stroll or wandering with small children. Thinking of being at different paces makes me think also of runners, who frequently use sidewalks, too, and when they're crowded, runners wind up running into frustration, weaving amongst slower users.

Among less able-bodied people, we might see people with canes, crutches, walkers -- moving very slowly -- and people in wheelchairs and scooters -- moving quickly!

Speaking of wheels, I also see kids on kick scooters and the occasional person on inline skates. Probably my least favorite wheel-based travelers on sidewalks are people on bikes, who I always imagine must be equally annoyed by the pedestrians they encounter.

Are the sidewalks in your neighborhoods well designed for all the people who use them?

Measure twice, cut once

Last night, I was walking down Elm Street in Davis Square past the bus stop in front of the Social Security office and Dunkin Donuts. As usual, there was a big crowd of people waiting on and around the bench for a bus. And since it was prime after-work time, there was a lot of car and foot traffic around and about, too.

The sidewalk there is about 8 feet wide, and it's an extremely high-traffic spot. Both the Dunk and the Social Security office have a lot of visitors, the bus stop, especially during rush hour, probably has no fewer than 10 people waiting at any given time, and often 20 or more. And, of course, there are a lot of people walking by on their way to or from engagements in Davis Square.

This sidewalk, I thought to myself as I stepped off the curb and into the street to get around the mass of people waiting for a bus, is insufficient. It's insufficient for any of the uses it sees at rush hour, much less all of them. And it leads to pedestrians stepping out into the street in order to get by, not to mention a lot of frustration and annoyance for all involved.

But what can you do about a sidewalk that's not wide enough? Obviously, taking down the buildings and pushing them back isn't an option. The best bet in this case, actually, is probably a curb extension, which would approximately double the width of the sidewalk and could provide plenty of waiting room for bus riders while clearing the rest of the sidewalk for through foot traffic. This would not lose parking, since the curb would extend into the bus zone, but it would mean that one lane of traffic would be blocked when buses stop to load and unload passengers, which would make it a hard sell.

This got me thinking about the importance of careful and thoughtful design at the beginning of any development. In most cases in urban settings, we're working within the constraints of previous decisions with regards to the built-environment, and that limits what we can do going forward. This will always be true, so it's super important for planners and designers to consider all the uses an area might see. These days, as we look ahead to increasingly costly personal-vehicle use, we know that pedestrian and bike uses of streets will represent more and more of the traffic, especially in dense neighborhoods where that's realistically likely to be a major portion of people's daily trips.

This is one of the reasons that I think the work of WalkBoston is so important. The decisions we make today have a real, immediate, and long-term impact on people, communities and neighborhoods. The fact that I have to step into the street to get through shows a failure in the past to effectively foresee the current uses, and that failure constrains how we can respond now. We're not always going to foresee in an accurate way, but it's incumbent upon us to think carefully about our decisions. At WalkBoston, we daily raise this kind of issue with urban designers and planners to keep all street uses on the table in the planning process.

Walking at night

Thinking about the details that influence my walking routes for the last post here, I also started thinking a lot about how different it is to walk during the day versus at night. A route that is pleasant to walk during the day thanks to its seclusion may feel unsafe at night for the same reason, for example. But more than personal safety changes with the time of day.

Some places that I walk, especially in many of the old neighborhoods that exist in and around Boston, have pretty challenging walking conditions, including sidewalks that are too narrow when they pass by old trees, or that have been pushed into tall, cracked hills by those trees' roots. Brick sidewalks, already somewhat tricky are especially hazardous where they interact with tree roots. And all of these obstacles are even more challenging at night, because those same trees then block the streetlights' illumination of the sidewalk in those areas. This means that when I'm walking at night, I try to choose routes that avoid poorly-lit sidewalks that I know to have obstacles where they interact with trees.

Are there other issues that change your walking habits daytime vs. nighttime?

Choosing a route

Walking to and from the nearest T station to my house involves a relatively straight shot from origin to destination, so I don't tend to put a lot of thought into selecting a route, especially because the most direct route is also the most pleasant, as it takes me on the community bike path near Davis Square. The Porter Square T stop is also a comfortable walk from my house, but it's a little further away, and the walk isn't as enjoyable, so I tend only to go that way when I need to stop at one of the stores in Porter Square on my way to wherever I'm going.

On the work end of my commute, however, I have many more choices. Park Street and Downtown Crossing are equidistant from my office, and neither involves a particularly more or less pleasant walk in comparison to the other. Further, there are a couple of routes from Park Street, equivalent in distance. So, how do I decide?

In general, I select the station that's in the right direction on the rail line for the direction I'm going. If I'm Davis-bound, I go to Park Street. Headed to Andrew? I go to Downtown Crossing.

On the other hand, the walk to Downtown Crossing is almost always much more crowded in the afternoon, and because I'm a relatively brisk walker, I often find crowded sidewalks annoying in the extreme.

One of the routes I can take from Park Street involves less in the way of crowds, typically, but more in the way of construction traffic, and it also takes me past an alley where two restaurants take their trash. Though I'm not particularly squeamish, walking past there can, at times, be stomach-turning, so despite my appreciation of the less crowded sidewalks, I've recently reverted to the other route.

What factors influence your choice of walking route?