Walkability archive at RunawayJim.org

Archive for the 'Walkability' Category

Why $4+ Gas is a Good Thing

Published on July 3, 2008 in Environmentalism, Walkability, Transit and Urban Issues. 2 Comments

Gas is expensive. That’s a no brainer. Most people are bemoaning the increased prices in gasoline and pushing the government to do something about it. However, I don’t have a problem with expensive gas. Now before you go and accuse me of being one of those people who doesn’t drive and takes public transportation or walks everywhere, that’s not me. I drive to work everyday. Yes, you read that right. I live in the same city in which I work and I drive to work. It’s about a mile and a half each way, but I drive. Why do I drive? Easy. I’m lazy. I don’t like mornings. Driving gives me the opportunity to sleep a little later. Why don’t I just take the bus you ask? Another easy one. The bus is not convenient in Providence unless you live downtown or live and work on the same bus route. Susan takes the bus everyday for a couple reasons. The first is that we live on the same bus route as the one that goes to Brown. The second is that there’s a waiting list for a parking space at Brown, which would cost $400 per year and would likely be the same distance as if she walked halfway to work. So long as she’s working at Brown, she will never drive to work. If I could easily take the bus, I would. But I can’t. I don’t walk because I live and work on a hill, but there’s a valley in between and a 4 lane “super highway” is the only reasonable route to walk. I also sweat a lot, and we have a ridiculous dress code at work (one that no other college I know of has). Now that the PC gym charges, I can’t just stop there and take a shower at work. It would take me about half an hour to walk to work, it would actually take me a little longer to take the bus.

Now, why is $4 (and rising) gas a good thing? Because it forces people and the government (federal, state, and local) to rethink things. Public transit ridership has increased greatly across the country. People are moving closer to work. More people are telecommuting when possible. All this adds up to less pollution, less congestion on the roads, and less suburban sprawl.

With all of this, there is good reason for people to petition their local and state governments to increase public transportation options and increase the money they spend on public transportation. Local governments should enforce good urban design and help create walkable neighborhoods. There is no reason that the United States should not have a quality extensive, inexpensive railway network across the country connecting all the major cities. People in Europe travel almost exclusively by train, public transportation, walking, or bicycles. It all depends on how far they’re going. There is no reason people in the United State shouldn’t be doing just that. However, we do not have an extensive railway network. We do not have the extensive public transportation options of Europe. Aside from our major cities and some smaller village centers, we do not have walkable neighborhoods. The 50’s and 60’s and the new “American Dream” of white pickett fences, expansive lawns, and large houses in the suburbs killed all of that. We have taken cheap gas, something Europe has never seen, for granted. We are now paying the price of the suburban dream.

Time has a great article called “10 Things You Can Like About $4 Gas”. It’s worth a read. Maybe I’ll attempt to ride the bus to work sometime this summer. If it’s not as bad as I expect it to be, perhaps I’ll do it all the time. In the meantime, I’ll continue to drive. I have stopped coming home for lunch to save some gas.

Share and Enjoy:

I heart New Haven

Published on April 18, 2008 in Walkability, Transit and Urban Issues. 3 Comments

I went to a little conference today at Yale University in New Haven, CT. I grew up in Branford, just outside New Haven. So I’m pretty familiar with the area. I spent Thursday night at my brother’s house and thought I’d take the train in to avoid parking fees and traffic. The nice thing is for a city of about 124k, there are decent mass transportation options (CT Transit bus, Dattco bus, Shoreline East commuter rail, Amtrak, and Metro-North). Heck, New Haven even has its own, albeit tiny, airport.

So I woke up this morning and went to the train station where I saw this cute sign warning of flooding. I was early so I had about a 15-20 minute wait for the Shoreline East train. However, about 10 minutes after the train should have come and gone, an announcement came saying that the train wasn’t coming and Amtrak would be making all the stops. Half an hour after the train was supposed to leave, Amtrak shows up. I make sure they’re going to stop at the State St. station when I get on. The conductor assured me they were. That was good. Approaching the station, however, they announced that Metro-North put them on a track not adjacent to the platform and they wouldn’t be stopping there. At least they never collected fares from us. I ended up at Union Station, making my walk to Yale more than double what it would’ve been. Luckily, today was absolutely beautiful. So that’s the mass transit horror story for the day, but it was worth it. The walk was nice and I wasn’t late.

Now, onto New Haven in general. Having grown up there, I have a certain affinity for New Haven. It’s a fine city that went through some rough times, but has pulled out of those. I can’t help but compare it to Providence. Unfortunately, there’s no comparison. Downtown New Haven is an urban delight. It’s very walkable, the development is very urban, it’s clean, and it’s super vibrant (though having Yale right downtown helps a bit with the vibrancy). I know Yale had a lot to do with this, but why isn’t Brown or RISD or Johnson & Wales or even Roger Williams and URI with their downtown campuses helping clean up downtown Providence? Why aren’t they helping in the development of downtown? Why isn’t Providence College cleaning up Elmhurst and Wanskuck? While Yale has a whole lot more resources than any of these RI colleges do on their own, together they could really move Providence in a positive direction. I mean, we have 5 colleges located fully within the city limits (URI and RWU are just satellite campuses, but counting those and CCRI, there are 8 colleges in Providence). New Haven has 4 (Yale, Southern CT State University, Albertus Magnus, and Gateway Community College).

New Haven has great signage for restaurants and shops. There are even pedestrian/driving signs telling you where the points of interest are. Street signs are abundant and even the “No Parking” signs are standing upright and are clearly visible and not faded. It’s amazing what all the little things add up to become. Downtown New Haven is not a whole lot bigger than downtown Providence. If you don’t count the Yale area (which would be like College Hill in Providence), then downtown is about the same size as downtown Providence (including the Jewelry District). Yet New Haven is clean and it feels safe all over downtown. The signs are inviting, the streets are lit at night. It feels like a much larger city, yet it has about 50,000 fewer people than Providence.

Being in the same class of cities, Providence should be looking to New Haven as a model of how to do things correctly. The new construction in the downtown area is all very urban. Granted, there’s that whole Long Wharf area that is not at all urban with Ikea’s massive parking lots, but downtown, and many of the other neighborhoods are very urban. The biggest issue in downtown New Haven is the massive parking lot that was once the New Haven Coliseum (aka Veterans Memorial Coliseum), but that would be considered business as usual in Providence.

Share and Enjoy:

Sidewalk dining…

Published on August 25, 2007 in Walkability, Providence, Food and Urban Issues. 0 Comments

This has been a pet peeve of mine for a while. I enjoy going out to eat, and on a nice summer night, there’s nothing like sitting outside while eating. That pleasure vanishes when your dining “room” has suddenly become someone else’s walkway. I live in Federal Hill about a block from Atwells Ave, the dining Mecca of Providence. The street is lined with restaurant after restaurant. The sidewalks on Atwells Ave are not the extra wide sidewalks found in super pedestrian cities like New York or Boston. They’re regular old Providence city sidewalks. If I had to guess at the width of them, I’d say about 6 feet or so from the building to the curb. The restaurants have decided that they need to attract tourists with their “outdoor dining”. That means that tables have been setup on these already somewhat narrow sidewalks to accommodate the diners. Some tables are round, some are square, some are two-tops some are 4 tops, some are setup square to the building, others are setup more diamond shape. These tables end up taking up about 4 feet of the space on the sidewalk, that’s two-thirds of the room, 66% of the space to walk. Now, on a night like tonight, with humidity near 90% and temps in the 80’s, you’d think that people wouldn’t want to eat outside. That is except for the fact that it’s “quaint” to eat out side. You get the lovely ambiance of the cars driving by, the guys giving cat calls to the girls crossing the street, the cars parked on the sidewalk, and the pedestrians, remember the pedestrians, this is a city after all, bumping into you because they have to dodge the valets flying in and out in front of the restaurants and the sandwich board signs in front of every restaurant advertising that they have valet. That brings me to another point… are these signs even permitted to be there and do all the restaurants really need valet? There’s a strip with 3 restaurants - Siena, 242, and Opa - each of which with their own valet and sidewalk dining (and these are the worst offenders with taking up too much of the sidewalk).

In an urban environment on a street that attracts so many pedestrians at all times of the year, especially the summer, the tables and the sandwich boards should not be allowed. The restaurants on Atwells Ave do not need the outdoor dining to attract customers. They simply need to be open, especially in the summer. There is no shortage of people who want to eat and on a night like tonight, every restaurant on Atwells was packed to the brim.

Note to anyone who has an interest, outdoor seating, while important to the tourists, does not belong on narrow sidewalks. Take a lesson from Trinity Brewhouse. They have a “deck” attached to the building with outdoor seating. The building is set back a bit more from the street than anywhere on Atwells. If Atwells were bigger, it’d work, but it’s not. The outdoor seating is not attracting anyone, and the only people eating out there are doing so because it’s the only option. It might give you a few more tables and a few more customers, but it kills the flow of pedestrian traffic and I’m sure the customers aren’t overly happy with pedestrians bumping into them while they’re dining.

And for the valets, there needs to be a central valet stand for each block on Atwells, not one for each restaurant. The restaurants can pay into it somehow, but they cause more problems with traffic and the people who work the valet don’t give any regard to traffic laws.

Share and Enjoy: