Baldwin County roads need smarter usage
You can’t tell from looking around the Eastern Shore, but streets aren’t just for cars. They are public resources, funded by taxes and put down for everybody’s use. And “everybody” isn’t limited to those bodies in cars, trucks, RV’s, etc. All of us should be able to use public streets and roads conveniently and safely without having to drive. There is a term to describe the condition where streets meet the needs of all users: Complete Streets.
It came into being way back in the last century (1990s) as a shorthand descriptor for what organized bicyclists wanted incorporated in the federal and state road-building programs. To be “complete,” a road system should serve the needs of everyone who travels, “be it by automobile, bus, foot or bicycle.” Their efforts paid off at the federal level with the call for states to consider bicycling and walking when building new roads or modifying existing ones.
So what should we expect to see in our Eastern Shore communities in response to these nudges (sometimes in the form of laws) from Washington, DC? As a minimum, pedestrians are provided with sidewalks that are even and well-maintained – wide enough for people to walk side-by-side and for a wheelchair or scooter to negotiate safely. There are crosswalks and “Walk/Wait” signals at major intersections – with cars actually yielding to pedestrians. If the street is a high-speed corridor, the walkway should be well separated from the car lanes.
Bicyclists need some attention too. Although classified as vehicles, they are very vulnerable when competing for space with cars and trucks. Can bicycles be operated on the streets safely? If the answer is anything but an unequivocal “yes,” look for bike lanes or paths that will allow the safe use of bicycles as an alternative to a car.
I could go on describing the “should-haves,” but our Eastern Shore communities fall so far short on these basic measures of serving all users, to do so would just be verbal “piling-on.” We have allowed our leaders to pander to the demands of drivers to the extent that other street users’ needs are ignored. As a result we see private citizens funding sidewalks and civic organizations struggling for years to get a single cycling and walking path built along this side of the bay.
I realize that a lot of our infrastructure is old and pre-dated the recognition of the need for Complete Streets, but as new neighborhoods are being added, nothing has changed. Even where there are city planning documents that incorporate concepts that would take back our streets from drivers – as does Fairhope’s comprehensive plan – critical elements like connectivity are often abandoned in the face of opposition by small groups of vocal residents. The isolated, homogeneous, cul-de-sac neighborhood is alive and thriving on the Eastern Shore, protected by the specter of “others” passing through and somehow lowering property values.
This fear ignores the economic and quality-of-life success of communities like Celebration, Fla. There, the streets are alive with pedestrians, bicycles and electric cars. Every street is “Complete” and you can go any- and everywhere without an internal combustion engine. Especially ironic is that Celebration was designed and built to replicate the appearance and lifestyle of a traditional town-center type community – like Fairhope – while currently Eastern Shore cities appear to have adopted the old car-dependent Southern California neighborhood-enclave model.
My concern is that no matter how strongly proponents push Complete Streets, the mind-set I have just described will keep it from happening. Sure, Olde Town Daphne and the Fruit and Nut district could get some enhancements to make walking and cycling safer. Older and disabled residents may find the sidewalks less heaved and the curb cuts a bit smoother, but overall the car will still be king – in spite of shocking gas prices, unprecedented traffic, environmental degradation (dare I mention Global Warming?), and spreading obesity.
A bright light in all this gloom is an upcoming event: “Walk Your Child to School Day.” This is a special activity for school kids and their parents, designed to get people out of their cars. It’s happening Oct. 8, jointly sponsored by the Fairhope police and planning departments. This experience could make people aware of how hard it is to get around on foot currently and maybe get Complete Streets supported as a civic imperative. To seal the deal, these neophyte pedestrians need only cross Greeno Road.
It’s like dodge-ball on a bigger and more threatening scale – and I’m describing using a marked crosswalk and where there are traffic signals. Sure there’s an element of risk, but it would be very instructive.
I hope that this walking to school thing will not be a rare event. With good fortune, active encouragement by teachers and administrators and a strong commitment by groups of parents (maybe even organizing the “Walking School Bus” I described in this column almost exactly a year ago), I can see this experience as a tipping point – a harbinger of new behavior here on the Eastern Shore. The long lines of SUVs that clog the streets around our schools are gone, families have become accustomed to the idea that using the car often is neither necessary nor even a good idea, and we all experience a new sense of community growing out of seeing our neighbors face-to-face, not car-to-car.
From this small event could come a ground swell of support for opening our streets to everybody, with travel on foot or by bike popular, convenient and, above all, safe.
Contact Pete Gleszer at jubilee@lagniappemobile.com.
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