![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
What is wrong with walking?
Inspired by this thread.
Americans, particularly of the non-"country" variety, seem to have a horrible ingrained bias against walking. Ignore the truly lazy and obese folks, who this rant is not particularly aimed at; I am talking about people capable of walking a couple of miles without hurting themselves who are simply turned off by the concept of walking more than the physical act.
The trip from your parking spot to the front door of a theater, mall, or anything else with a large lot can easily be a quarter mile. The mostly-indoor path from the front door of the Hyatt to the back door of the Hilton at Dragon*Con is over half a mile. A circuit of the typical mall on a shopping trip, especially if you include aisle-by-aisle coverage of a few department stores, can easily involve multiple miles of walking. These are things you do not think twice about doing, you are at point A, then ten minutes or two hours later you are at point B, no big deal...
But then someone actually suggests out loud that you do something that involves walking a half, or heaven forbid whole, mile. Are they crazy? Absolutely out of the question, what respectable person actually walks anywhere these days? Suddenly this thing that you do voluntarily on a daily basis becomes anathema, not even worth considering.
This is part of a larger problem involving people who unreasonably avoid public transit, refuse to take Greyhound or Amtrak, etc. What has gone wrong with our culture to cause this? How can we fix it?
Americans, particularly of the non-"country" variety, seem to have a horrible ingrained bias against walking. Ignore the truly lazy and obese folks, who this rant is not particularly aimed at; I am talking about people capable of walking a couple of miles without hurting themselves who are simply turned off by the concept of walking more than the physical act.
The trip from your parking spot to the front door of a theater, mall, or anything else with a large lot can easily be a quarter mile. The mostly-indoor path from the front door of the Hyatt to the back door of the Hilton at Dragon*Con is over half a mile. A circuit of the typical mall on a shopping trip, especially if you include aisle-by-aisle coverage of a few department stores, can easily involve multiple miles of walking. These are things you do not think twice about doing, you are at point A, then ten minutes or two hours later you are at point B, no big deal...
But then someone actually suggests out loud that you do something that involves walking a half, or heaven forbid whole, mile. Are they crazy? Absolutely out of the question, what respectable person actually walks anywhere these days? Suddenly this thing that you do voluntarily on a daily basis becomes anathema, not even worth considering.
This is part of a larger problem involving people who unreasonably avoid public transit, refuse to take Greyhound or Amtrak, etc. What has gone wrong with our culture to cause this? How can we fix it?
no subject
Not sure how many answers I have to the questions posed, but I share them.
no subject
By the way I do take Greyhound and Amtrak quite a bit rarely fly, unless it's uber cheap (which a lot of the times it's cheaper than Amtrak), used to love long distance driving and exploring (until gas prices shot that down this year), and I'm an avid fan of Mass transit, but I'm spoiled by NYC's Mass transit system.
no subject
All that said, a lot of the south, especially Atlanta and it's surrounding suburbs, are not set up for walking. Sidewalks are few and far between, often making walking dangerous. Crosswalks are exceptionally far apart from each other, making getting from one side or the other either difficult or dangerous.
As a matter of, if you google "pedestrian fatality atlanta" you'll find that while the rest of the country has declined in pedestrian fatalities, Atlanta did not. I can't find figures for this year, but our 2004 statistics were far beyond the rest of the country. In 1999 the CDC even declared Atlanta as the highest in pedestrian fatalities. There was a caucus on what to do about it.
The problem is that nobody cares. Rich people have cars, poor people walk. Rich people contribute to political campaigns, poor people do not. Rich voices speak louder and clearer than the poor.
Several times since I moved here 16 years ago have there been public forums on expanding the transit system, but it doesn't happen. One, it is unbelievably underused and two, more moneyed suburbs have again and again said that they do not want transit coming to their area. That it would bring people from the poor areas to their area to rob and steal.
Seriously.
Read between the lines and there is a very, very racist statement there coming from the suburbs.
This city is racist and classist. They want to stay separated.
Until the rich take it to their heads to walk around regularly, or use Marta the transit will suck, (really, if you don't live where the trains are, and have to take the buses, you have to add on a half hour to an hour to any trip time) there will be no sidewalks regularly, crosswalks will be hard to find and placed too far apart and people will continue to die on the Atlanta streets at a higher rate than the rest of the country simply because it's an ignorable problem.
no subject
Yeah, if you sit down and look at the metro lines, you can see a clear separation of socio-economic regions that are reinforced by public transit.
Man, I WISH MARTA came out to Stone Mountain and Duluth (I live in SM and work in D), it would save me a TON on gas money.
no subject
MARTA 120 runs from SM to Avondale station, then train to 5-points. Gwinnett 103A runs on a limited schedule (it's the reverse commute option, the normal 103 only goes into Atlanta in the morning) from 5-points to Discover Mills. Total trip time, about 1:30, how does that compare to your current drive?
Caveat... Gwinnett express buses are *expensive*. $150/mo for a unlimited pass.
no subject
no subject
no subject