CDOT – Page 2 – The Naked City Blog

Heads, tales and feet

I walked to work today in what must be considered perfect weather for a 4.5-mile hike: a sunny morning, cool but not cold, blooming bulbs and dogwood trees, grass as vibrant green as the eye can absorb. And just as lovely, today I had no near-death encounters with oblivious drivers.

And those near-death encounters have all taken place where there are sidewalks. When it comes to pedestrian safety, sidewalks are vital, but they are only the beginning of the tale. When you use your feet, you also have to use your head. Every street crossing is a hazard. Every driveway is potentially dangerous. Every side street can be treacherous.

So while I was happy to learn that the Charlotte City Council decided on Monday to shift $2 million from street projects to build more sidewalk segments, no one should think that’s all it takes to make the city safer for anyone on foot. Let us hope the elected officials and the staff can also turn their attention to some of the other things we lack: Safe crossings. Educated drivers.

Here are some of the hazards when you walk, even with sidewalks: Drivers who forget to look both ways before pulling out of driveways or side streets. Drivers who either don’t know or don’t care that you have the right of way, even if they are turning. Because I am alert to this, I did not get hit today by the woman exiting a parking lot who pulled right in front of me as I approached on the sidewalk. (I had already decided to walk behind her car, just to be safe.)

The area has seen several high-profile pedestrian deaths and injuries in the past few months. Two young boys were killed in February as they walked with their father on West Tyvola Road. An 18-year-old Garinger High student was killed trying to cross Eastway Drive near the school. A Central Piedmont Community College student was killed on South Tryon Street as he crossed to get to a bus. A Butler High School student was injured crossing the street near the high school in Matthews. In January a man was killed in uptown Charlotte, at Stonewall and College streets. The next day another pedestrian was hit there.

Almost every day as I drive to and from work along Eastway and North Tryon Street, I see people darting across those busy streets to get to bus stops or stores on the other side. One huge problem is the distance between signalized intersections. As this map shows, if you get very far outside of uptown – which to its credit remains the best urban walking area in the city – you find pedestrians get little respect. Tell people they should only cross at signals, and if the signals are a mile apart you are basically telling them to walk as much as 40 minutes extra to do so.

Here’s a map the city’s Department of Transportation put together about four years ago, showing on how many thoroughfare segments pedestrians have to go at least a quarter-mile (a five-minute walk) or a half-mile (a 10-minute walk) between traffic signals. You can’t tell from this map, but in some places the distances are up to 2 miles.

That’s not the only problem. The intersection at Garinger High School has a signal. But it has no pedestrian crosswalks, and the intersection design allows cars to turn right from Sugar Creek Road onto Eastway without stopping at all. Remember, this is right in front of a large high school. The school opened in 1960, and in that era the city didn’t even offer school bus transportation to students. (I have a friend who graduated from Garinger, Class of 1961.) So it’s fair to say officialdom has had plenty of time to realize that students might be walking to and from the high school.

Another problem: Many of Charlotte’s major streets aren’t owned or managed by CDOT at all, but by the N.C. Department of Transportation. Those state-owned streets include Eastway and South Tryon Street, sites of two of the recent accidents. Butler is also outside CDOT’s jurisdiction.

And finally, even with sidewalks, crosswalks and pedestrian lights, drivers have to be trained to expect pedestrians, and pedestrians have to be trained to walk defensively, ever wary of motorists turning into your path regardless of who has the right of way.

That means that no one should think just building sidewalks solves the problem.Yes, build them and build more of them. But I’d invite our city council members to get out on foot in their districts around the city, to experience the pleasures of long walks on cool spring mornings, with the birds singing and the traffic humming and a sense of danger in the air.

More recognition for Raleigh’s pedestrian enthusiast

Matt Tomasulo, who instigated a creative way to highlight pedestrian issues in Raleigh, makes the big time. Bigger than the BBC? Well maybe not. But this planning-landscape architecture graduate student at N.C. State University is the (Raleigh) News & Observer’s Tar Heel of the Week. I first wrote about Tomasulo on Feb. 6, inviting similar guerrilla urbanism in Charlotte. So far, I’ve heard of none.

However, what’s has happened here has been a tragic string of pedestrian deaths, including two children on a section of West Tyvola Road that lacks sidewalks, and a Garinger High School student at an intersection at Eastway and Sugar Creek roads that lacks any crosswalks or pedestrian lights. I’ll write more about that one later, but it’s worth pointing out that the deaths at Garinger and on South Tryon Street were on state-maintained and state-designed thoroughfares, and the injury of a Butler High School student was in the town of Matthews.

All those deaths and injuries, including others that don’t get much media attention, point to how complicated it is to encourage people in Charlotte to walk more and drive less – for reasons that include health, obesity-reduction, air pollution and saving gas money in household budgets.

We lack sidewalks, of course. But many streets that have sidewalks don’t have safe and convenient street crossings, even where bus stops are heavily used or outside places like high schools where people are routinely walking. Another example of that is Wendover Road behind the rear entrance to Myers Park High School.

Drivers are so unused to seeing pedestrians they’re often oblivious, and pedestrians have to be extraordinarily careful. I have personal experience with this one. Some drivers are aghast when you make them realize they nearly mowed you down. Others are mad you’re there at all and get hostile, apparently unaware state law gives pedestrians in crosswalks the right of way.

In other words, making life safer and more comfortable for pedestrians means using a lot of tools: more sidewalks, more and safer crossings and more driver and pedestrian education.

How to get Americans walking again

Uptown Charlotte, one of the city’s few walkable areas

Yes, we in Charlotte are geeky enough that it’s exciting when the mighty BBC takes note of North Carolina. And the WalkRaleigh campaign that I wrote about Feb. 6 in “Guerrilla wayfinding and the Charlotte dilemma” has hit the big-time, so to speak.

Asking, “How to get America to walk?” the BBC’s piece on Raleigh features WalkRaleigh’s Matt Tomasulo, who was behind what he calls a “self-motivated and unsanctioned” posting of signs telling passers-by how many minutes it takes to walk places in Raleigh. Note, too, that in the video Raleigh’s chief planning officer, Mitchell Silver, appears disinclined to call in the sign police to take down the signs. [Update: Silver reported via Twitter that the signs came down Wednesday. He is in charge of zoning enforcement, he said. He talked first with Tomasulo and they are working on a longer-term strategy to make the signs either a pilot project or permanent, Silver said.]

But maybe the best snippets are from the jogging stroller exercise class, where women with children work out, in a gym, with their strollers because they can’t, or don’t, actually take the strollers out for exercise or a walk. In one great visual, a woman points to a sidewalk that ends abruptly, keeping her from walking to a nearby grocery store.

All of which leads to a question I keep bugging my friends and colleagues with: Why isn’t there a pedestrian advocacy group in Charlotte to do what the bicycle advocates have been doing so effectively? Charlotte Area Bicycle Alliance (aka charlottebikes.org) was founded in 1997 and has successfully raised the profile of bicycling. Is this bicycle nirvana? Of course not. But CABA has worked diligently to be at the table for policy discussions, and has clearly made a difference. So where’s the pedestrian counterpart?

Yes, the Charlotte Department of Transportation did hire a pedestrian planner a few years back, to its credit. But where are the people who’ll hound CDOT about cracked sidewalks and ankle-threatening potholes? Where are the people pushing, pushing, pushing for motorist- and pedestrian-safety campaigns, for more crosswalks and more pedestrian lights and for those pedestrian push-button signals to react sooner than 5 minutes (or so it often seems) after you push them?

(Related news: On Wednesday two young children were killed when they were hit by a truck as they walked with their father to a day care center. They were on a stretch of West Tyvola Road that lacks sidewalks and has narrow shoulders.)

I know plenty of people who care about pedestrian issues, not least of whom is the city’s pedestrian planner, Malisa Mccreedy. But city staff can’t be the effective advocacy group that Charlotte needs. How about a Walk Charlotte? Somebody?

Why Charlotte needs that ‘noose’ study

As expected, the Charlotte City Council on Monday approved the measure to allow a study of the uptown loop and all its interchanges. As I wrote in Time to neuter that noose around uptown Charlotte? the idea to put a cap onto part of Interstate 277 (leaving the highway there, but creating usable space above it) has been proposed since at least 1997.

During discussions for the Center City 2020 Vision Plan, the idea was broached of converting the section of the loop at the north end of uptown into a boulevard, although the final plan only recommended further study.

I checked with Charlotte Department of Transportation’s manager of planning and design, Norm Steinman, about the I-277/I-77 study. He pointed out that the study – which might or might not end up making recommendations for a freeway cap or boulevardization – is needed for a more essential reason. It’s been at least 40 years since the I-277 loop was designed, with its early alignment concepts more than 50 years old. “Obviously,” he said in an email, “a lot of growth has happened since then.” The NCDOT and the Federal Highway Administration essentially have said no more changes can happen to any of the I-277 interchanges without a study.

“For the first time in 50 years we’re taking a look at what should be done,” Steinman told me.

I have in my possession a copy of the 1960 master highway transportation plan for the city of Charlotte, prepared by Wilbur Smith and Associates. It shows the route for I-77 and for a loop around uptown a lot like what eventually opened in the 1980s. (It also shows the Independence Boulevard Freeway, which remains unfinished. Gee.)

Atop this blog is a not-great-quality cellphone photo of that map. Notice how similar it looks to today’s configuration. The study is dated April 1960, so the designs for I-277 must be more than 50 years old. Goodness knows how old the original concept is.

Another highway-street design tidbit: Monday night the council also OK’d a “roadway classification study” for the Brookshire Boulevard and W.T. Harris Boulevard. This is deep in the weeds of transportation policy, but it could be potentially significant. The classification for roadways affects lane widths, speed limits and whether, for instance, they’d have bicycle lanes and sidewalks, which aren’t appropriate along a freeway. The study is necessary, the agenda says, because these two roadways today contain a variety of different roadway classifications, and “are being affected by discrete land development and transportation investment decisions.”

And, let me add, both are high-volume city corridors that, today, look like highways but cut through neighborhood and commercial areas that maybe would be healthier if they weren’t next to freeway-style highways? But that’s just me ….

The problem of pedestrian crossings

After a customer at an Elizabeth neighborhood bar was killed while crossing Seventh Street, the bar’s owner is trying to begin a campaign to add safety measures to the street. (The Observer ran a moving article today on the life of the victim, an Air Force veteran who was engaged to marry.)

A safer Seventh Street is an excellent goal, but the problem is not just for one street in one neighborhood. In another accident late Tuesday, a 14-year-old boy was killed when several cars hit him as he crossed W.T. Harris Boulevard.

The city, to its credit, has been working hard to add sidewalks and tame traffic on many neighborhood streets and thoroughfares. But those measures, by themselves, aren’t all that’s needed to make conditions comfortable and safe for people traveling on foot. Pedestrian crossings are essential. Charlotte doesn’t have enough of them.

In my possession is the 2008 draft of the City of Charlotte’s Pedestrian Plan. It remains unfinished, and thus unadopted. One of the most interesting maps in it shows the distances between signalized intersections (click here for a larger view. If the link doesn’t work, we’re working on that.). Segments greater than a half-mile (a 10-minute walk) are shown in purple, those greater than a quarter-mile (a five-minute walk) are in brown.

Except for a nugget in the center of the map (uptown) the map is a snake-pit of brown and purple squiggles. And I know, from driving around and checking the odometer, that many signalized intersections are farther apart than a half-mile.

For instance, yesterday I used the odometer to check distances between signals (where one could safely cross) on heavily traveled Eastway Drive, North Tryon Street and University City Boulevard, all of them bus routes. I frequently see pedestrians perched on tiny concrete medians as cars whiz past, or crossing in front of cars, typically to get to bus stops on the other side. My findings:

Eastway Drive: From Central Avenue to Kilborne Drive, no signal for crossing for .9 mile. I saw two pedestrians in the median.
From Kilborne to Shamrock Drive, one-third of a mile between traffic signals.
From Shamrock Drive to the signal at Sugar Creek Road, at Garinger High, .4 mile but no pedestrian crosswalk at the light.
Sugar Creek to The Plaza, .4 mile.

North Tryon Street: From Old Concord Road to Tom Hunter Road (served by two bus routes), 1 mile.
From the newly opened I-85 Connector Road to University City Boulevard, a stretch served by two bus routes but with huge gaps in the sidewalk network, .5 mile.

University City Boulevard: No sidewalks from the light at North Tryon to the light at the Target near W.T. Harris Boulevard, no way to cross for .4 mile.

On first glance you’d say a five-minute walk to go 1/4 mile to a signal isn’t so bad. But consider that you have to walk to the light, then back again if, for instance, you’re trying to get across a busy street to get to a bus stop. Humans are not prudent, and most people resist walking 20 minutes out of their way just to cross the street. If the street looks clear, they will cross where they can.

I know trade-offs exist. The more pedestrian lights you have the slower traffic will flow. In spots where motorists aren’t expecting to see a light they tend not to stop, even if the light is red. Pedestrians who believe they can safely cross might get hit. (Update 6:48 p.m. 11/4/11: One unfortunate example took place Thursday night, when a Davidson professor was badly injured when he was hit while in a pedestrian crosswalk.) (Update Nov. 13: The injured man died Nov. 11.)

I ran much of this past Malisa Mccreedy, the pedestrian program manager for the Charlotte Department of Transportation. She replied, via email: “Your effort to bring attention to pedestrian crossings is much appreciated. While the City has a history of working to address the inherited challenges of how our land use and road networks function, it is an ongoing balancing act.” CDOT will focus anew on its Pedestrian Plan starting in 2012, she said.

Bike-sharing deferred, but tax talk moves forward

Did I mention that a Charlotte City Council committee scheduled to discuss a possible bike-sharing program this afternoon was also going to talk about “finding new revenues” for roads? I believe I did. And you don’t have to be a political science professor to know elected officials won’t breeze quickly through any talk of new or higher taxes.

The result: Much information about higher registration fees, new sales taxes, new toll roads and even a vehicle-miles-traveled tax. (For details, see below.) The council’s transportation and planning committee voted to refer the whole topic to the council’s budget committee and to urge city staff to make sure the topic comes up during the council’s retreat next winter.

But no bike-sharing discussion. The committee ran out of time. That discussion is now scheduled for the committee’s Oct. 10 meeting.

For transportation policy geeks and tax policy geeks (I plead guilty), the how-to-fund-it-all discussion was meaty and even, well, sort of fun. The presentation from developer Ned Curran, who chaired a 2008-09 citizen group called the Committee of 21, is here. (For details, read that PowerPoint.) In a nutshell, the Transportation Action Plan, adopted five years ago and due for an update, lays out a series of countywide transportation improvements. The Committee of 21 concluded the gap between identified road needs and known funding sources (federal, state and local) over 25 years is $12 billion. So … how do you find that money?

Curran, CEO of the Bissell Cos., made clear that the committee’s charge was to look specifically at roads, not at other transportation modes. They looked at 19 different revenue options, such as sales tax and gas tax increases, driveway taxes, impact fees, sin taxes and even parking surcharges. (The full list is on page 6 of the presentation on the committee agenda.) They assessed the options based on how related they were to driving, how much revenue they’d produce, how easy to implement and operate, political reality, etc.

The Roads Final Four:

Doubling the $30 vehicle registration tax from $30 to $60 = $18 million a year.
A half-cent Mecklenburg sales tax increase for roads = $81 million. Note, that estimate was before sales tax revenues plunged in 2009. A more recent estimate would be $55 million, Charlotte Department of Transportation chief Danny Pleasant said.
Tolls on all existing interstates in the county = $52 million a year. This, obviously, depends on the toll assessed and what revenue-splitting agreements would be forged with the federal and state governments.
A vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax. Curran said this option has gotten plenty of national discussion and would likely have to take place nationally, but as federal and state gas tax revenues sink due to more efficient cars and and people driving less, the VMT tax will get more credence. Privacy concerns? “If any of us have our phones on in our car, we’re being tracked anyway,” Curran quipped.

As Curran and Pleasant discussed the toll roads situation, it got interesting. A multistate agreement is in the works, they said, with which other states would agree to help each other capture the cents-per-mile tolls if, say, a New York driver zipped through North Carolina on I-95 and didn’t pay the tolls. New York would collect the money (how? that wasn’t clear) and send it to N.C. Meanwhile, North Carolina is one of several states applying for a program to inaugurate tolls on parts of I-95. With more tolls and more states cooperating – and with innovations such as a High Occupancy Toll lane being planned for I-77 in north Mecklenburg – pretty soon you’ve got a VMT anyway.

One doubter about all this: Council member Michael Barnes. “There has never been the political will among elected officials to deal with it [funding transportation],” he said. “I am tired of it.” Count him among skeptics who think council members will, once again, after discussion fail to enact any specific measures to fund the city’s plans for transportation.

A sidewalk legend that just won’t die

Instead of posting this comment on the previous sidewalk piece, “Sidewalks: Fines? Red China? Remove fences?” I want to highlight it here, in hopes of killing some out-of-date misinformation that has a remarkable shelf life in local memory.

The fact that people continue to be confused about whether the city will repair a sidewalk or makes property owners pay for repairs is an indicator, I think, of how lame the city’s overall sidewalk policies and advocacy have been. This shouldn’t be read as an indictment of Charlotte Department of Transportation’s pedestrian program manager, Vivian Coleman. [Note, 1:40 p.m. Jan. 5: Coleman has been promoted and is now Transportation Planner.] She has to swim upstream in a city of nonpedestrians and a city government that is only oh-so-slowly concluding pedestrians do, after all, deserve consideration. Indeed, CDOT may now be more enlightened on that matter than many other local agencies. (Can you say, “Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools”?)

Here’s the comment, sent from “Bruce Keith” sent about 10 p.m. Monday (Jan. 3):
If a sidewalk fails or breaks and the homeowner doesn’t pay to repair it, the city will pave it with Asphalt, even in Historic Districts. This fence most likely is in the right of way but the city should maintain ALL of its infrastructure and ENFORCE all of its ordinances. This fence should be moved or removed and the city should maintain the walk, as it is Public Property in a Public ROW [right-of-way].
Commenter Keith is about 10 years out of date on that repair issue. CDOT used to charge property owners part of repair costs and, if owners wouldn’t pay, the patch was cheap asphalt. But it changed its sidewalk repair policy in 2001. “Just as CDOT repairs potholes for cars, broken sidewalks are repaired to maintain quality facilities for pedestrians,” CDOT spokeswoman Linda Durrett wrote me in an e-mail.

Plenty of Charlotteans don’t realize the repair policy changed, and many repeat that bit of lore, maybe because some of those old asphalt patches are still around? In any event, if you want to read more about sidewalk repair policies, here’s a link.

You’ll note I didn’t address the issue of rights-of-way and whether the city can legally require people to clear off sidewalks in the city (or state) right-of-way. I’m still checking on the legal issues. The city also expects property owners to mow the grass in planting strips, an expectation that doesn’t seem to bring out nearly the hostility as asking people to keep leaves, snow, ice, etc. off their sidewalks. Go figure.

And the comment about rollout trash bins? Yet another reason that those horrible back-of-curb sidewalks are and were an abomination. Thank goodness the city no longer allows them to be built that way. But if you’re in an area that’s stuck with them, you have little choice but to clog the sidewalks with them, and, if you’re thoughtful, haul them back in as soon as you can.

Sidewalks: Fines? Red China? Remove fences?

A commenter to my previous post, who read the Sunday editorial “Urban streets will need urban sidewalks” correctly nailed it with his/her suspicion, based on the Runnymede Lane photo that ran with it, at left, that I was its author. (I’m among the four people at the Observer who write the unsigned editorials on behalf of the editorial board.) And he/she raises one of the trickiest issues that city transportation officials are going to have to confront: If you want to encourage people to walk, how can you ensure that sidewalks are kept clear? Read the comment in full, at the end of this.

Currently, property owners are expected to keep sidewalks clear. But the city’s ordinances are murky about what the city can/can’t order property owners to and it’s generally silent on what punishment is allowed.

The commenter raises the specter of Red China and its cultural education camps. But rather than having an “education czar” (oops, those czars were in Russia, not China), he/she suggests the city should remove the fence shown in the photo. Er, wouldn’t that be taking private property?

The commenter asks if I’ve ever called CDOT (Charlotte Department of Transportation) for enforcement. As a matter of fact I have called them about that messy stretch of sidewalk off and on for 10 years. After I wrote a June article about sidewalks (“Walk this way. If you can”) with photos and called CDOT officials for information, the Runnymede sidewalk was finally cleared. I’m not sure whether CDOT contacted property owners or the publicity alerted them. But in the six months since then, the sidewalk has clogged again with leaves.

If you don’t want an education czar, do you want to spend city taxpayer money on a fleet of clean-sidewalk enforcers? Hire people to monitor telephone or email complaints, dispatch inspectors and – if warranted – cite or otherwise notify property owners? And if you really want walkable sidewalks, should you wait for complaints or be pro-active in keeping them clear?

Currently, CDOT says it responds when people complain, but in my experience, my complaints haven’t seemed to get much attention unless I put something in the newspaper with photos. I can’t imagine they are hopping to it when people without access to printing presses or editorial pages complain.

But the underlying question is: Should the city beef up its attempts to keep sidewalks clear? And if the answer is “yes,” (which is how I’d answer) what’s the best way? Cite and fine property owners? Use city staff to clean sidewalks?

Here’s the comment about sidewalks from the previous post :
I read the editorial in today’s (Jan. 2) Observer about urban sidewalks, to which Mary obviously contributed. (The photo of that leaf-cluttered Runnymede Lane sidewalk, which Mary has long bemoaned, gave it away). Frankly Mary, I agree with much of that editorial. I’m a retiree, live in a densely populated part of South Charlotte, and make good use of sidewalks as both pedestrian and bicyclist. My current sidewalk travel has been primarily for exercise, but given the ever-escalating cost of gasoline, I recently bought a small cart in which to haul groceries and other purchases behind my bike. I appreciate that our city provides an alternative that will keep me trim, save me some money, and help reduce traffic congestion and air pollution. But a sentence in that editorial has me puzzled. In mentioning that sidewalks outside of center city are often impassable, you or another editorialist ask “How can property owners be taught to keep them clean?” What!? Have the Red Chinese finally overrun this city? Will local government be expanded to add an education czar with the authority to haul affluent Runnymede residents off to a remote training camp in the mountains where they’ll be taught a lesson on how to rake leaves? I don’t think the Powell Bill, which helps fund sidewalk maintenance in Charlotte via taxed motor fuel, allows for that. In the case of Runnymede Lane, a better solution may be for the city to remove that tall, solid-wood fence shown in the editorial photo. It appears to be suspiciously close to the sidewalk, probably encroaching on city right-of-way. Have you ever called CDOT for enforcement? Fence removal will eliminate the “out-of-sight out-of-mind” strategy of the usually neat but sidewalk-hating Runnymedians. They – or their lawn service – will be out there with a leaf blower in a flash. Unfortunately, you can’t force folks to be thoughtful and responsible – unless you are part of the Red Chinese bureaucracy. In Charlotte, you have to hit them where they feel it – in their pocketbooks. Just call 311. And if the city doesn’t take care of the problem, the Observer should ask why we are paying bloated salaries and retirement benefits to government officials and not getting anything in return.

Sidewalks: Fines? Red China? Remove fences?

A commenter to my previous post, who read the Sunday editorial “Urban streets will need urban sidewalks” correctly nailed it with his/her suspicion, based on the Runnymede Lane photo that ran with it, at left, that I was its author. (I’m among the four people at the Observer who write the unsigned editorials on behalf of the editorial board.) And he/she raises one of the trickiest issues that city transportation officials are going to have to confront: If you want to encourage people to walk, how can you ensure that sidewalks are kept clear? Read the comment in full, at the end of this.

Currently, property owners are expected to keep sidewalks clear. But the city’s ordinances are murky about what the city can/can’t order property owners to and it’s generally silent on what punishment is allowed.

The commenter raises the specter of Red China and its cultural education camps. But rather than having an “education czar” (oops, those czars were in Russia, not China), he/she suggests the city should remove the fence shown in the photo. Er, wouldn’t that be taking private property?

The commenter asks if I’ve ever called CDOT (Charlotte Department of Transportation) for enforcement. As a matter of fact I have called them about that messy stretch of sidewalk off and on for 10 years. After I wrote a June article about sidewalks (“Walk this way. If you can”) with photos and called CDOT officials for information, the Runnymede sidewalk was finally cleared. I’m not sure whether CDOT contacted property owners or the publicity alerted them. But in the six months since then, the sidewalk has clogged again with leaves.

If you don’t want an education czar, do you want to spend city taxpayer money on a fleet of clean-sidewalk enforcers? Hire people to monitor telephone or email complaints, dispatch inspectors and – if warranted – cite or otherwise notify property owners? And if you really want walkable sidewalks, should you wait for complaints or be pro-active in keeping them clear?

Currently, CDOT says it responds when people complain, but in my experience, my complaints haven’t seemed to get much attention unless I put something in the newspaper with photos. I can’t imagine they are hopping to it when people without access to printing presses or editorial pages complain.

But the underlying question is: Should the city beef up its attempts to keep sidewalks clear? And if the answer is “yes,” (which is how I’d answer) what’s the best way? Cite and fine property owners? Use city staff to clean sidewalks?

Here’s the comment about sidewalks from the previous post :
I read the editorial in today’s (Jan. 2) Observer about urban sidewalks, to which Mary obviously contributed. (The photo of that leaf-cluttered Runnymede Lane sidewalk, which Mary has long bemoaned, gave it away). Frankly Mary, I agree with much of that editorial. I’m a retiree, live in a densely populated part of South Charlotte, and make good use of sidewalks as both pedestrian and bicyclist. My current sidewalk travel has been primarily for exercise, but given the ever-escalating cost of gasoline, I recently bought a small cart in which to haul groceries and other purchases behind my bike. I appreciate that our city provides an alternative that will keep me trim, save me some money, and help reduce traffic congestion and air pollution. But a sentence in that editorial has me puzzled. In mentioning that sidewalks outside of center city are often impassable, you or another editorialist ask “How can property owners be taught to keep them clean?” What!? Have the Red Chinese finally overrun this city? Will local government be expanded to add an education czar with the authority to haul affluent Runnymede residents off to a remote training camp in the mountains where they’ll be taught a lesson on how to rake leaves? I don’t think the Powell Bill, which helps fund sidewalk maintenance in Charlotte via taxed motor fuel, allows for that. In the case of Runnymede Lane, a better solution may be for the city to remove that tall, solid-wood fence shown in the editorial photo. It appears to be suspiciously close to the sidewalk, probably encroaching on city right-of-way. Have you ever called CDOT for enforcement? Fence removal will eliminate the “out-of-sight out-of-mind” strategy of the usually neat but sidewalk-hating Runnymedians. They – or their lawn service – will be out there with a leaf blower in a flash. Unfortunately, you can’t force folks to be thoughtful and responsible – unless you are part of the Red Chinese bureaucracy. In Charlotte, you have to hit them where they feel it – in their pocketbooks. Just call 311. And if the city doesn’t take care of the problem, the Observer should ask why we are paying bloated salaries and retirement benefits to government officials and not getting anything in return.