Category: pedestrians

Behind the fountain? A Scout story

I’ve been getting interesting comments all week about the “Walk This Way. If You Can” package from last Sunday’s editorial page. One of the many interesting ones was an e-mail from Ivan Mothershead (he was a state rep back in the day) giving the history of the drinking fountain I featured in a photo:

“Thanks for the picture of the water fountain at Christ [Episcopal] Church. This fountain was paid for and installed by my son for his Eagle Scout project in August 2000. The church had nothing to do with the fountain, except for giving him permission to install it and paying for the water.

I am sure he’d love to get some credit for it!! Hint Hint! I cannot speak for the Methodist Church fountain [I referred in my article to another fountain at the Myers Park United Methodist Church parking lot at the Queens-Queens-Providence-Providence intersection, aka Q2P2] or how it got there, but Ivan and his friends spend two days digging out the red clay (six feet down) and installing the fountain. The cast iron fountain cost $3,000, he raised more than that to buy it, install it and give the balance to the church. If you are by it, note the marble stone in front. Someone steals the bowl we leave for the dogs.

You know great stories that would entertain your readers would be Eagle Scout projects in the county. There are a lot of neat projects that would amaze your readers. Hope the fountain is working OK!”

I’m glad to know its history, and I stopped on Thursday to admire the polished marble stone with “Charles Ivan Mothershead” engraved, as well as a Bible verse. And I’ll say that for years I’ve admired – and sat upon – a bench installed in our neighborhood several decades ago by another Eagle Scout. The Scout projects have added some great amenities to the city.

One other note: More and more of those drinking fountains are being installed. It’s a slow but steady increase. I regularly use one on Wendover, between Forest Drive and Forest Drive (don’t ask!). I know of one or two on Queens Road/Queens Road West. I’m pretty there are others. It’s a wonderful, generous and gracious city comfort for pedestrians and bicyclists in this often hot city. My thanks to those who’ve generously installed them.

In Charlotte, walking has pleasures but problems, too

In my life as an associate editor at the Observer I’ve written a lengthy piece about my experiences walking 4-plus miles to work once a week in Charlotte, since March. Here’s the piece, with a photo slideshow.

But it’s too bad the slideshow with the package doesn’t show the evil “goat path” along Runnymede, where the sidewalk has not been cleared, to my observation, since at least 2001. Doreen Szymanski of the Charlotte Department of Transportation told me she believed the city had cleared it, at least once. I drive that way almost daily, however, and have never seen it cleared of muck and leaves. I’ve posted a photo below.

Some adjoining property owners – who ARE RESPONSIBLE because property owners bear the responsibility for keeping sidewalks clear of obstructions – have not-so-helpfully planted holly bushes there, the kind with prickly leaves. So if the bushes ever grow you’ll be crowded off the goat path and onto the teensy planting strip.

I’m already getting emails from readers, including one from someone who’s a quadriplegic. She writes:
“As a quadriplegic and wheelchair user, I blog about wheelchair pedestrian safety frequently. So many people fail to recognize that, as paratransit cuts continue, even more blind people and wheelchair users are taking to the streets to get around to doctor’s appointments, grocery stores, etc. as a necessity. Passable sidewalks, street signals and driver education are urgent concerns that need to be discussed in communities.”

Another reader tells of stealth pruning:
“After years of watching walkers and joggers (me included) duck — or walk in the street to avoid — low hanging branches on the sidewalk next to a large condo complex, I took my loppers in the dead of night and did some heavy pruning.Now, once a year or so, I just have to do some light maintenance. I leave the clippings — in the case of the first year, the limbs — on the grounds of the condo complex, thinking they would get the hint. Now, several years later, I STILL have to do my midnight pruning.”

Here’s the photo of the Runnymede goat path, with holly bushes:

A morning walk

I walked to work today.

Big deal, you say? Maybe so. But it didn’t seem like such a big deal. It’s 4.2 miles and took me 80 minutes. While walking I called a couple of friends to chat and told them what I was doing (to explain away the panting on the uphill parts). Both acted as if I was bonkers, and both offered to come get me if I needed help.

I didn’t. I’m in decent walking shape – walk an hour a day most weekend days, and 30 minutes or so most weekdays – but this was, I admit, a bit daunting. I had to plan it out, choosing a day where I didn’t need my car for work, with a good weather forecast, and then think seriously what to wear so I’d be comfortable yet not have to change clothes at work. I put my office shoes in my backpack.

I figure the walk only took about 30 minutes more than my usual morning routine. I typically walk 30 minutes anyway. The drive to work and walk from the parking lot take about 20. So it wasn’t hugely time-consuming.

You see more when you walk, of course. I saw daffodils and crocuses and some fruit trees (cherry? plum?) blooming. I saw two places that were complete barriers to anyone wheelchair bound. They should be fixed.

One was the sidewalk in front of the shops at Morehead and McDowell. A utility pole narrows the sidewalk to about 18 inches. Anyone in a wheelchair coming from the south would be completely blocked and have to go in the street. The other was closer to the Y. Repair work at a corner (was it Myrtle?) blocked the sidewalk. I could walk around it, up a grassy hill where a path was being worn away into the grass. No one in a wheelchair could have done that.

I didn’t get run over, though I had to make eye contact with motorists a lot and a couple of times realized that state law giving me the right of way in crosswalks was irrelevant, when drivers were complete unaware I existed because they never even looked. It felt like wearing Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak.

I walked mostly along Morehead Street, Queens Road and Providence Road. It was rush hour so traffic was heavy. Almost every vehicle I saw carried only a driver and no passengers. Maybe 5 to 10 percent had a second person, typically a child. All this on a beautiful spring-like morning with a shining sun and temperatures climbing from the 40s into the 50s as I walked. I started to wonder why more people weren’t walking. Yes, I admit it, the last 15 minutes were not so fun. I wasn’t puffing but I was tired. My shirt got damp, especially under the backpack. But a few minutes at my desk revived me nicely.

And here’s my reward. It’s from a new book I’ve finished, called “Carjacked”: “Just an hour of walking at a moderate pace burns 207 calories off the average woman and 244 calories off the average man.”

No moral to this story, just sharing the experience, in hopes others might decide to give it a try someday, if they can.

City leaps to fix hazard

This updates my report Monday on the ugly post in the uptown sidewalk, mentioned in yesterday’s blog posting about some pedestrian hazards I encountered uptown.

I just got e-mail from Tamara Blue, customer service manager of Charlotte Department of Transportation: “I wanted to let you know the post is being cut down as I type this. We very much appreciate you letting us know about this trip hazard. Unfortunately, we can’t be everywhere at all times and knowing citizens like you will let us know when there is a problem is a tremendous help.”

Kudos to the city for solving a small but dangerous pedestrian hazard. Now if only they can figure out how to inspire folks to shovel their sidewalks after it snows, and to rake off the leaf piles …

Walking uptown? Good luck

Without question downtown Charlotte is the most pedestrian-friendly neighborhood in town. But there are still some, ahem, issues. I spotted a few during a Sunday afternoon walk through downtown.

For instance, although the city code says property owners are supposed to keep the sidewalks in front of their property free of obstruction, on Sunday afternoon some spots that were in the shade were still filled with slushy ice, such as the spot in front of the restaurant Press on West Trade Street. No, it isn’t fair that some people get the sun to do the work for them. Life isn’t fair. Clear your sidewalks, please.
Unfortunately, the city doesn’t do what many Northern cities do – you get a certain number of hours to clear your sidewalks of snow and then you’re cited (in theory, at least). In recent snowy weekends I’ve noticed that hardly anyone seems to feel it’s important to shovel the sidewalk in front of their home – not just uptown either. The result is dangerous ice and slush, and pedestrians having yet more difficulties getting around.

Charlotte has no staff or policies about enforcing the few ordinances it does have, such as keeping sidewalks clear of obstructions. A large pile of leaves was composting in the sidewalk in front of the County Services Center annex building on North College Street. (And since 2001 I’ve been watching some leaves actually turn into compostable soil on a sidewalk on Runnymede between Alexander Graham Middle School and Sharon Road. In addition, I noticed in fall 2008 that a section of sidewalk on Sharon Road, on the back end of a very exclusive and expensive property, was ankle deep in leaves – as though the property owner had no idea it was his/her responsibility to keep it clear.)


And finally, here’s something you don’t want to stumble over on a dark night uptown. Come on, guys, just get a hacksaw out and cut that one all the way to the pavement. It’s on Fourth Street, just a few feet uphill from College.

Walking? Hazardous duty in Raleigh, Charlotte

This morning’s topic: the hazards of walking in Charlotte. One recent horror story: On Election Day my husband and I walked to our polling place, and then to the cleaner’s – which meant crossing the vast Providence Road-Sharon Amity/Sharon Lane intersection. Even after we waited for the crossing light, we couldn’t set foot into the crosswalk for fear of becoming grease spots on the asphalt, as vehicle after vehicle sped around the generously curved corner, designed to make it easy to turn at 30 mph (and making it easier to destroy anyone on foot). Knowing state law gives pedestrians in a crosswalk the right of way, and thus my heirs might at least get a nice settlement, I ventured into the crosswalk. A monstrous black SUV nearly creamed me. The blond driver, on her cellphone, never even saw me.

When we made it across, then we had to cross the other street. This time, we edged into the crosswalk so drivers could see us, and stop for us. A driver wanting to turn right (into our path) kept edging forward. I made eye contact, which usually signals to drivers to stop. So far so good.

The light changed. We stepped farther into the crosswalk. Zoom! She drove right in front of us. I am here to recount this only because we are reasonably spry. My husband shouted at her so loudly she – get this – stops her car in the left lane of Providence Road and sits there for several minutes. Hmmm. Driver safety class needed?

Which brings me to this: Although most Charlotte drivers aren’t thinking about pedestrians, we are NOT the most dangerous N.C. city for pedestrians in the state. Raleigh takes that ranking.
(Here’s a link to the Triangle Biz Journal article on the same ranking.) The study, by an advocacy group, Transportation for America, used an index based on the number of pedestrian fatalities relative to the average amount of walking by residents. The deaths came from 2007-08 data; the walking stat was based on the percentage who walk to work in 2000. I.E., it’s not a perfect measure – but it’s probably relatively close in terms of rankings if not absolute numbers.

Orlando, Fla., was the most dangerous city for pedestrians, followed by Tampa, Miami and Jacksonville, Fla. Memphis, Tenn., was No. 5. Charlotte was No. 12 on the list. All are in the Sun Belt (well, Louisville maybe is borderline), until you get to No. 14 (Detroit) and then to No. 20 (Kansas City). Here’s a direct link to the rankings. And here’s one to the study, called Dangerous By Design. That reflects the reality that most Sun Belt cities grew during the 20th century, when pedestrians were discounted completely in street and highway designs.

Pedestrian safety starts with safe sidewalks, of course. But there’s more. Traffic speed is a huge factor, and for the last half of the 20th century even in-town streets were designed for speed, not for pedestrians. Another factor is turning radius of corners. If they’re wide, pedestrians are endangered by speeding cars turning. A huge factor is enforcement. Where police take pedestrian safety seriously, drivers get the message. I don’t think Boston drivers are more courteous or innately kinder. Yet in Boston they stop for pedestrians. Police enforcement (and seeing other drivers do it) trains you. In Charlotte I’ve seen police cars almost mow down pedestrians uptown.

Streets like Paris, eh?

So I’m sitting in this windowless room in the belly of the local transportation bureaucracy: sixth floor, city-county government center. CDOT offices. (Charlotte Department of Transportation for you non-geeks.) It’s only 8 a.m., so I’m pretending to be awake. And I start to notice what’s on the walls:

A white board with markers and erasers. Above it a clock (analog). A calendar. A poster of the 2004 Mecklenburg-Union Metropolitan Planning Organization’s Thoroughfare Plan.

Then I spot a print of Gustave Caillebotte’s 1877 “Rue de Paris, Temps de Pluie” with people in umbrellas crossing a rainy street (copy above). A print of a Monet scene of a railroad in the snow in Paris. A poster with a photo of the Pont Alexandre III over the Seine. And a Michelin map of the city of Paris.

Do you realize how significant this is?

Let me explain. Charlotte is not Paris. Our traffic engineers (including the NCDOT folks) move traffic. They value speed, efficiency and “safety,” not beauty or the value of the experience. Limited access highways through historic neighborhoods would be just fine by too many of them.
Paris is a city with high-volume, high-speed and beautiful boulevards that retain fabulous street life alongside the traffic. Walking down a Paris sidewalk is a magnificent experience. Even the traffic islands are magnificent. They don’t have Independence Boulevard or South Boulevard. They have true boulevards. I have said for years that our traffic engineers and transportation planners needed to visit Paris and bring home what they learn.

But CDOT has been changing. It redesigned the city’s street standards. It pushed the City Council to adopt a Bicycle Plan. I was there this morning to hear about its proposed Pedestrian Plan. (More on that at a later date. It will be discussed at a City Council Transportation Committee meeting Wednesday (Dec. 10) at 2 p.m., Room CH-14 of the Gov Center).

The windowless conference room, I’m told, has been dubbed “the Paris room.”

Someone at CDOT gets it.

Can’t walk to school? Whose fault, really?

To everyone who wants to blame:
— the school board
— the health department
— the county commissioners
— school desegregation
— me
— the Observer’s editorial board
— whoever else is handy …

… for the fact that in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, as in many communities around the nation, it’s difficult for most kids to walk to school, I offer the following complexities for your consideration. (If you’re new to this, first visit my posting from yesterday, “Why it’s not easy to walk to school,” and the comments on it.) Now, here are a few things to ponder, among the many realities that affect the situation:
— Until the late 1990s, the city of Charlotte didn’t require developers to build many sidewalks in their new developments.
— The city’s budget for retrofitting streets with sidewalks, while expanding, is pitifully inadequate.
— In North Carolina counties have no responsibility for streets or roads or sidewalks. Either the city builds and maintains them, or the state does. The state’s attitude used to be to discourage any sidewalks built outside a municipal jurisdiction. Much of what’s now inside Charlotte was in unincorporated Mecklenburg County when it was built (and later was annexed). Thus, few sidewalks.

— Most of suburban Charlotte is pedestrian-hostile, with wide and busy intersections, few pedestrian lights and crosswalks, long blocks and little connectivity.

— Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, in its building designs and site-size requirements, followed state requirements based on a national organization, meaning those requirements exist all over the country. Only in recent years have some N.C. requirements become “guidelines” which school systems can occasionally bypass. The requirements included huge sites: e.g. 18 acres for elementary schools, 60 for high schools. CMS, to its credit, is building on smaller sites when it can, and building more multistory schools, which need slightly smaller footprint. And it’s trying to keep walkability (and transit) in mind for newer schools.
— CMS has been harangued for years by the anti-tax crowd to be more economical in its school building, so like many large systems slammed with growth, it moved to larger (I would say too large) schools. Larger schools mean students must come from farther away, making it harder for them to walk, especially in Charlotte’s pedestrian-hostile suburban areas.
— The appropriate elected officials to blame for crowded schools are the county commissioners. They’re the ones who allocate money — or don’t — to build new schools and maintain old ones. The school board asks, but usually doesn’t receive all it asks for.

— While some comments have noted the can’t-walk-to-school situation isn’t universal, it is common across America, even where there was no school busing for integration. Desegregation is essentially a red herring in this debate. Further, even when there was plenty of busing for integration, some kids attended schools nearby for at least part of their schooling.
Yes, it’s theoretically possible a push for more walkable schools might have arisen earlier if all children were attending schools nearby. But I’ve lived in Charlotte 30 years and the whole “walkability” movement — irrespective of school kids — was nonexistent for most of that time.

Why it’s not easy to walk to school

“Why was it necessary to create a job in the health dept. to encourage kids to walk to schools? Isn’t that something a principal/teachers/student nurse could communicate to the parents?”

Good question, from a comment on the previous posting. The situation is complicated. A few administrators at schools here (and other cities as well) don’t want kids walking to school. They think it’s unsafe. They think kids already have bus rides so why would they want to walk? In addition, many principals spend their time trying to make sure kids are learning and teachers are teaching. How students arrive at school — as long as it’s not causing immediate problems — is way, way down the list. I wish the case were otherwise, but it’s not realistic to think that will change.

And school nurses? Most school nurses are assigned to multiple schools and barely have time to turn around, must less launch campaigns to encourage walking.

But there are other problems, too, that even the principals who DO want kids to walk or bike can’t surmount: Lack of sidewalks. Lack of crosswalks. Lack of midblock stoplights on long, long blocks. Lack of bike lanes. Lack of crossing guards. Those policies and decisions are not within a principal’s authority, but reside with the City of Charlotte.

And it’s even more complicated. Plenty of schools were built and designed for car- and-bus-only transportation. They’re not in pedestrian-friendly settings. Here’s a good example: Unless things have changed in the last couple of years, Greenway Park Elementary sits right next to the McAlpine Greenway, yet there’s no pedestrian connection to the greenway. The school, like many, sits so far back from the road and its sidewalk that the whole setting conveys a subliminal message of “Don’t walk here.” Technically, of course, you can walk to that school. But it wouldn’t be very efficient or pleasant.

Older schools — Eastover, Myers Park Traditional, Davidson Middle, Midwood School, the old Wilmore School (now used for offices) — were built when it was expected that kids would walk to school. That fell out of favor, all over the country.

School designs for the past 40 years had almost nothing to do with whether the assignment zones were neighborhood-school or crosstown busing. You see the same styles all over the country, not just in Charlotte. They have to do with state school design guidelines (influenced by national standards), traffic engineering and the architectural mode and practices of the day when they were built.

Reversing all the policies that combine to create an anti-walking environment is a huge task. I don’t wany my school principals having to tackle it. They have another mission.

CDOT: “Don’t Walk Here” Wall Doomed


Here’s the word from Danny Pleasant, interim director of the Charlotte Department of Transportation, responding to my post earlier today about this pedestrian obstruction on Brevard Street as you head from Fourth toward Third Street:

Good news, Mary. We have a project to convert Brevard Street between Trade Street and Stonewall Street into a more pedestrian oriented, two-way, two-lane street. It will follow the current work of converting Caldwell Street to two-way operation. We are in the process of selecting a design firm. The process should finish up in October. The project will include sidewalks on both sides of Brevard the length of the project. It will take a couple of years to build. But when it’s done, the brick wall will be gone.

Here’s what I had written earlier:

Don’t you love this? Walkable Charlotte, eh?

This particular barrier to pedestrians is on Brevard Street, between Fourth and Third streets, a half a block from the Transportation Center — a spot to which thousands of people walk daily.

Last time I asked about it, several years ago, someone at either CDOT or the city planning office told me they were waiting for that property to develop and when it did, they’d make sure the sidewalk got built. That’s been several years. Guess they’re still waiting. I’ll see what interim CDOT chief Danny Pleasant has to say.

And to be fair, I’ll say that CDOT has improved dramatically in its attention to pedestrian comforts, and that uptown Charlotte is, square foot for square foot, the largest pedestrian friendly site in the city. Does anyone know of any others that would compete for that distinction?