In the picture you are looking north at the well worn dirt path worn at the side of Bridgewood Drive in East Fort Worth.
There is no buffer between the well worn dirt path and Bridgewood Drive, so it is ever so slightly scary when a vehicle speeds by.
I have seen a mom with two kids in a stroller struggling to walk in this sidewalk-less location.
A couple weeks ago I blogged about my perplexation regarding the lack of a comprehensive public mass transit system in Tarrant County and the other counties that make up the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex in a blogging titled The Befuddling Mystery Of Tarrant County & Texas Public Transit.
Someone named Dannyboy commented on the befuddling mystery of Tarrant County & Texas public transit, with part of that comment informing me that, "It is a fact of life in North Texas. Mass transit is considered something that poor people use, and consequently, the funding and improvement of such transportation plans are not seen as important in any way."
Today, when I walked on the dirt path alongside Bridgewood Drive it occurred to me that Fort Worth's sidewalk shortage may stem from the same attitude that causes mass transit in parts of Texas to be a bit behind the modern world as lived in other parts of America and the world.
So, is that the reason for the Fort Worth sidewalk shortage? That being that in Fort Worth sidewalks are considered something that only poor people use?
That only poor people have the need to walk?
8 comments:
Honestly over here on the "rich" Westside of Fort Worth, we have lots of sidewalks. I find it weird your neighborhood doesn't. Strange, strange. (I am not one of the rich, but am surrounded by them. Cheers to scoring a REALLY good house price).
cd0103, it is almost like I-35 is the Fort Worth version of the Berlin Wall, with you living in West Berlin, in freedom and prosperity, while I am stuck in East Berlin, in a poor police state, with a sidewalk shortage. Someday maybe that I-35 Wall will come down and East Fort Worth can join West Fort Worth in freedom and prosperity. And sidewalks....
You know, that is a really good analogy.
My husband and I were just talking about this. Our neighborhood has sidewalks. This neighborhood was built in the 1920-1940. The neighborhood he grew up in farther West in Ridglea was built 1940ish and had no sidewalks. His house in South FW in Wedgewood built in the 1960s also had no sidewalks. Weird. No sidewalks during a building time when more people had cars?
The TRE isn't for poor people. That is why they have parking lots at the stations.
Steve A----I should have figured out the TRE was not for poor people when I realized there are no sidewalks to walk on to get to my nearby TRE station.
The lack of sidewalks is quite simple. At some time post-1950s, real estate developers in FW decided they didn't want to pay for something so frivolous as sidewalks. That has continued, and now no one wants to do anything about it. What needs to be done is for someone to sue the city over not complying with ADA requirements. It has been done elsewhere, and cities have had to comply with ADA by building sidewalks and getting people in wheelchairs out of the street.
The FW Weekly raised the sidewalk issue in 2007, pointing out that people get run over and die because of the lack of sidewalks in FW.
http://www.fwweekly.com/2007/04/04/here-the-sidewalks-end/
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