Monday, August 4, 2014

A Walking Around My Neighborhood Freshly Lamenting Fort Worth's Sad Sidewalk Shortage

It has been a week or two since I took myself on a walking inspection of my neighborhood, other than walking up the hill to Albertsons for this, that or the other thing.

Yesterday whilst driving to the Tandy Hills I found myself freshly annoyed about a subject which has annoyed me previously, that being Fort Worth's sad sidewalk shortage.

I drive Bridge Street to get to the Tandy Hills. Bridge Street runs parallel to I-30. Bridge Street has multiple businesses, apartment complexes and a library along side its north side.

Yesterday, ahead of me as I drove west, I saw a mom carrying a little kid running towards a bus stop on Bridge Street, with the running taking place on a well worn dirt path. I saw the mom trip on the dirt path with the bus taking off before the mom returned to being vertical.

Above you are looking at the sidewalk that goes around the big block in which my abode is located. You are looking north at four lane Bridgewood Drive. The sidewalk takes a right at the green street sign. There is no sidewalk if one wanted to cross the street and continue north.

And what's up with sticking a light pole in a sidewalk? This repeats multiple times to varying degrees of sidewalk penetration.

Is Fort Worth the #1 major city in America in miles of roads without sidewalks?

If I remember correctly sometime around the last time I harped about Fort Worth's sad sidewalk shortage I read that the city was looking into possibly maybe developing some sort of sidewalk building program.

I have a suggestion on where to start. On major streets, like Bridge Street, where you can clearly see the volume of foot traffic has created a dirt path, that is where the city needs to add a sidewalk.

Maybe Fort Worth could send some sort of task force to a west coast town, like Tacoma, for instance, to find out how a little town like Tacoma manages to have wide sidewalks alongside both sides of pretty much all the town's streets.

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