About an hour ago I took a walk to take a picture of a sidewalk. Well, more accurately, I took a walk to take a picture of the lack of a sidewalk.
Last night, when I as returning from my aborted attempt to play bingo at Paradise Center Camp Bowie Bingo, at about 7:30, well after dark, I was driving north on Bridgewood Drive, almost back to my abode, when I saw young mom pushing a stroller, with two kids in the stroller, up the hill you see in the picture.
In the past couple months a lot of roadwork has been done to Bridgewood Drive, for no reason apparent to my eyes. That roadwork did not include installing sidewalks along the un-sidewalked sections of Bridgewood Drive.
But, that roadwork did totally rough up the well worn pedestrian dirt paths on both sides of the road, making the paths bumpy.
That mom I saw last night was struggling hard, I assume trying to push her kids to the Krogers at the top of the hill, to get groceries.
In addition to the rough path, the street was poorly lit, very dark. I assume a street light, or two, may be out. Would not be the first time.
Why is there not some sort of mandate, a law of some sort, making it required, for safety's sake, to have sidewalks alongside roads in heavily populated areas?
Every other city, with which I am familiar, besides Fort Worth, installs sidewalks along their roads, I assume due to common sense being in sufficient supply in those towns. Maybe the Fort Worth Oligarchy could send out a task force to others towns, towns that have figured out how to install sidewalks alongside their streets, and discover how this is done.
I know I have gotten on the Sidewalk Bandwagon before. This is because this really bugs me.
Another aspect of Fort Worth's sidewalks, that being the sidwalks that do exist, that bugs me, is they are, for the most part, so narrow.
On most sidewalks in Fort Worth, two super-sized Texans, coming towards each other, could not pass with out one or the other, or both, stepping off the narrow sidewalk.
How can a city be so blind that it can have a vision wasting millions of dollars to build a river diversion channel that is not needed, a little lake that will cause giggles, non-signature bridges to nowhere and whatever else it is that is currently being seen by the myopic Trinity River Vision Boondoggle, when its city sidewalks, or lack of, are something one might expect to see in a town in a Third World country?
How many Fort Worth natives have taken a look at the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle's first completed project? That being the world's premiere wakeboard lake called Cowtown Wakepark? If that operation is the quality level that the Trinity River Vision sees as acceptable, well, the portent is not good.
Cowtown Wakepark looks tacky. Everything about it looks tacky and cheap. And what happens to Cowtown Wakepark the next time the Trinity River goes into flood mode? Wipeout?
Back to the lack of sidewalks. How can any self-respecting town, particularly one prone to ridiculous delusions of grandeur of the sort Fort Worth is prone to, maintain those ridiculous delusions when the town is so lacking in something as basic as sidewalks, that a mother of two has to push her kid's stroller on a bumpy dirt path to get to a grocery store?
Where this mom was pushing that stroller is not an area with few people. It is a densely populated area of Fort Worth.
Where is the vision for the rest of Fort Worth? The part not seen by the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle?
