Forget the "swan flude." If RantWoman wants to go ballistic about untimely and unnecessary death, there is always the 400,000 excess deaths per year in the US caused by sedentary lifestyle, lack of places to walk, high-calorie density low nutrtive value (VITAMINS) food, the cul-de-sac lifestyle, our habit of driving our cars to the gym. The road to hell lies straight through the doors of the automobile and now that the US auto industry is going kerflooey down the economic toilet, it's about dang time a new day dawns in terms of pedestrians and walkability. Or something.
(RantWoman owes her life two different software upgrades; that and what RantWoman is certain must be flakiness on the part of web entities involved. RantWoman only notes this point as part of her relentless effort to track the consequences of certain inconveniences. RantWoman is annoyed as she edits to discover others! Testing to follow.)
The foregoing leaps notwithstanding, RantWoman has been trying for days to rave about the launch of the Draft Seattle Pedestrain Master Plan . RantWoman owes the world a rant about all the personal, environmental, physical activity, epidemiological, and experiential reasons this topic thrills and delights her. Today RantWoman is TRYING to stick to wonkiness.
RantWoman went to a public event the other night to look at the different maps of equity, pedestrian activity drivers, street crossing characteristics and several other examples of the wonders of GIS. RantWoman will likely dissect the Draft Plan further fairly soon. In the meantime, she will seed the environment with various links and the kind of notes she might otherwise scribble in fat pen on the backs of all the envelopes that wind up in her favorite Bus Life Bags.
http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/pedestrian.htm
General Seattle Pedestrian Program
http://daily.sightline.org/daily_score/archive/2009/02/23/walk-baby-walk
Walking and Sustainability Wonkiness from the Sightline Institute
Besides the map, there was live entertainment, accompanied by Powerpoint no less, by Mr. Mark Fenton, champion racewalker, motivational speaker, mechanical engineer and student of biomechanics, host of Americas Walking on PBS with Mark Fenton and in general a walking maniac orders of magnitude more maniacal than RantWoman.
http://www.pbs.org/americaswalking/
Great Walking Tips from Mark Fenton
http://walking.about.com/cs/beginners/a/fentontips.htm
RantWoman is thrilled simply to know such people exist!
RantWoman predictably also has specific RantWoman rants, but, Dear Readers, you get to thank internet flakiness for sparing you that for now.
In connection with general automobile skepticism and pedestrian alternatives, RantWoman notes a mention in a recent radio broadcast of the point that in Indian cities people more easily get along without cars because they tend not to go very frequently more than about a 10 km radius away from home. RantWoman will stow this point for those moments when she is a really militant pedestrian advocacy fanatic as opposed to merely her average level of fixation and nuttiness about the topic.
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