Read as much as you can. WRITE COMMENTS. There will be a hearing at the Seattle City Council on July 21. RantWoman has it in her calendar.
RantWoman herself means to read more of the Seattle Pedestrian Master Plan and then to comment. Good thing she now has another week to do it. You too! Read it. Digest it! Comment.
At first pass, when RantWoman went to a sort of pep rally for the project, she was impressed that the project made lots of efforts to map different characteristics of roadways, pedestrian realities and economic development realities. Now RantWoman needs to read more because she is all but certain that there are elements which need that definitive RantWoman take!
Tonight for instance, RantWoman is peeved about one whole set of topics that as far as RantWoman knows is completely lacking from the ped plan: being a pedestrian, getting around only on foot or public transit gives one a whole different set of choices from those with a car:
--Often when RantWoman leaves the house for the day, her calendar includes multiple different activities in multiple different places: work meetings, exercise or public events or shopping.Even when RantWoman tries to trim her baggage, carrying items needed for each activity can still add up.
RantWoman feels lucky to feel hale and hearty and able to carry quite a bit. RantWoman sometimes feels awkward about needing temporary places to stow part of her baggage for short intervals. RantWoman knows other people who must have the same problem because at many kinds of events she can pinpoint who came without a car by the volume of auxiliary gear they also are toting around. It would be REALLY nice if the ped plan thought of addressing this kind of need for people who choose the pedestrian route.
--The library wants to ban wheeled vehicles. This would be because the kind of tourists who take a lot of pictures and buy lattes and get souvenirs in the gift shop USUALLY do not come in with their luggage in tow. However harried professionals do. Elderly people who use wheeled backpacks to tote their library materials around do. Committed pedestrians with back trouble do. People who have agendas in their day between their home and the airport do. Some though not all of these people would be delighted to have places to leave their luggage. However people who basically tote their offices with them may have plenty of reason to pack the office in a wheeled suitcase. Having this kind of ban at the library immediately subtracts from people's ability both to choose alternatives to the car and to use library resources.
--The ability to walk to school is a big driver in pedestrian planning but in many neighborhoods, the schools people can walk to SUCK and any parent with even an iota of aspiration for something better for their children will have to move heaven and earth to get kids into programs across town and then put the kids on the bus for hours / day.
Even when there are dedicated staff trying hard, as opposed to clueless clucks stuck somewhere on their way out the door, parents in poorer areas working two jobs have no time or resources to do the extra fundraising done by parents at many middle class schools. A realistic ped plan might seriously consider helping do things to equalize resources so that sending one's kid to a school he or she can walk to would not mean sentencing them to permanent educational apartheid. The Seattle School District is currently going through one of its spasms of rethinking school assignment. So far the walk to school issue is on the radar but the resource issue most assuredly is not.
--Speaking of schools and poor neighborhoods, the ped plan is stunningly silent about neighborhoods where a lot of people with limited English, ie people who fill out surveys in other languages when available see car ownership both as an entirely rational way to solve their horrible transportation needs and a sign of success American style. Because bus routes tend to be designed for commuters rather than neighborhood circulation, people in poor neighborhoods often have to take two buses to go to locations comparatively nearby. This of course takes disproportionate time and makes car ownership seem almost mandatory. Fixing ped infrastructure in these areas is critical, but it takes more than sidewalks to make a walkability oriented lifestyle realistic.
--Search at public buildings: people with cars can leave their pocket knives, butter knives and other questionable items in their cars. Confirmed pedestrians are likely to have very useful items confiscated with no hope of return if they have the temerity--or absentmindedness--to bring such along. Again, the ped plan is completely silent about this inconvenience, and RantWoman is firm on this point even though she is also aware that people carry along God knows what for decidedly unbenign purposes.
--Wanna swim or go to the gym on the way to or from the rest of your day. What are you going to do with your suit and gym clothes for the rest of the day? Some places can handle this question; some cannot. True, if one is an energetic pedestrian, a lot of exercise is just built into one's daily routine, but people still do need the joint benefits of swimming or the other benefits of weight training and things one does most easily in the gym.
Whatever your fixations, Read the plan. Dream. Comment!
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