Walkability Whine of the day

A couple days ago RantWoman had to pay a visit to one of her medical providers. The visit is its own rant: there are only so many ways to make tedious medical tests entertaining and RantWoman is darn short of any. RantWoman does want to rant about walkability. RantWoman would actually like to find a picture of the very facility she visited to make her point but the vast oceans of searchable material did not yield anything helpful in the few short minutes RantWoman wanted to devote to her quest today.

The facility has a lovely parking lot in the back with tolerable attention to pedestrian amenities. The facility has a lovely driveway so that people arriving in vans or taxis have reasonable paths to the front door from a long U-shaped driveway in front of the building. However, RantWoman is far from the only patient streaming toward that very facility from the nearby bus stop.

The bus stop is itself lovely. Thanks to both passengers and bus driver complaining about problems with a previous placement of the bus stop, new signage and a lovely concrete foundation arose at the desired location. There is a good traffic signal. The sidewalk is in fine condition. What could possibly be wrong????

The problem from RantWoman's perspective is thtat there is no separate pedestrian walkway from that lovely bus stop to the lovely front door. There is either a glorious expanse of lawn with some shrubbery and flowers for punctuation or there is the fire lane / driveway into the parking lot.

People are generally responsible drivers and do not tend to come barreling out like the proverbial bat out of hell. However, the word is "generally." Once in awhile, someone is not paying attention or the zillions of vans and delivery vehicles in the front parking lot get stacked up in ways that RantWoman finds very disconcerting. RantWoman does not necessarily advocate paving a strip of sidewalk across the glorious front lawn, but the continual need to risk life and limb doing what to RantWoman seems like a perfectly normal, reasonable, predictable pedestrian move does rankle RantWoman.

And maybe it is just as well RantWoman cannot find a picture. If RantWoman had a picture, perhaps a whole bunch of other facilities might think they are off the hook because RantWoman is not talking about them. Go look at your own facilities for your own darn selves! If you don't know what to look for, ask someone who comes regularly on the bus!