1. Auto-centric land-use planning and separation of uses: Zoning laws require residential, retail, office, and industrial development to occur in separate geographical areas. Originally intended to preserve health and quality of life, these policies have the unfortunate side effect of increasing the distances between the places we live, shop, eat, and work. In a typical suburban development, a quart of milk costs a quart of gasoline because a corner grocery store would not be allowed in most residential areas. Nor can modest wage earners live in apartments upstairs from the commercial developments they work in or next door to the services they use. Where adjacent properties do represent different land-uses, required aesthetic barriers such as wooded buffers, hedges, and fences present obstacles to convenient pedestrian access.
2. Expansion of sprawl development along rural roads: Rural roads that were designed at a time when traffic and population density were very low were built without sidewalks. If vehicle and pedestrian traffic are sparse enough, it is reasonable to expect motorists and pedestrians to cooperate in sharing the road surface, with the vehicle driving up to the yellow line as the pedestrian steps into the grass. But when rapid suburban growth spreads into rural areas bringing with it hundreds or thousands of motorists, the roadway can no longer be safely or effectively shared. As developments are added along rural routes, short sections of sidewalk are typically installed only on the areas of street immediately in front of new properties. Usually these sidewalks do not connect with one another. Unfortunately the vehicle traffic generated by the new developments drastically reduces pedestrian safety along the rest of the route where sidewalks are missing.
3. Linkage of connecting sidewalk installation to road-widening projects: The costs of obtaining the required land rights and construction of sidewalks that connect new developments typically fall to the local government. Such projects are cheapest to complete in conjunction with a road-widening project. Therefore, sidewalks are not installed on sprawl-afflicted roads until the government is ready to fund the widening of the road. By the time such funding materializes, auto traffic levels are usually so high that pedestrian travel in the area has become impossible due to safety concerns.
4. Activity centers are located on major thoroughfares with high design speeds: Suburban zoning policies typically allow activity centers (shopping centers and similar destinations that attract local residents) to be located only on major thoroughfares, especially at major intersections. Major thoroughfares are characterized as having speed limits over 35 miles per hour, (usually 45) and design speeds of over 50 miles per hour. Resulting motor vehicle speeds are far above recommended speeds for safe pedestrian access. Traffic calming and pedestrian-safety buffers such as trees are not allowed between the sidewalk and the street since these structures are considered potential hazards for bad drivers. Marked crosswalks at intersections are avoided in order to discourage pedestrians from crossing, and intersections are widely spaced, usually 1/2 mile or more, in order to maximize traffic speed. Such features encourage jaywalking and result in higher pedestrian fatality rates. Major thoroughfares are not designed for the safety or convenience of local residents; in most cases their design and development is controlled by the state in the interest of providing efficient inter-city transportation. Local governments prefer to develop non-residential roadways as major thoroughfares instead of local-use roads because they receive financial assistance from the state for thoroughfares.
5. Wider road designs add new dangers to pedestrians: As streets are widened, traffic speeds increase as drivers adjust their behavior to their perception of the roadway capacity. Additional lanes increase the distance a pedestrian must walk to cross the street. These factors combine to make it much more difficult for pedestrians to cross safely. Often the time required to walk across is longer than the time required for an automobile to arrive from beyond the pedestrian’s view. Intersections on widened roads are also designed with wide-radius turns for negotiation at higher speeds. Such turns further increase the distance between sidewalks and endanger pedestrians at the most important locations for them to cross. Intersections between widened roads typically require pedestrians to cross four lanes of through traffic plus one or more turn lanes. Worse still, such intersections are often built with no marked crosswalk lines to alert drivers to yield, or crosswalk lights to assist pedestrians in crossing. Most stoplights are set up to continually stream traffic through the intersection across all crosswalk paths on every light cycle, with no protection for pedestrians.
6. Commercial developers and businesses choose auto-centric property designs with inadequate pedestrian access. Publicly-funded roadways offer retail businesses the opportunity to draw a large population of customers from a wide geographic area. Bigger stores with bigger parking lots allow more customers and thus lower overhead per sale, which makes such businesses more profitable and competitive. In this manner, ugly box stores and strip-malls separated by acres of parking spring up in new areas of suburban development while putting smaller neighborhood stores out of business. But while small neighborhood stores focus on service to the immediately surrounding community, including those within walking distance, large-scale retailers have little incentive to provide pedestrian access. Instead, sprawl-mall businesses often consider pedestrian access to be a liability, because such accommodations may encourage access by segments of the population they do not consider desirable customers - i.e. those who do not drive due to their age or economic status. At the very least, large-scale commercial developers typically place very low priority on walkability between storefronts to the surrounding community; nor do they actively choose designs that may encourage shoppers to walk to competing retail developments located nearby. Note also that poorly designed roads and parking lots within shopping centers are considered private property, not public streets. This means that motor vehicle laws cannot be enforced by police, and dangerous driving occurs without any threat of punishment.
7. Residential developers promote neighborhood isolation: Home buyers want to live in neighborhoods with little traffic and low crime. They also show preference for separation from neighborhoods of lower socioeconomic classes. As a result, developers build isolated cul-de-sac neighborhoods without through-streets or through-sidewalks. While this design reduces unfamiliar traffic in one’s neighborhood, such poor connectivity makes it difficult to walk to errands or for any purpose other than exercise. Such developments also increase congestion on collector roads and intersections, which form bottlenecks for automobile traffic and endanger pedestrians in areas without sidewalks.
Prescriptions for change:
1. Design residential and office neighborhoods for walkability and sustainability via small, nearby stores that provide essential goods and services. Encourage mixed-use development that serves the needs of those close by. Allow placement of low-impact convenience stores inside existing residential PUDS. Avoid placing neighborhood activity centers on thoroughfares, and provide slow, local road access to such sites.
2. Where thoroughfares pass activity centers, reduce speed limits and design speeds (with traffic calming and law enforcement where required) so that 85th percentile speeds do not exceed 35 miles per hour. Limit road widths near residences and neighborhood activity centers.
3. Provide pedestrian paths through buffers that are often placed between land uses, or eliminate buffers in favor of more attractive commercial architecture and site design. Require that sidewalk paths connecting points of interest follow the shortest reasonable path between those points. Survey dirt paths blazed by users of existing developments and take steps required to replace them with sidewalks.
4. Expand the Adequate Public Facilities ordinance for roadways to include a requirement for sidewalks connecting points of interest such as large residential and retail developments. Require sidewalk installation before large developments are built on rural roads. Plan for safe pedestrian access out to a 1/2 mile radius when developing activity centers and similar developments.
5. Add sidewalks to two-lane roads before or without widening, in order to support pedestrians sooner and without simultaneously encouraging more traffic and higher vehicle speeds.
6. Improve crosswalks at intersections (paint crosswalk lines on all high-volume intersections that feature sidewalks, and add lights where needed) and add trees between the sidewalk and street, as well as other traffic-calming features, on wide roads in order to improve pedestrian safety and comfort levels.
7. Require pedestrian-friendly development designs with sidewalk access to storefronts, and place parking behind or beside developments. Bring commercial building facades back to the street sidewalk, eliminating large setbacks.
8. Add more public parking to streets in order to encourage walking to multiple commercial developments from a single parking space. Encourage site plans that encourage sharing of parking spaces between businesses.
9. Require residential areas to be based on through-streets with narrow or tree-lined traffic-calming designs that keep down traffic levels and speeds. Place sidewalks on both sides of residential streets and connect PUDs together.
10. Require sidewalks to be installed between schools and the neighborhoods they serve. Return to the model of geographically relevant neighborhood schools wherever possible, in order to allow students to walk or bike home from afterschool activities.