01 August 2006

Walking for Joey

Joey Sobrino left the following comment on the post about how little Americans walk.

New Yorkers don't have qualms about walking. In America, and being that Canada is similar I am sure the same applies, we don't have the luxury of walking everywhere. How many Europeans that now are or live in the US walk places?

Joey - You are using NYC as the exemplar of America? Holy cow.

You have a point though. American cities like New York, or rather Manhattan, encourage, even demand, walking. Driving is a nightmare, and the subway and buses convenient and cheap (at least compared to the parking rates!). So people take a subway to the nearest point and walk rapidly to their destination. The Twin Cities were a lot like this, though waiting for a bus when it is 5 below is not fun.

A place like Atlanta, otoh, discourages walking. Inadequate public transport designed mainly, as was the bus system for that unnamed port city to the south, to move African American workers from the inner city to white suburbs and back again - so that it is much more practical to go by car. And it shows in the relative body weight statistics of the two places.

But what is responsible for the design of our cities? Part of it certainly is cheap gasaline, something the Europeans never went in for. A major part of the cost of gas in Europe is the tax bite - hence $6/gal gas. So even if you own a car, half again as expensive as here because of taxes, you take public transport and walk to your destination from the bus/metro stop. Our cities are strung out all over the place, roads and parking lots don't connect, and workers live far from the workplace with poor public transportation systems.

Is that the only explanation though? The town where I work, let's call it Crockett, is a nice, quiet mountain community surrounded by gorgeous mountains. Tourists come from all over to enjoy the outdoor life and activity, like hiking. But not in the town itself. Its town planning is the most pedestrian hostile environment I have ever seen. No sidewalks, narrow roads, two huge four lane highways intersecting with no regard for those afoot trying to cross. I once lived 3 miles from where I worked yet could not bike to work. There simply was no safe route. Why was this? My theory, which was confirmed by one of my American History colleagues, was that historically here in the South, if you didn't ride a horse you weren't worth worrying about, and that attitude has simply been transferred to cars.

Yet I have to wonder if even that explains it. Every day when classes end I see our 20 year old students hanging around the front doors of classroom buildings using their cell phones to tell their roommates/boyfriend/girlfriend to come pick them up with the car. From one end of campus to the dorms is less than a mile. I'd better stop with this thought - I am beginning to sound like a cranky old man.

But perhaps you could explain why the females of the most obese generation in the history of the planet favor fashions that leave exposed the cute little tummy rolls hanging over the waist of their jeans?

ps: Sadly, Elliot tells us Canadians are falling into the same habit. Don't know about Europeans who actually live here. The ones who visit are appalled.

5 Comments:

At 01 August, 2006 19:34, Blogger Elliot said...

Well, I'm a fanatical cyclist/walker/bus-taker (we don't have a subway here). It really gets my goat to see all the new suburbs going up with miles and miles of big-box American franchise stores, all with massive parking lots and no thought at all for pedestrians or public transit.

And the more I cycle the more disgusted I get with people whizzing by in their cars. They get frustrated and angry at the drop of a hat, if something slows them down for an instant. To be fair, I'm often surprised by the courteousness of drivers to cyclists, but just the same, people seem more and more prone to road rage.

Not driving has caused me to start paying attention to driving habits. It seems like 75% of the people I see are zooming around alone.

I can only hope that soaring gas prices knock some sense into people. I know that when we did have a car, it was seductive and so easy to drive everywhere and fall into all the same psychological traps. So I understand how easy it is to feel that God has ordained automobiles should rule the Earth. But in reality it's a destructive lifestyle that needs to be pared way back.

I don't think we can do without them entirely. I live in Winnipeg, after all, where the climate makes cars a necessity for some things. But we sure could use them a lot less.

 
At 01 August, 2006 21:39, Blogger Joey said...

New York is a different beast. The think you can blame that most cities were populated after the invention of the automobile.

Convenience rules. In America (and in Canada) it is much more convenient to use an automobile than public transport. As you said, in Europe, finding parking, paying for storage, and 1.25 Euros per Liter of gas discourage it.

Europeans who live here now do not walk. We aren't inherently lazy people it is just difficult/dangerous to walk here.

We are certainly paying a price for that mindset. In Dec 2005 I was tipping the scale at 260 pounds (118 kg), and after three months in Europe I was down to 217 (98kg). It can be nearly completely attributed to walking. Now stateside for the same amount of time, I am back to 240 (109).

As Winnipeg requires driving during the winter, I am not sure I would walk to work even if I lived at the apartments across the street during a Tampa summer.

BTW, the problem with public transport is that we are reluctant to invest a lot of money in something that may have a limited payback. And because limited public transportation funding consists of buses, that doesn't bypass traffic which limits its usefulness thus discouraging people from abandoning their cars.

I think we are reevaluating suburbs a little bit as downtowns are becoming safer.

--Joey

 
At 03 August, 2006 13:57, Blogger Clemens said...

Elliot (and Joey),

Yes, that all sounds very familiar down here. It's why a good stiff tax on gas would be a good thing, but politically impossible, I am afraid. If the price went way up, people would be able to make their own decisions about how much driving to the corner Shop-n-Go to buy some Mountain Dew was to them. As it is, one fine day we will wake up and find we are either rationing it by gov't fiat, or simply not able to get it at any price (don't laugh - I remember when exactly this happened). The tightness of the world petro supply is such that it is bound to happen before too long.

As it is, GM and Ford are both in trouble because Americans have quit buying their pickups and SUVs. But I've already posted on that.

Conservative ideology (though apparently not conservative practice) calls for less govt and fewer taxes. Which means no taxes on gasaline and no public expenditure on mass transit. I personally would love to have a train or bus that I could hop on and spend the next hour or so reading, writing, grading, until I got to work.

But there is no way.

 
At 03 August, 2006 13:59, Blogger Clemens said...

Addendum:

For what it's worth - back when people in large Plymouths enjoyed driving into any little Opal car I happened to be driving, I was carless for most of a year. This was in winter, and while I lived in Minneapolis. I was right across the street from the school I was attending so that was no problem, but getting to work over in St Paul was a more interesting adventure. Still, I survived the winter. It can be done!

 
At 04 August, 2006 17:28, Blogger Elliot said...

Yeah, I 'bus it' everywhere during winter. But for transporting older folks and children, a car is almost a necessity when it's really savagely cold.

 

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