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TODAY Friday 2 May 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
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TODAY Friday 2 May 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
TODAY IN THE WORLD: Killer Grannies and the Highway Bill
Here is a list of The Ten Most Dangerous Metropolitan Areas for Walking, as provided by two of our favorite organizations, the Environmental Working Group and the Surface Transportation Policy Project.
The Ten Most Dangerous Metropolitan Areas for Walking:
1. Fort Lauderdale
2. Miami
3. Atlanta
4. Tampa
5. Dallas
6, Houston
7. Detroit
8. Riverside-San Bernadino
9. Phoenix
10. Charlotte
They're talking rate of pedestrian fatalities from auto accidents. More people die from being hit by a car than from being murdered by a stranger. It would be interesting, I think, to amalgamate both kinds of premature death and come up with a list of the Ten Most Dangerous Metropolitan Areas for Setting Foot Outside Your Door. Miami, Atlanta and Houston look to be list-toppers.
Anyway, the report from which the list comes ("Mean Streets") makes this comment about it:
"The most dangerous metropolitan areas for walkers tend to be newer, sprawling, southern and western communities, where transportation systems are most biased toward the car at the expense of other transportation options."
Fair enough as far as it goes, but let's not get too delicate. Four of the five most dangerous walksites are places in Florida where there are lots of old people. Can we talk here? Too many half-blind or tunnel-visioned or slow-reacting or just out-to-lunch grannies and gramps are driving the nation's highways, and they're lethal. I know this to be true, because only last month did I finally pull the fingers of my sainted 84-year-old mother from the steering wheel of her Chevy. Mom would cruise down the boulevard and see about thirteen percent of what would come into the field of vision of a normally-functioning human eye. And talk about reaction time. Mom would hit a lamppost and then ask me five minutes later if I had heard a funny noise.
This problem, acute already, will become a catastrophe when me and my fellow boomers lapse into senior status. We're going to be all over the place, and we're not going to sit still for a minute with any limitations on our freedoms to do exactly whatever it is we want to do. The carnage!
That the highway lobby is now busy on Capitol Hill strangling appropriations for buses and sidewalks is predictable but loathsome. One hundred and seventy five billion dollars -- as in $175 billion, biggest appropriation after Social Security and the military -- is up for grabs as Congress begins consideration of the re-authorization of the federal surface transportation act. That there now is a walkers lobby and a Campaign to Make America Walkable is aesthetically unfortunate but politically necessary, because the guys who build highways and influence Congress think you should only leave your car to set foot on a mall parking lot.
And one more thing, as long as I'm in a bad mood. There's another common characteristic of the ten cities on the Most Dangerous list that the report writers don't mention. They are all extremely ugly (unless you're sitting in that portion of Miami where you can turn your back on it). Mediocre-at-best glass box buildings, interstate highways through the center of town, shopping strips of numbing uniformity. People like them this way, we're told. Maybe, but I don't know. There's lots of evidence that a new taste for anti-sprawl -- for walking and socializing and doing errands -- is developing into a national movement. Long overdue.
TODAY ON THE SITE
A propos of all this, you might want to check in at our High Fives section and take a look at the excellent Web recommendations listed under Land Use and Transportation.
Yesterday we posted a revised and updated Media Watch. This weekend we'll be putting up new Op-Eds. Stay tuned.
5/01: China
4/30: Pity the Mangrove
4/29: Grizzlies off Battery Park
4/28: Mighty Monsanto
4/25: Growth
4/24: Refrigerator Wars
4/23: The Day the Earth Day Stood Still
4/22: Doorman Ecology
4/21: Toyota Steps Out
4/18: Victims of Extremism
4/17: Our White Guy Problem
4/16: Coca-Cola and the Merrit Parkway