Walking has plummeted across America
Walking has plummeted across America
Walkability has plummeted. It's too dangerous for me to even walk from my house to the gas station about a mile away because there are no sidewalks and cars come hurtling down the road I would have to walk down.
I live in a small city/large town now. I used to live in L.A. and, unlike a lot of people, I walked all the time. And took the trains. I miss being able to walk to the supermarket or down to the donut shop for breakfast and coffee.
As someone not from the US, the idea of non-walkable cities is so alien to me.
Before learning to speak English and reading about the US, I wouldn’t even imagine it’s a thing.
Yeah basically the country was blowing up in birth rates and suburban expansion post WW2 at the same time the car was becoming a big thing and people were able to afford them. So auto companies lobbied and campaigned heavily to make everything very car-centric in the US and now this is the result. It really fucking sucks.
Also doesn't help that the country is so damn big, but that's a poor excuse for the lack of proper transit at the metro area level.
The town I grew up in was very walkable, and I'd like to move back there one day if housing ever gets cheaper, but until then I'm stuck in this town where they want us all to drive everywhere.
It's frustrating because so many of the older city and town centers actually have decent walkability, even if growth made things a little more complicated. It's mostly the later development surrounding the cities where the only thought during planning was how the cars get from point A to point B and then park, and now the barriers to fix that situation are enormous. Some of them will update their ordinances to require sidewalk construction during new development, but it's not all that helpful when you end up with sidewalk stubs connected to nothing. It also doesn't fix the existing arrangement of buildings and drives that makes everything so hostile to pedestrians.
I feel like I live in the least walkable city in the US. I live 2 miles away from work and I've walked it a few times and here's the annoyances I have to deal with:
- Sidewalks are blocked by obstacles such as overgrown vegetation and cars.
- Sidewalks are broken up so badly they aren't safe to walk on.
- Segments with NO sidewalks around blind curves.
Basically you have to walk in the road most of the trip.
But fuckin' hell, we need to increase taxes to pay for that new jail! I really hate my town.
This would be funny if it wasn't so relatable.
My kids have friends about a block away, and both ways to get there have massive spots of missing sidewalk with almost no space on the edge of the roadway. My neighborhood has decent sidewalks, but we're a little island surrounded by areas with huge gaps in the sidewalks. In some areas you can stay on the sidewalk if you keep switching sides of the road though...
It's like whoever designed the roads forgot that people live in residential areas...
I live in a midwest city (not even a small one), and it's so frustrating that sidewalks will just end suddenly. There are no obstacles, it just ends. Or the sidewalk stops on one side of the road and literally picks back up on the other side of the road. But the road is a 4 lane road with a 45mph limit (so everyone does 55+) so it's too dangerous to cross.
Last year there was a bunch of construction near me to build a brand new sidewalk down a long stretch of road. ...and they just ended it a half block away from the next light so you have to walk in the grass.
Between stupid garbage like that and bad bike infrastructure (which here is actually not the worst I've seen), you definitely feel like US cities hate their citizens.
I live in a very walkable part of the world with great public transportation, and still people don't seem to walk anymore. It's electric scooters and these weird electric mopets.
I was in the city the other day and walked in between some people. There was a tram arriving and most people around me started to pick up because they had to catch it. They looked like they were running, but were barely faster than me walking, and some of them were slower, because they had to catch their breath on that epick 100m sprint. I think wall-e wasn't too far off.You could be right.
39% of adults in the world are overweight or obese Globally, 39% of adults aged 18 years and older were overweight or obese in 2016. Being overweight is also defined based on body-mass index: the threshold value is lower than for obesity, with a BMI equal to or greater than 25.
https://ourworldindata.org/obesity
To be fair, BMI is kind of a bullshit measure, but I think there is definitely an obesity epidemic and, while it is especially bad in the United States, it is global.
It doesn't help that our streets, stroads, and roads are frequently unwalkable.
I was waiting for my car to get its brakes fixed yesterday, and decided to go across the street to a starbucks. It took like 15 minutes to cross the street as I had to wait for two sets of lights to cross the intersection. At least there was an actual sidewalk. Later I walked over to a different strip mall to get some lunch. No sidewalk at all. Multilane road with lots of traffic, no sidewalks. The few pedestrians out were, like I was, using parking lots as pathways to avoid getting run over.But beyond that, the group isn't sure what's keeping Americans off their feet.
certainly it cant be all the obvious things that keep them off their feet
The suburb I live in is only walkable if you’re willing to cut through lawns. Otherwise it takes three times as long to walk.
It would be awesome if they could connect the cul de sacs with bike paths. Suddenly it would be faster and legal to bike or walk.
However, this would require buying many expensive homes and tearing them down, so it won’t ever happen and I’ll continue trespassing to get to the store.
The US has been car-centric for so long and walkability has been neglected in construction and local policy forever. It's much harder to build it after the fact.
If you have visited or ever will visit Europe, notice that there really isn't an urban or suburban road built without sidewalks and bike lanes. It's standard practice.
I've been to Europe and while the walkability is nice, there's still too many people and I don't like being that close to others. American suburbs are too crowded for me, but I can't move further out at the moment.
Plus I'm lucky that I'm in an older suburb, because the new ones don't even have sidewalks.
I live in NYC and a big reason I like it is how walkable it is. Haven't needed a car in a decade.
I'm lucky enough that I can just refuse to live somewhere else.
Grew up in the suburbs and I never want to go back. I can't stand how isolated and barren they feel.
The key in that chart is terrible. Why does it get darker then lighter?
I thought it was bad where I live, but when I was in OKC it was so much worse. I've never been anywhere so hostile to pedestrians. Sidewalks were jagged and broken and just ended randomly wherever they thought they could squeeze more parking in. Despite being a small city there were highways EVERYWHERE. You could never escape the roar of traffic. My buddy who lives there is in a gated community and even if there was anything around (there wasn't) you couldn't walk anywhere anyway because the gate is pressure sensitive to the weight of a car so you can't actually leave unless you're driving. I can only hope the next generation of planners can mitigate some of the last generation's damage in our lifetime
And it's not only gated communities. So many neighborhoods in the US, especially in the burbs, trap you at the entrance to the neighborhood. Unless you're in a car, you simply can't leave. There are no sidewalks and no bike lanes and nothing connecting you to the neighborhood down the road. It's ridiculous. Hate it.
The data for this tracks 2019 - 2022 and so I'd be real curious to know how this would have looked had the pandemic not happened. I think a lot of people's walks often have an objective to them (get coffee, stop at a store, etc) and it just wasn't a great idea there for a while.
I was in Seattle for the pandemic and the number of people outside doing anything at all dropped considerably during that time. I lived by a really popular neighborhood walking greenway thing and it was almost totally dead for a while.
Pedestrian fatalities from vehicles has skyrocketed.
Makes me appreciate my very walkable neighborhood.
so people monitoring their steps with a fit bit isn't helping?
