A few weeks ago, I was almost hit by a truck while I was crossing the street.
I was walking to my car at the end of the workday. I had to park a few blocks away from work, since the parking lot at the office was full. I walked along the sidewalk to the corner, saw that the traffic had stopped at the stop sign, and started across the crosswalk. A truck that was turning left moved into the intersection and was turning towards me. This kind of thing happens sometimes, but usually, the driver stops before he's close enough for me to get worried.
This driver didn't stop. I had to run out of the way. He only saw me after I was out of the way of his truck. He gave me a meek wave of his hand by way of apology and drove off. I made it to the other side of the street, shaken after seeing a grille as tall as me coming at me. If I was any slower, or looking elsewhere, or a child, or a senior, I would have been hit. I'm lucky because I know how often this kind of thing happens. I know that I need to have my head on a swivel as I'm crossing a side street because I cannot trust drivers with my safety. I'm lucky because I ran out of the way. I'm lucky, because any time it's truck vs. human, truck will win.
This kind of thing happens all of the time. I've had a few close calls myself, and it's one of the main reasons I'm always scared when I get behind the wheel. I do not want to be the person who injures, maims or kills another person.
But this is not the article about cars. I wrote that one a few weeks ago. This is about being a pedestrian. And I really like being a pedestrian.
Being a pedestrian (and I am including people who use wheelchairs and other mobility aids in that definition — though I will discuss how our community and transportation system affects people with disabilities in a later article. Also, to make my life easier I'll use the word "walking" interchangeably with "being a pedestrian"), which is the one universal mode of transportation. Even if you drive everywhere, you still walk from your car, through the parking lot, to the vape shop (or wherever you're going). Until we invent teleportation, we're all pedestrians. So why don't we design our community around that one, universal, shared experience?
Probably because walking isn't something that can be monetized, and capitalism doesn't like that. The only thing that a walker needs to buy to walk is a pair of shoes. But then that's not specialized equipment. The odds of people already having shoes are pretty high, so it's hard to even say that. There's no need to pay for parking, or a bike lock, or a bus ticket, you can just ... go walk somewhere. You also don't have to worry about parking close to your destination, because you're not parking anything. People can even run errands on foot. With a backpack or even just a shopping bag, it's perfectly fine for most people to pick up some groceries on foot, grab a book or two from the library and head home.
Now I know what you're thinking. Unless you live basically in downtown, all of these things are just too far to walk.
That's exactly the problem, and the way I see it, there are two solutions: the temporary one, and the long-term one.
Courtenay is not a big town, it doesn't even have that much sprawl. But it does have a lot of single-use areas. We tend to live far from where we work and shop. That promotes car dependency and has us all getting into our cars at the same time, going to the same places, and then going back home all at basically the same time.
But there are places in the world where where we live, work, play, eat, and exercise are all actually within walking distance of each other. That's possible here too, it just takes a bit of political will and for the public to want that. The long-term solution is to plan our community around walking. To make multi-use zones with businesses, homes and everything but industrial areas all applicable within the same areas.
In Japan, zoning is a federal thing. The most restrictive zoning is similar to residential, but instead of exclusionary zoning as we have in Canada, all of the zones include the use of the zone below it on the hierarchy. So effectively every zone can have residential use. Commercial zones can include smaller stores, schools, and homes. There is one zone where homes aren't allowed, and that is heavy industrial, and I think that's a manner of safety rather than anything else. But what this does is put everything in the same place, so you don't have to get in the car to go anywhere. Everything is within walking distance of your home.
The more short-term solution, I think, is modal share. Yeah, walking downtown from east Courtenay would be a pain, but if we had a decent bike lane network anywhere east of the river, it would be fine to ride a bike or e-bike into the downtown core, lock it up at a designated bike parking garage or even just outside of a business do what you need to do, and then ride home. For people who can't ride bikes, or for bad weather, that's where the improved transit system I talked about last week comes into play.
Imagine walking out of your front door and being able to do everything you need to in a day, without having to pay for gas or find a place to park. Now, back to the story I started with.
Remember how I was almost hit by a car? What if I was a child? We are rapidly designing ourselves out of a world where kids can roam freely without being hit by a car. In fact, most of the pickup trucks on the market today are taller than an M1 Abrams Battle Tank. I wouldn't want my kids in front of one of those.
What if they didn't have to be?
