Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 9, 1995 TAG: 9507100016
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARGIE FISHER EDITORIAL WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It was my plan to stretch beyond my usual exercise regimen - daily sprints leashed to a squirrel-chasing yellow Lab - and to walk to work at least three days each week.
I was well-equipped and ready: Spiffy, new, white walking shoes, and bobby socks with no holes in the toes. A new, red, leather backpack to tote umbrella, lunch, wallet and assorted clutter that ordinarily travels in my pocketbook, and proper office shoes to change into once I got there. My Walkman, with fresh batteries, and enough borrowed or rented books-on-tape to get me to August. Even a pedometer.
Trial runs determined that it is exactly 2.5 miles from my front door to The Roanoke Times' front door; that hoofing it takes approximately 45 minutes; and that the aches and pains in the legs and abdomen disappear in about 36 hours.
Also that it made me feel downright noble. I congratulated myself for doing something good for the environment as well as my heart, lungs and muscles.
Those first few times I did it, I felt great solidarity with a young mother I saw in Wasena giving her baby an outing in his stroller, and a young fellow who, I guessed from his shirt and tie, was biking to a downtown job. I was pleased that several drivers slowed down long enough to hand-signal or shout an offer of a ride, and that a few neighbors or co-workers stopped to ascertain that my car had not broken down. It's assumed, apparently, that nobody would walk to work if he or she had wheels.
And, obviously, from the state of the sidewalks in Roanoke, it is further assumed that everybody has wheels.
I've always been a walker, from days of growing up in Old Southwest whence, long before I was old enough to drive, there was no way to visit friends from old Lee Junior High School and Woodrow Wilson Junior High except to walk to their homes in South Roanoke, in Garden City, in Wasena, in Raleigh Court. So I became familiar with city sidewalks - knew the places where the bricks had Balkanized and the cement had been buckled by roots of nearby trees, creating a hazard for even the nimble-footed.
Well, 45 years later, many of those places are still there - only scruffier with weeds and in worse shape. Their disrepair is testimony to the world's most endangered species: the pedestrian.
One day, I decided to take a different route. Instead of going through Wasena, across Wasena Bridge, down Elm, down a side street to Campbell, I walked from Brambleton down Brandon, past Towers Shopping Center, trying to get to Franklin Road.
Big mistake.
Though there are snatches of sidewalks on this stretch of Brandon, there is no way to get from one snatch to another except to cross back and forth on the busy highway. And however you may zigzag, it is inevitable that you eventually end up on the narrow shoulder of the road or in its median, with cars whizzing by within an inch of your life.
Not a good way to start the workday. After that experience, I decided nobility is overrated; I caught the bus home that evening and got my car out of the garage.
Churlish as it may sound, with roads and bridges in crumbles from the recent floods, it seems to me that local, state and federal government leaders and other visionaries ought to be giving a little consideration to this nation's most neglected infrastructure: the sidewalk.
Remember 1986, when former Gov. Jerry Baliles launched his Great Transportation Initiative? Remember the task force of thousands that he convened: legislative pooh-bahs and corporate nabobs and former governors and local-government VIPs? Remember all the public hearings, and all the reports and recommendations concerning the building, maintenance and financing of highways, bridges, airports and ports? I do, and I don't recall that anybody ever mentioned sidewalks.
When was the last time you heard the word at a zoning-commission meeting when a proposed residential development was being discussed?
Today, there's much talk about restoring our sense of community, about ``bringing people together.'' I suggest the humble sidewalk might play a role in this. If city and suburban neighborhoods had decent sidewalks, more people might turn off their television sets and home computers. They might get off their duffs and go outside to walk, mingle, talk to one another, get to know each other better, and care a little more about others' lives and problems.
Sure, people can get many of the benefits of sidewalks now - at the shopping centers, at their health clubs, on the golf courses. Provided, of course, that they have a car to drive to get to the shopping centers, and the money to afford the health clubs and golf courses.
Today, true enough, many of our visionaries are talking greenways: future networks of wonderful walkable greenways, linking everything in sight. I'm all for it, and hope I live long enough to see it. Which I might have a better chance of doing if, someone, streetwise, would meanwhile think about grayways: sidewalks.
by CNB