Walk Across America

With the weekend close enough to taste, here's a video my coworker sent me to pass the minutes until quitting time:



It's more like other Pixilation-style videos than my Pedestrianism series, and must have taken an incredible amount of work. The effect is totally amazing!

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Scenic Route

The Chronicle Comical has a piece in today's Datebook section about a new web application called Scenic Route. The app lets you pick a starting and ending point, as well as the amount of time you have for your stroll. Then it spits out something of a walking tour that leverages the comments of other users to find interesting hidden gems along the way.

There's historical trivia and architectural points of interest, as well as some bizarre entries like this one from user 'paugsburger,'

sometimes I drive, I love the view from 280 (at 6th and Townsend)

Whatever.

The more time you give yourself, the more meandering the route this app returns. It's definitely designed to be used on an iPhone's web browser, but you can also launch it from your computer.

Check it out!

San Francisco's Exurban Values

I stumbled across this article on two contrastingly walkable exurbs of Washington DC. It's a well written explanation of what makes a place pedestrian-friendly or, more often, doesn't.

In his critique of the archetypically suburban-minded Leesburg, Virginia Bed Adler says:

The problem of pedestrians attempting to cross these roads in Leesburg is so severe that the town government has taken up the issue. The main strip-mall shopping area -- home to a Wal-Mart and outlet stores -- sits on a six-lane highway bypass with vast distances between pedestrian crossings. People who live directly across the road have been known to run across the street rather than hike to the nearest crosswalk. The town decided to curb this threat to public safety not by making it safer to cross but by putting up a roadside fence. So now people jump over the fence to get to the Wal-Mart across the street. -Ben Adler

Sound familiar?

Pedestrianism Vol. 4

Pedestrianism Vol. 4 from Josh Bingham

This edition is HD by Vimeo's standards. I recommend viewing it full-screen with HD on and scaling off.

This walk circumnavigates one of San Francisco's ugliest warts: the tangled maze of on- and off-ramps that connect Potrero Avenue and Cesar Chavez Street to Highway 101 while separating the Mission and Bayview Districts for car-free residents. Other liveable streets advocates have taken to calling this monstrosity the "hairball," and I'll use that term here as well since my own name for it is unprintable.

We start at Muni's Potrero trolly yard and maintenance facility, recipient of some much-needed Federal stimulus funds and end at the Flowercraft garden center on Bayshore Boulevard. Since the hairball cuts off the most direct route, down Potrero, across C Chav and on to Bayshore, I cut across 101 at the 18th Street Pedestrian bridge and over Potrero Hill into the Islais Creek industrial area of Bayview.

Things to note in order of appearance:

• The steep slope of Mariposa between Potrero and Utah Street results in steps for a sidewalk.
• 18th Street pedestrian bridge
• Potrero Hill community garden is planted on former Caltrans land
• McKinley Square park with its formal Victorian lawn and panoramic views
• The section of Vermont Street adjacent to McKinley Square is curvier than Lombard, but far less famous
• The lack of pedestrian crossings on C Chav, even east of the hairball, forces pedestrians to go out of their way around Kansas and Marin Streets, past the KOFY TV20 studios and Beronio Lumber
• The Bayshore Boulevard traffic sewer with its merge turns and narrow sidewalks encourages motorists to drive recklessly. Note the failure to yield at 2:18
• The Old Clam House is a San Francisco institution; a relic of the days when this area was wetlands surrounding Islais Creek
• The old Whole Earth Access and Goodman's Lumber buildings. Locals remember these places fondly; the latter is the site of the ever-controversial and endlessly reincarnated proposed Big Box Home Center store

Pedestrianism Vol. 3

Pedestrianism Vol. 3 from Josh Bingham on Vimeo.

In this video I experimented with night time, longer exposure pictures for the time lapse. The result is something like a drunken stumble. This is also the first Pedestrianism video that is HD by Vimeo's standards, so I recommend viewing in full-screen mode with scaling off.

The walk cuts across a northern section of the Mission District, along Mariposa, 17th and 16th streets. With the low frame rate you may be able to pick out some landmarks and get your bearings, if you are familiar with the area.

The Plight of the North American Biped

Tom Vanderbilt (author of Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do) has this hilarious mockumentary on that species so endangered in modern America, the pedestrian:

Militant Pedestrianism

An oldie-but-goodie wound up in my inbox this morning:


You go, grandma.

This is a great example of "militant pedestrianism." More on the subject here and here.

A Privilege, Not a Right

Drop a flower pot off a high-up windowsill and kill someone, you might face criminal charges. Slam into a pedestrian in the middle of a crosswalk and what happens, exactly?

WalkBikeCT has a spot-on analysis of modern American transportation pathology. Despite words to the contrary (words, I might add, that every would-be young driver is supposed to learn and take to heart) we treat driving as a god-given right in this country, and especially here in California. And as long as we keep thinking that way we can expect atrocities like these to keep happening.

Portland has a Vulnerable Users Law that puts responsibility on the operators of more dangerous vehicles for the safety of more vulnerable road users. Bikes have to look out for the safety of pedestrians and cars have more responsibility to look after bicyclists. San Francisco needs a law like this. Otherwise we will continue to tacitly discourage walking and biking because of what is essentially bullying by motorists - the threat of physical harm if we don't give up our lunch money right of way.

And we need to enforce laws already on the books protecting that right of way. DPT needs to actually respond to calls about cars parked on the sidewalk. The police need to ticket drivers who fail to yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk. And in the unfortunate instances where vulnerable roadway user is hurt or killed by a vehicle, appropriate criminal charges need to be filed. It's against the law to kill people. Why doesn't law enforcement act like it?

It all starts with walkable streets

Eric at the must-read Transbay Blog has an excellent post about the connection between the pedestrian environment and the overall health of our cities. Specifically he's rallying support for the Congress for the New Urbanism's recent proposal to include dense, livable streetscape improvements in the upcoming Federal stimulus bill:

The CNU proposal leverages the power inherent in a street grid to disperse traffic throughout an open, integrated network of routes. This is preferable to funneling a high volume of cars onto a few wide arteries, which encourages many drivers to use the exact same route. As a result, these wide arteries attract congestion like a magnet, and when the roadway reaches capacity, there is the perception that it must be widened to further increase capacity, leading to a vicious cycle of induced demand. ... This pattern has led to the decline of many once-prosperous urban districts and corridors, including here in the Bay Area. It confirms our observation that the freeway/artery model is inferior to the grid model, in which traffic is dispersed throughout a network of streets.

Investing in the rennaisance of our neglected urban cores - and in the creation of new urban areas where previously cars were king - will yield more bang for our buck than any freeway widening project, and should be a part of any taxpayer-funded stimulus package.

Please let your elected representative know how you feel about this.

Pedestrianism Vol. 2

Pedestrianism Vol. 2 on Vimeo.

An on-the-ground look at one of the worst streets in San Francisco. The stretch of trash-strewn pavement below the Central Skyway is actually three streets that have been combined into an expressway below the elevated freeway structure. Division Street runs between the Caltrain yard and Bryant St. Division curves South at Bryant and the expressway becomes 13th St it crosses Mission. From Mission it becomes Duboce and gradually narrows and calms down. The Skyway leaves the expressway, curving North and touching down on Market and Octavia.

With three lanes of traffic along most of the road, the expressway has roughly the same road space as the freeway above it. Pedestrians trying to make their way along or across this stretch of town have to deal with loud, echoing traffic noise; multi-street intersections, often without Pedestrian signals; off- and on-ramps for the Skyway; incomplete sidewalks and illegally dumped garbage. The blight surrounding this freeway and the vacant Caltrans properties along its way is noticable for blocks in either direction.

In 1999 the Central Freeway was demolished back to Market Street. The stretch of Octavia Blvd along its former route has since blossomed. Regrettably, it is very unlikely that the Division/13th/Duboce traffic sewer has any hope of a similar fate.

Why don't we do it in the road?

From Broken Sidewalk of Louisville, KY:

What a profoundly clear example of how stupidly sidewalks are often built. How evident that the people who build them or design them don't give them a second thought.

Every town has its own examples just as egregious as the ones Broken Sidewalk shows; an obvious example is the section of sidewalk below the 101 overpass in Pedestrianism Vol.1

Anyone else sick of this? In a nominally transit-first city like SF, why don't we start treating the rights-of-way reserved for private cars like this?