My town's walkability nightmare: the closest southbound bus stop to a great mexican restaurant, an old folks' home, a 3 star hotel, two fast food restaurants, a bank, and other local businesses.
You're looking at that right by the way. THREE freeway ramps!! I walked this last week and it was genuinely terrifying. The first freeway ramp when coming from the bus stop has NO pedestrian lights or signals.
Also those of you with good eyes will notice that there is NO SIDEWALK south of the bus stop. None. If you want to walk south on that particular street (which is 5 lanes btw) then you have to cross the freeway to get to the other side of the road.
But the outside world is scary! That's why I need a 3 ton metal box to shield me from it wherever I go
You're kidding yourself. A lot of that metal box is plastic instead.
Is it bad it i think that this isn’t that bad at all?
I mean it would be nicer if the sidewalk continued on both sides sure, but freeway enterance ramps are typically about as hard for pedestrians to cross as roundabouts given the slow speed you need to take them and single direction of traffic. It looks like there are even marked crossings and a sidewak, so this walk is very much intended. The freeway itself is grade separated and so not a factor in any of this, and while the road is five lanes it’s a arterial road so that’s quite resonable.
It's really bad. Don't fool yourself. Typical layout of a car-centric design.
What would improve it in your view? I mean it’s an artery joining a freeway, there’s going to be cars.
At least a small bridge over the multi lane street.
Proper ped/cycle infrastructure is at grade with cars doing the climbing.
given the scale involved i don’t think you’d be tight on space with just a pedestrian ramp, much less rasing or lowering the road. Given how it’s just two lanes each way plus a turning lane i’d imagine a stoplight’s pedestrian cycle should be enough.
Putting a bus stop at those businesses on the other side would help.
That comes at the cost of slowing down the bus for everyone for a two minute, plus waiting at stoplights, walk.
Depends on driver behavior where you live, I think. I have zero confidence in marked pedestrian crossings, and expect everyone to take these kinds of ramps as fast as they possibly can, possibly while texting.
As a cyclist/pedestrian always assume that, at best, drivers are indifferent to your well-being.
The crossing to the bus stop is a nightmare, there isn't even a crosswalk there. And considering this is near the freeway ramps, I assume that 5 lane road is quite busy. The rest isn't that bad. But that one crossing definitely deserves an on-demand stop light or better yet a pedestrian bridge or underground passage.
Are you looking at the same picture? I see a crosswalk from the bus stop side to the median at the nearest on-ramp access, then from that median to the sidewalk under the freeway.
It's clearly a lot of crossing to get to the bus stop, but the problem here is where the bus stops, not the current crossings provided. There are few other ways to provide non-grade access to a multi-lane freeway. I'm not sure of any which would be workable given the proximity of land use which prevents a cloverleaf, and the addition of one would probably make the crossing even more treacherous. If the bus were simply to add a stop on the (photographic) north side of the highway, up near the commercial entrance, that would be the nominal "solution" and require nothing more than a sign.
My sweet, sweet summer child..
You're kind of right about the freeway being "as slow as a roundabout" but the third crossing is the worst because it's a slip road without a yield sign, so you have to rely on drivers actually looking at you and stopping for you. Fortunately traffic here is so bad that the stop light ahead usually results in cars being stuck all the way on the freeway, allowing you to cross between them. There is a crossing light for pedestrians but only pedestrians can see it, like one of the ✋ signals youd see in a city. The cars have no awareness on whether you're "allowed" to cross.
The slip road is made especially worse by being quite smooth and straight so instead of going the speed suggested by the signs (20 mph), most drivers go 40 or even 50 down the ramp before stopping or going for the stop light.
This is also true if you intend to stop there and cross the road to go south because there's no sidewalk on your side of the road. The second crossing is another freeway slip road. This one does have a yield sign but you still have to rely solely on drivers seeing you and actually caring enough to stop, which isn't great considering it's a semi-blind corner and they're already speeding up to go highway speeds.
Wait, do you go over or under the freeway ramps? The map makes me think it’s under, but from your description it sounds like you’re going over?
Either way it looks like a very dangerous walk.
You go over. You go under the overpasses, but the crosswalks will the on-ramp and the off-ramps are level
Ah, now I see. Sorry, I read three and my head automatically only saw the overpasses.
Sorry you have to deal with these kinds of situations. I'd ask if you could address these problems with the town council, but I'm guessing the answer will be very predictable.
Yeah, a lot of people have tried. The issue is really just from a cost perspective and the town council has repeatedly said they won't be fixing anything here due to it being cost prohibitive. The freeway is one of the busiest in the country (although our section isn't too bad) so shutting down an exit or entrance or even an overpass would be bad for business.
It really all just stems from this street formerly being very rural, like you only got off the freeway here to go to 1 other town 20 miles away, or a government agriculture facility. Now there's a mall, Walmart, grocery stores, a few strip malls... Etc., so it didn't matter that the road design was trashy even by 1970s standards when only 50 people used it a day
20 years ago the average resident here probably would've never gone here. Now people commute here.
Oh woah. Looking at that map gives me culture shock! Is that USA? How common is such a situation in your area?
This kind of thing depends a lot on the part of the US and the time the development was built.
Stuff built to serve suburban communities, built since 1960, and particularly in the “sun belt” are way more likely to be built with the assumption everyone will drive and thus walkability is an after thought.
It’s changing but a lot of new development in places like Florida, Arizona and Texas are still being built like this.
Basically anywhere with a conservative government is still built like this. Public transit is socialism!
Very common. NYC, San Francisco, Seattle, and maybe a few other big cities are more pedestrian and public transit friendly, but most US cities are exactly like this. It's not uncommon to have to walk a couple of miles to a bus stop.
Is it sad the first thing that came to mind is how nice it is you have a sidewalk all the way there. Most places around here you're either on the road or in the bushes trying to walk places.
This kind of makes me feel that the problem starts one layer before: this are is so spread out. It really doesn't look like there's any visible reason for buildings to be so far apart.
There's so few buildings that yeah, I think one bus stop is enough to serve them as far as amount of users is concerned. But the green could have been around the built up area, not between the buildings. Parking could also be compacted, maybe multi-floor or underground to reduce the surface area.
This post is about the position of the bus stop, not whether it serves the amount of people necessary.
I probably didn't express myself well. What I meant to say is that with an area so spread-out, any placement of the bus stop would make it extremely unreachable from some other adjacent destination.