I live in Los Angeles. It's sunny and gorgeous here a lot. A dreamy place for walking, riding your bike, just being outside. But the truth is a lot of people do not go outside to ride their bike or walk for very long because it feels unsafe a lot. From almost every place I go in LA I can hear traffic. And I don't mean just cars driving by. I mean a low persistent hum. Cars set the tone for this town.
But being the gorgeous place it is here you want to be outside but often it's not that easy to find a place that is car free.
Sometimes I can't help but get the feeling that we are all allowing cars to dominate our lives. Not just being dependent upon them but literally running out of their way, not wanting to go for a walk or bike ride because we feel it is too dangerous.
A few great places to walk and bike in LA are Griffith Park and The Rose Bowl.
But the thing these two places have in common are cars barreling by all of these fragile humans out walking.
Today I had my son and we were standing off to the side chatting with a friend, "Holy cow," she said as a mini SUV went barreling down the road right by a grandfather and his grandson biking.
"Yep," I replied, "that's why I hesitate sometimes to do this walk."
I'm not sure what the speed limit is around The Rose Bowl but a lot of people are going between 30 and 40. The website for the DOT says "In an effort to make your recreation experience more enjoyable and safe, colored pavement, striping and delineators are installed to separate pedestrians from cyclists and motorists. Pedestrians should always remain within the delineators and on the painted surface." Thanks for that effort, it's great but what about the danger of the people driving the cars too fast?
One little slip of the hand and someone could do a lot of damage.
When I have gone visiting my folks in a new suburb in Northern California my husband and I couldn't help but be unnerved by how fast the cars were going on the roads. The roads were wide and the speed limit was 40.
How can we foster a sense of community when all we are doing is whizzing through town in our cars? To quote The Atlantic Cities "Consider, for example, main "arterial" streets so wide that pedestrians can’t cross them, even if there is a reason to; little if any greenery to absorb water, heat, or provide a calming influence; or residential streets with no sidewalks."
I'm not out to say cars are bad but what about lowering the speed limit where people walk? Or even where people don't walk but might if they didn't feel so unsafe in doing so?
Yes, you would get to where you are going 10 minutes later. woopee
Do we really want to continue building a society around cars?