You CAN'T walk to school: Another example of poorly engineered streets in suburbs costing you money

ABOVE: Perhaps this familiar "road ends here; we screwed up" sign should be incorporated into Franklin's city coat of arms.

A recent story in the Washington Post describes a school district's attempt to contend with sky-high transportation costs by encouraging more students to walk to school, thereby lowering the amount of buses on the road burning expensive gas.

Here's the sad fact: Most post-World War II suburbs - - Franklin is certainly one of them - - have poorly engineered streets that are more akin to plumbing systems than useful transportation grids.

This is the curvilinear suburb, the familiar collection of curving, irregular streets inspired by, of all things, rural cemeteries designed in the first half of the 19th century. Rather than a regular, predictable, useful grid of streets that disperses traffic and provides multiple routes from "A" to "B," we live in "communities" designed by engineers to focus traffic on a few over-used arterial and collector roads. This leads to a common suburban phenomena: You can see it, but you can't get to it.

One had only to live through the recent flooding here in Franklin to realize that it takes very, very little to completely cut off access to whole neighborhoods because we lack a useful street grid. In the picture above, you can see that flooding on any of the red or blue roads - - collector roads - - pretty much seals the deal.

So, imagine trying to get kids who live close to school to forgo the bus and walk. You could take a compass and inscribe a circle that radiates a half-mile from the school in question, and decide that every student in that circle should walk or bike to school.

But you can't do that in Franklin; or, indeed, in many sprawling suburbs. As described here multiple times, there are kids attending Pleasant View Elementary School, for example, who get on a bus mere yards from the school's front door due to the sad fact that, even if there is a street route to school, it is so horribly unsafe that it's better for them to climb on a bus for a 12 second ride than brave the road.

 

ABOVE: If you're a kid that would like to walk or ride a bike to school, that little red strip is a virtual gauntlet. 

That's not to mention the many homes from which you can hear or even see the school your children attend, yet you cannot get there on foot without taking some circuitous route that invariably forces you to cross or use a busy collector road where traffic averages 45- and 50-miles per hour - with no sidewalk and a shoulder regularly used by vehicles for blind, full-speed passing of turning cars.

 

ABOVE: Playing "chicken" on Drexel in the bike/pedestrian lane on a blind rise.

Has Franklin learned its lesson? No. A July 15th city memorandum describes a five year road improvement plan that concentrates on merely widening arterial and collector roads.

And we'll keep paying for buses that transport kids 275 yards down the road.

More Kids Might Walk To School - washingtonpost.com:

Comments

[lisa]

At franklin high school, NO ONE walks to school, and upperclassmen can't be seen riding the bus. To keep up appearances at FHS you gotta have a car and a $200 parking permit or else have a lot of friends that are willing to drive you home. If you don't, have fun walking 2+ miles home on collector roads.

[John Michlig]

I've heard that from other students and their parents as well, Lisa. There's a whole neighborhood a stone's throw away that is unconnected, and 51st street is a death trap. Literally.

[Dave Reid]

It's funny I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and you know until you experience urban living you really think driving to get everywhere is how things work. Now living in the City, I haven't seen my car in months!

[Liz Stone Abraham]

In my town, the only way for kids to get to school is via one of two heavily trafficked routes with no shoulders. Even though school buses clog the roads every morning and afternoon, the buses are frequently half-full, leading me to guess that only a portion of kids in each area of town are willing to take the bus. Having grown up in NYC, I don't have personal experience with the shame associated with taking a school bus in high school, but I hear about it from my students. I don't know where we would begin to remedy the situation.