I love living along the trail system in my suburb, but I really, really wish there was at least an attempt to make businesses accessible via riding or walking on it. Not even a 10 foot piece of sidewalk to join the existing sidewalk to that north/south stretch for walking to the businesses. Desire path is best hope when not muddy.
by BrianDerm
11 Comments
Here in Houston, the street bike lanes stop a few blocks before the bayou trails. It’s all unconnected and great for getting from one side of a neighborhood to the other (you don’t need a trail or bike lane for that) but uncomfortable to get to the next neighborhood or destination area.
Agreed. Ones that go along highways without any zen whatsoever. I’d literally rather drive. At least then I can roll up the windows and listen to music.
Here we have neighborhoods walled off from each other with only car roads between them. A solitary multi-use path is bisected by high speed roads with signals to hold the murder machines at bay. Signal crossing buttons are always on the light pole furthest from right hand curb; okay for pedestrians, at least. We have Paint-and-Prayers bike routes next to traffic whizzing by at 60mph. ACK.
If Joe was a smart business man he’d through a couple bags of crushed stone on a desire path and put up a sign “pizza & pasta this way —>”
There is a surprising lack of knowledge in the planning departments about the need for cycling tourists to get to amenities from these trails. I base a lot of my travel locations based on cycling trails nearby and having places nearby to srop and spend money is very helpful…
If we made alternate transport better, people might be less car-reliant! Wont anyone think of the auto manufacturers! /s
I think this comes from people viewing cycling and walking as strictly recreation and not as transportation. The path goes by the waterway because it’s an enjoyable place to be, not because it gets you somewhere useful.
I’m in New England and our trails are pretty useful because they’re on old rail beds which were already designed to go places people want to be. I wish they still had actual trains on them, but that’s a whole other issue. Personally, I use the trails if they go where I’m going but I won’t add tons of extra time onto my trip just to use a multi use path.
*Somebody* needs to design a city that makes multi-use trails useful to ***everybody.***
In my city MUTs do wind through and connect businesses districts, but many homeless people “live/try to live” near or on the trail.
Commercial areas like that pretty much never have decent bike parking, if any at all. If they do it’s usually just front wheel collectors that can themselves be loaded into a truck with a small crew.
https://preview.redd.it/xyjfs5laq90g1.png?width=1334&format=png&auto=webp&s=0a2a6140dfa6782437df9ecdc29ce50ad21db936
this is probably the result of some combination of:
* limited property easements, likely only along the stream bed
* poorly planned commercial developments that already existed
* planning not wanting a path to run up to that dangerous stroad
* lack of funding for bridges etc
usually they want to connect businesses *in principle*, but making some of this stuff happen in practice is way more difficult than it needs to be.
i’m chair of my local citizen MUT board, and our biggest priority at the moment is actually working out connections between our trails.
Agreed. Unconnected trails lead to low usage and more opposition to funding for the next project. We need to focus on connections to homes and destinations.