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| The six lanes of 1st Avenue (Iowa Rte. 922) by Coe College |
A major challenge to creating a walkable town is the legacy of auto-centric street widening in past decades. Reconfiguring or narrowing the street so it works with, rather than through, the neighborhood is a logistical as well as a political challenge. It is especially so when the street in question is a state highway. While there are exceptions--I wrote about
King Street (State Rte. 7) in Alexandria, Virginia last spring--for the most part state transportation departments have their standards and they're sticking with them, and too bad for the town that has to co-exist with a four-lane highway slashing through its commercial and residential districts. (For a tragic case from Syracuse, New York (State Rte. 108), see
earlier posts, the future of Iowa's small towns continues to be very much in doubt. Traditional small towns retain the grid patterns and older commercial buildings that inspire urbanists everywhere. Maybe those downtowns can't all be brought back to life, but how running a four-lane highway through them helps town life is beyond me.
MAIN SOURCES:
Jeff, "
Grundy Center Fights Back Against Three-Laning,"
Iowa Highway Ends (Etc.), 13 February 2019
Joe Linton, "
L.A. Anti-Road Diet Conspiracy Trolls Trying to Go National,"
Streetsblog LA, 4 February 2019
Angie Schmitt, "
The Airtight Case for Road Diets,"
Streetsblog USA, 29 October 2014
Jeff Speck,
Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2012)
Sumber http://brucefnesmith.blogspot.com
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