Florida needs sidewalks

LauderdaleGrandfatherGrandson1967 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It doesn’t take much to create discomfort. People avoid discomfort at all costs.  Who wants to be uncomfortable? It is therefore no wonder that people in the USA and particularly Florida walk less.  Streets are not designed with the pedestrian’s comfort in mind.  I’m not referring to luxurious comfort, or excessive amenities.  What I am referring to is simple common sense things which somehow escape the sense of designers, contractors and policy maker’s minds.

Absence of designated path (sidewalk)

When a pedestrian is forced to walk on anything other than a designated path, he or she immediately is uncomfortable.  To walk through waist high grass street shoulders is to place a burden of unnecessary anxiety on a pedestrian.  Moreover, this lack of designated path unwittingly places the pedestrian in real present danger.  For example:  If grass is high enough to obscure the view to the ground significantly, then the possibility exists for:

A walking injury:

Have you ever stepped into a pot hole not realizing that that pot hole was there? I have…plenty of times.  It usually results with a twisted and/or sprained ankle (or worse).  No one likes walking through the unknown.  When grass is high and a path is nonexistent, the potential for covered unseen holes or obstacles is high.  An injury from these is fairly certain.

An animal encounter:

Snakes – Yes snakes hide in these tall bushes of grass.  The good thing is that most snakes are afraid of humans. Therefore, if a snake hears your approach, they will usually flee.  This however, is not always the case and the possibility for a deadly encounter with a rattler for example, is very real.

Ticks – Florida is infested with them.  And guess where they live?  High grasses are perfect habitats for these disease ridden pests.  Exposing pedestrians to these blood hungry, Lyme disease infecting pests is borderline cruel and inhumane since it can easily be avoided by the erection of a designated path.

Mosquitoes – Another common resident of Florida.  Mosquitoes are unrelenting blood sucking machines that can carry with them diseases like the West Nile virus and Dengue Fever.  A

English: Stegomyia aegypti (formerly Aedes aegypti) mosquito biting a human. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

pedestrian can be exposed to Mosquitoes whether on a designated path or not.  However, the level of exposure greatly increases if pedestrians walk through high marshes and unpaved areas thus increasing the chances of coming into contact with an infected host.

Ants – Ants are extremely beneficial to the environment.  They take care of eating and eliminating carcasses from dead animals which otherwise would remain.  They create tunnels which helps crop grow by providing oxygen to the soil. Overall, there are not many bad things you can say about ants…that is until your fate brings you into a one on one encounter with an ant pile whiles you’re walking through waist high grass, oblivious to the incoming calamity about to reach your skin.  A very painful experience for sure and if you are like my dad who is allergic to red ant bites, a potentially deadly experience.

Sphecius speciosus (Photo credit: Arenamontanus)

Wasps – Yes, wasps can make their nests on the ground too.  For example, the Ground Digger wasp (also known as the Cicada Wasp) makes its abode by digging a hole in the ground.  These are passive aggressive wasps so it’s rare that they will come and attack you, however, if you walk on their nest while they are around, they will try to protect the nest and that means they will come after the danger (IE, you).  Yellow Jackets on the other hand are not as passive as the Cicada wasp.  In fact, these guys are pretty aggressive protectors.  If they sense any danger to their nest, they will come out to protect it in force.  Depending on the species of Yellow Jackets their nests can usually be found on high places or low to the ground within high grasses.  It’s worth re-stating that these guys are very aggressive and will repeatedly sting (as opposed to bees that will sting you once then die) and what’s worse, some people may be allergic to stings from wasps, creating a potentially life threatening situation if a wasp nest is disturbed.

This list is by no means exhaustive; there are plenty of other animals an unsuspecting pedestrian can run into.

A vehicular intrusion:

If there are no delineated paths for pedestrians you are in essence informing the pedestrian that he or she can walk wherever they want.  This means that if the pedestrian decides that he

English: Typical Indian National Highway. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

or she does not want to walk through high marshes of grass and instead decides to walk on the paved shoulder of the streets, then it would be acceptable.  This however, exposes the pedestrian to a high chance of injury due to vehicular interaction especially on a busy highway.  According to Transportation for America (TA) within the decade between 2000 and 2009 America witnessed the deaths of over 47,000 pedestrians. Moreover, over 688,000 pedestrians were reported being injured.  That’s a lot of people! Now there are a lot of factors that contribute to this statistic, however the main factor is that our streets are not pedestrian safe or friendly, period.  There is no political jargon needed in trying to obscure the fact that over 700,000 pedestrians where either injured or fatally wounded. This means that something must be done to our streets to ensure the safety of people.

Absence of shelter

This is Florida.  Florida is known for its very hot weather and timely showers.  As a pedestrian, to walk exposed to these elements is grotesquely uncomfortable.  Especially when you have to walk half a mile from let’s say the bus stop to work (not exaggerating).  High temperatures can reach in the low hundreds on any summer/fall day in Florida (or any day for that matter) which means that pedestrians who go extended periods of unsheltered foot travel are exposing themselves to potentially dangerous weather conditions.  This can result in dehydration, sun burn, skin cancer, etc.  To be clear, when I say “shelter” I am referring to either a man made shelter, like a gazebo or some type of overhead enclosure; or natural shelter like an inexpensive tree.  Either one works.

The fact

The fact is that America (Florida included) needs to walk.  The fact that obesity in our country is so high is just shameful.  An environment that encourages walking will help decrease the obesity rate and help decrease expenses for our country and more specifically, our state.  Creating walkable streets is a win-win situation.  Why our policy makers, politicians, and contractors have not focused on creating these streets is really beyond my comprehension.  Maybe I’m just too young to understand the economics of it all.  Maybe it’s too expensive to protect human

Florida (Photo credit: colros)

lives and increase health in our country via properly designed streets.  I mean, if that’s the case, then that makes perfect sense.  The bottom line, above all is that we must save money.  We must seek any and all possible ways of consolidating street design in order to produce the most profit and provide the least service.  Isn’t that how capitalism works?  This is America after all.  To take care of people while spending more than “necessary”, well that’s just a socialist idea. We need to get back to our roots, selfishly seeking our own profit and neglecting the ones that need it most.

Juan Castillo Jr.