There’s a lot of loose talk about ‘retrofitting suburbs’ and ‘walkable suburbanism’ but examples like this show just how hollow and meaningless those terms can be.”Ĭortright isn’t wrong about the walkability of the area surrounding the intersection of Memorial and Eldridge, which is in the Energy Corridor. He wrote: “While this has the veneer and some of the trappings of walkability, it’s just not a walkable area. Of course, he was mostly joking in comparing what essentially is marketing to what he said is the reality of such infrastructure: all cars and zero bikes and pedestrians. In doing that, Cortright noted that the design aimed to be pedestrian-oriented - proven by an artist’s rendering of the completed project featuring as many bicyclists and pedestrians (41) as cars (38). He lumps the rebuilt Memorial-Eldridge intersection into this category. Many of these projects involve building pedestrian bridges over wide, fast arterial roads or railroad tracks and, as Cortright has pointed out, are “at best a remedial effort to minimize the danger this environment poses to anyone who isn’t in a car.” The problem is, they don’t do anything to increase walkability or the desire to walk, which is true. Much of what is labeled pedestrian infrastructure is in reality car infrastructure.”Įxamples of “performative pedestrian infrastructure,” which can seem like a two-steps-forward-one-step-back approach to bike and pedestrian infrastructure can be found in Denver, Atlanta, Orlando and other cities. A four- or six-lane arterial, posted for 45 miles per hour, and with crossings every half mile or more isn’t pedestrian friendly no matter how wide the sidewalks are on either side of the road. An example of the former is his campaign against the pandemic-induced flight from cities narrative while the latter includes various freeway expansion projects and “performative pedestrian infrastructure” - a term he may have coined.Ĭortright puts it this way: “One of the biggest lies in transportation planning is calling something ‘multi-modal.’ When somebody tells you a project is ‘multi-modal,’ you can safely bet that it’s really for cars and trucks with some decorative frills appended for bikes and pedestrians. He’s also not shy about calling out what he considers to be nonsense (or nonsensical), whether it be the flawed interpretation of data or a wasteful or impractical project carried out by a government agency. Cortright has deep knowledge of urban issues, including transportation, housing, gentrification and placemaking, and has done a lot of really interesting data analysis related to trends in urban migration and the impact of urban sprawl. The intersection makeover also caught the attention of Joe Cortright, an economist based in Portland, Oregon, who runs - and is the driving voice of - the City Observatory blog. Touted by the Energy Corridor District as the “first intersection of its kind in west Houston,” the redesign included wider sidewalks, raised refuge islands and bollards to protect pedestrians, wheelchair users and cyclists, as well as aesthetic additions like landscaping, trees and pedestrian lighting. But in January, both the Houston Chronicle and CW39 covered the completion of the “Memorial Drive and Eldridge Parkway Protected Intersection Project” - a makeover five years in the works. Redesigning a busy intersection to (ostensibly) improve safety for pedestrians wouldn’t make the news in most cities the size of Houston.
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