Look Out
Our Bad Road Infrastructure Makes Us Blind to Our Neighbors
Dear Fairhaven neighbors,
Do you see them?
The kid coming home from Middle School, waiting forever for the walk signal after pressing the beg button. The person using a walker on the side of Sconticut Road because there’s no sidewalk.
As you drive through town, do you notice them?
The woman, looking tired after a long day’s work, sitting in the hot sun as she waits for the bus. The guy on the electric scooter commuting over the bridge to New Bedford.
When you do see them, what do you think?
If you’re like I was and your primary experience of our town is behind the wheel of a car, you probably don’t notice them at all. If you do see them, you might pity them for their station in life or judge them for being in the unenviable situation of being outside of a car. Maybe, as some of our neighbors on Facebook suggest, those old-timers on e-bikes lost their licenses due to DUI’s. Maybe you’re an avid cyclist who doesn’t understand why that woman on a bike doesn’t just don lycra and a helmet and brave the traffic like you. Why is that guy in the wheelchair on the road anyway? Doesn’t he know that’s dangerous?
Who Are These People, Anyway?
It’s a fair guess to say that at least 30% of people in our town don’t have a driver’s license and/or can’t drive. According to Anna Zivarts, in When Driving is Not an Option, disabled people are four times more likely to be non-drivers. Many seniors, regardless of whether they have a defined disability, will lose their ability to drive. Or maybe they can’t afford car ownership. When you include things like gas, insurance, maintenance, and registration in addition to a monthly payment, the average monthly cost of owning a car in the U.S. is upwards of $1K. Maybe they’re young. And while some of my suburban neighbors may think that kids are incapable of traveling independently, as Zivarts points out in her book, kids’ ability to get around in environments like ours is enabled or impeded by the infrastructure we have.
In Fairhaven, 7.3% of households (over 500) do not have a car, and about 36% (over 2,500) of households have only one car, meaning that households with multiple members have to share.
The people you see from your windshield are a small fraction of those who can’t or don’t drive in our town. If we usually don’t see the folks walking by the side of the road, we definitely miss those who aren’t out there. They’re the ones getting by as best they can, relying on friends and relatives to give them rides. Or worse, they’re stuck at home. For seniors, being homebound in this way increases their risk for falls, which, as I’ve discussed here, are by far the top reason for calls to emergency services.
If you’re like I was, your failure to adequately see non-drivers is not willful or malevolent. I’ll extend the same grace to our town officials and elected leaders. This past year the Planning Board approved a new Starbucks on the corner of Route 6 and Alden. All of the relevant departments signed off on the site plan. None of them insisted, as would have been their right, that the developer put in a sidewalk in front of the place. This despite the town signing on to a Complete Streets Policy only a few years ago that states:
"All private developments and related road design elements or corresponding road-related elements including but not limited to connections to the town's transportation network shall also comply with Complete Street principles and this policy and should demonstrate compliance to the extent feasible and practical during the local review and approval process.”
When someone in the site review meeting mentioned sidewalks, the project engineer said it wouldn’t be possible to both have sidewalks and to preserve the mature trees on the site (these trees died anyway when they re-graded the site). Someone else in the meeting noted that there’s no sidewalk continuing north on Alden, so any sidewalk for the Starbucks would end north of the property. When I asked the developer why there was no sidewalk, he told me he had tried to add one into the design, but the town road layout and grade difference on the property wouldn’t allow it. It’s certainly not on the developer to advocate for an expensive change like adding a sidewalk, which would also require the town to change its road.
There’s nothing nefarious on the part of anyone here. It’s just that in the minds of the decision-makers, a sidewalk on a town street is an add-on. They’re likely thinking that no one really uses sidewalks along stroads anyway, so why ask the developer to spend the money? These likely aren’t conscious thoughts. They’re just the result of a bit of blindness. Our non-drivers are out of sight, so for decision-makers, they tend to be out of mind as well. This blindness has consequences that play out in our streets.
The Pre Mortem
A year from now, what happens when that kid coming home from Hastings decides to swing by Starbucks on his way home to grab a Unicorn Frappuccino? After waiting forever for the signal to cross (and possibly just giving up and crossing against the light), he turns onto Alden Road toward the new Starbucks. The SUV turning north on Alden is accelerating, making up for lost time after waiting at the light. They don’t see the kid on the bike. The news will report on whether or not the kid was wearing a helmet and/or bright clothing. It will note whether or not the driver stayed at the scene. Barring any gross negligence, the ensuing investigation will call the whole thing an unfortunate accident. Facebook commenters will decry drivers these days or scold the kids who ride on roads.
If the incident is fatal and there’s enough of an outcry, the town will reach out to SRPEDD, who might initiate a yearlong study and lean on MassDOT to install a sign or another blinking light. Maybe someone will suggest (sigh)… pedflags.
The driver will claim that they didn’t see the kid biking on the side of the road, and they won’t be lying. All of the cues in their environment assured them that they didn’t have to look for him. And long before the driver failed to see this kid, many other people— leaders with a duty to the public— failed to see him, too.
A Better Vision
The many non-drivers in our community don’t need another branded program or special grant that rolls in every few years. They don’t need to answer another online survey supporting another master plan destined to gather dust on a successor’s shelf. They don’t want or need to take away from what the rest of us, who tend to be more privileged, have. They just need us to see them.
To our officials and representatives at Town Hall and the BPW: your work is increasingly challenging and difficult. You’re faced with tough tradeoffs on a daily basis as you serve our town. It is, therefore, with deep respect for what you do that I ask this of you: as you review every site plan, prioritize maintenance to our streets, and commit resources to our infrastructure, start by asking yourself: will this increase the safety and comfort of our most vulnerable neighbors or will it further discourage or endanger them? When we start there, we’re all better off for it.
And to my dear neighbors: the next time you’re at a stop light on Route 6, look for the people traveling outside of their cars. Ask yourself: What kind of environment does our town give them? What would you want it to be like if it were you out there?
You have this right, Will. Before Starbucks the curb on the northbound lane was at least a soft asphalt to grass berm that would make for a softer landing if your bike got forced off the road by traffic. Now it's a hard granite curb that leaves you no place to go if you get squeezed here. Call me paranoid but I swear the road is narrower now along Starbucks by the width of this granite curb. In addition they have yet to fill the trough created when they installed the curb. That makes the path for a bike even narrower. Of course the only way to navigate this funnel is to take the lane to be as visible as possible, but how many older folks on a bike will have the stomach for this type of aggressive riding?
And what's up with SRTA? Do they hate their customers that much or are they just stupid? There are no benches or shelters at their stops in Fairhaven. The bench that used to be at the Stop & Shop fell apart last year and was not replaced. People are forced to sit on overturned shopping carts or the guard rail across from Job Lot on Alden Rd. I've seen better accommodations in third world countries.