“Don’t walk. ” Image through the author.
We first published this article in 2021. With school closed for the summer, we share it again, as young people lose their lives or are injured every day on the streets of greater Washington. It’s a choice.
DC can be considered a child-friendly city in many ways: universal kindergarten, paid parental leave, and diverse and available park and recreation offerings. But one area where DC and many other cities can achieve better results is the design of public spaces. that prioritize young people over cars.
Experts agree: A city designed to allow young people to live and thrive would have far fewer cars and safer streets, more accessible on foot and by bike. So why can’t we get rid of the old cliché that “the parents of the young” don’t just drive?, but do they drive and park wherever they want, even in one of the most walkable cities in the country?
When we prioritize cars, we prioritize children
These arguments boil down to saying that the desirability of motive power – even in neighborhoods that are objectively walkable – takes precedence over the lives and health of young people. Parents move away from that logic. Car injuries kill and injure more young people than any other cause in the United States.
Let it sit for a minute. Children don’t die because their parents were walking around the block looking for a parking spot or because they had to leave the space a little early to take an art class. These are disadvantages, not dangers. They die when the driver’s convenience takes precedence over their lives and their ability to exist in public safely.
If there were no alternative, prioritizing cars for young people would still be deeply sad, but it could at least be considered as an integral component of our economy (the functionality of which is also very vital to the fitness and well-being of young people). We, in the Washington domain, have an excellent transportation formula and a dense footprint that makes walking and biking much more viable than in most of the United States. Our economy would only gain advantages if it abandoned the mobility of the car.
All of these assets can be leveraged, expanded, and made available to more people. Leadership and public support are needed.
“I need my city to be in a position where you can let your son’s hand through,” David van Horn (quoting the mayor of Paris) observed in a Post column reflecting on recent road violence. giving up something: not cars, but dependence on the car.
We have what we need for our children, but we have to need it.
How do you see putting young people before cars?This is equivalent to dedicating road space to other types of transportation, especially those that are statistically known to be used by other low-income people (such as buses), many of whom are young. , and youth of all careers (such as walking and cycling). They look like roads designed primarily for safety, thanks to the engineering of the areas through which drivers pass and the speeds at which they are allowed to circulate. They are public areas, such as bicycle and pedestrian facilities, that young people can use independently, throughout the city, and not just in the places they are intended for, such as schools; Because young people deserve to be able to live without risking their lives. This is said to be to prevent drivers from breaking the law with impunity, a challenge that has increased especially during the pandemic.
The good news is that DC has made strides in many of those spaces in recent years, spending millions of dollars on bus lanes and motorcycle facilities, as well as automated traffic cameras that deserve greater tracking and response to reckless driving.
Investing money in public transportation and in active transportation infrastructure and services, such as bus lanes and bike-sharing services, provides other people (even parents) with genuine non-car features. This has benefits beyond security. With the highest percentage of carbon emissions coming from transportation, no amount of composting escapes the destruction wrought by automobile technology in our own neighborhoods.
But more than any individual improvement, even citywide, we want to shift our social mindset to expect streets to be safely designed as a matter of course, as a separate feature or an add-on that requires endless discussions.
Pedestrians First, a resource aimed at making urban spaces more walkable (GGWash contributor D. Taylor Reich is the site’s lead writer) explains why designing cities to be available to young people is smart for everyone, at any age:
“When our streets and neighborhoods are safe, comfortable, and helpful for infants, toddlers, and their caregivers, they are more likely to be safe, comfortable, and helpful for everyone. Babies and young people are the only city dwellers who are vulnerable to bad environments. Young children want more time to cross streets, as do the elderly and those with physical disabilities. Street trees and public art are smart for both a baby’s neurological progression and an adult’s intellectual aptitude and sense of belonging.
Children on their way to school in Washington DC. Image by sglazerman under Creative Commons license. Image used with permission.
Safe Streets Are Parent-Friendly
In the meantime, parents will have to take responsibility for the protection and well-being of our children. We’re constantly cited as the main excuse to preserve parking and drive not only near where we’re supposed to go, but directly in front of it.
It’s a luxury. It’s a trap that prevents us from asking for more.
We saw this in the fight over the motorcycle lanes of North Carolina Ave NE, for example, where DDOT came up with seven other features for a single block to connect the motorcycle lanes from C St NE to Lincoln Park and the westbound motorcycle network. and slow traffic. (Disclaimer: Sits on the ANC 6A Transportation and Public Space Committee, which tested the issue. )
Some citizens raised the specter of having to walk to their parking area, of having it on their own block, or of having one-way limited car traffic, as compelling reasons to reject (in favor of their own proposals that were rejected on the basis of protection and feasibility).
When you peel away each layer, you realize an essentialist idea that children (and the elderly) can’t live without exclusive, almost exclusive, access to cars. Yes, cars are mandatory for certain types of trips – I have a car basically so I can walk on weekends and run errands. Some members of society want it more often. But very few people in other countries have access to our point of ease and low personal burden of driving, and yet somehow they continue to lead filthy rich lives. Even young people.
This unwarranted worry about wasting access to a car-first formula is incredibly common, especially in the same neighborhoods that reject it to protect our children. When some members of the network around Alabama Avenue in District 8 complained in 2019, DDOT got rid of the motorcycles. lanes that he had installed a month earlier in a domain known for its dangers to traffic.
Northwest DC has single-family home communities that are known to resist, among other things, sidewalk improvements. I visited a friend in Tenleytown, where I had to push my stroller down the street for six blocks on the subway.
Car-dependent children: a child whose time is up
The concept that young people want car-friendly neighborhoods isn’t just a false and outdated cliché. Due to the externalities of driving in terms of the environment, health, protection and mobility of those who do not travel in cars (the main explanation for why buses travel slowly), their compliance will place cars at the top of the priority list and the protection and well-being of children at a lower place.
We cannot keep cars at the top of the local shipping hierarchy if we need to maintain the life and environment that those same young people inherit. The standard-bearers of tomorrow are here today and are watching our decisions.
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Caitlin Rogger is Deputy Executive Director of Greater Washington. Broadly interested in the structural determinants of social, economic, and political outcomes in urban settings, she worked in public fitness before joining GGWash. He lives on Capitol Hill.
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