By Age-Friendly Carbondale
The 2013 Access Control Plan for Highway 133 reads in part, “The Town is concerned with the lack of locations where they feel pedestrians/bicyclists can safely cross 133 from the east to the west and vice versa. With only three signalized intersections and long distances between these signals, the Town feels that pedestrians/bicyclists do not travel to these locations to safely cross the street on a green light but instead wait for a perceived significant enough gap in traffic and cross at various locations along the corridor.”
How right they were! The National Association of City Transportation Officials says it’s essential to understand crossing behaviors from a pedestrian’s perspective. If the nearest crosswalk is over three minutes away, most pedestrians will cross along a more direct but unsafe and unprotected route. We needed more crosswalks in 2013. Then, we built Carbondale Marketplace, Hayden Place, Main Street apartments, an expanded Sopris Self Storage and more without the infrastructure we knew was necessary.
Adam depends on a battery-powered wheelchair for his mobility. He shops at City Market and maybe the Dollar Store or the Coop. Aside from the time it takes to travel the half-mile from Nieslanik to the roundabout and back, he worries about his battery running down before he can get home. So, he jaywalks (“wheels”) at Nieslanik Avenue. Sam, another wheelchair user, pushes his chair manually. After years of doing this, he is limited by chronic upper body stress injuries, and an extra half-mile adds to that problem. Maria, the mother of two young children, exits Hayden Place in the pouring rain, pushing a stroller and dodging traffic to get across the street for groceries. Nancy, an 86-year-old woman who lives on Lincoln Ave, depends on a walker for mobility. Unable to cross 133, she hired a shopper. Out to pick up a few items at City Market, Niki jaywalks at Nieslanik to get a Palisade peach on a hot summer day.
According to national guidelines, ideal walkability means signalized crossings every 300 feet. Six hundred feet is a workable distance (International Road Assessment Programme Toolkit, Global Designing Cities Initiative, U.S. Dept. of Transportation, MTUCD, 11th Edition ). The distance from Village Road to Main Street is six times 600 feet.
Development along 133 has brought us new prosperity and the potential to transform it from a through-road adorned by deteriorating strip malls into a vibrant street filled with retail shops, restaurants, health and wellness vendors and modern residences, but “walkability” and “small town character,” terms we have embraced in our Town’s comprehensive plans since 2013, are glaringly missing from what has become Carbondale’s most important street.