In Dallas, kids in the southeastern tip of the city attend the modern, environmentally friendly Ebby Halliday Elementary, but the sidewalk extends only as far as the campus borders. South Dallas and Oak Cliff are trying to stitch neighborhoods back together with transformative parks, yet sidewalks nearby are either broken, too narrow or nonexistent. And all across Dallas, you’re bound to run smack into the abrupt end of a sidewalk being gobbled up by a construction site.
Big things happen here, all right. It’s just that sometimes you have to take your life in your hands to get to them.
As the city crafts its next budget and makes plans, Dallas leaders must prioritize sidewalks. According to a city-commissioned study, Dallas is missing more than 2,000 miles of sidewalk across its 14 City Council districts. Another 4,000 miles of sidewalk exist, but much of that infrastructure is in a sorry state of disrepair.
The bill to plug every gap and repair the broken sidewalks? About $2 billion.
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/dmn/2CV3A6IEY5DUHMLCYEJPRA3F5Q.jpg)
Dallas staff said the city won’t have to cover the full cost, and they estimated that about $1 billion could get us to the finish line in 40 years. That would require the city to spend $24.4 million a year on sidewalks and another $1.3 million on curb ramps to make sidewalks wheelchair-accessible.
But Robert Perez, director of the Public Works Department, said the plan is to ask the City Council to double the sidewalk budget from the current $10 million to $20 million, through a mix of bond money and operating funds. If the city commits $20 million annually, it’ll take 100 years to fix the sidewalk network.
We urge the City Council to find the funds to stick with the 40-year timeline. That’s still a long time, but some of us might live long enough to see the upgrades. Sidewalks are a basic need for all of us: the senior shuffling along with a walker, the parent pushing a stroller, the neighbor walking the dog.
The city is taking a smart approach by identifying focus areas that will be prioritized for sidewalk repairs. We will know more details about the city’s choices once it publishes the sidewalk master plan in July.
One criterion used to make those decisions was public feedback, and that’s an area where the city must do better. City staff used English and Spanish yard signs, social media posts and business cards to promote a sidewalk survey, and it got 1,000 responses. That’s a measly return in a city with 1.3 million people. We encourage city staff to be more ambitious by meeting people where they are — markets, community gatherings, parks — and collecting feedback there.
Dallas will still reach only a tiny fraction of the people who live in this city, but it’ll nudge a more diverse set of survey responses and capture people with little or no access to technology.
The city also must do a better job of educating the public about sidewalk repairs, which by ordinance are the responsibility of the abutting property owner. Many residents don’t know this — or that the city has a program to split repair costs 50-50. The city should keep this program and find alternatives for residents who can’t shoulder the cost, typically about $1,625 for the homeowner. City Manager T.C. Broadnax floated the idea of using federal community development funds in qualifying neighborhoods.
The City Council will have to amble through several policy discussions to improve the sidewalk system. But to start off on the right foot, it must invest more.
The Link LonkJune 25, 2021 at 02:02PM
https://ift.tt/3h7ZwFJ
Dallas’ sidewalks are a joke. Will the city fix them in our lifetime? - The Dallas Morning News
https://ift.tt/2BsGM2G
Joke
No comments:
Post a Comment