Walking audits

 

Students exit the city bus, catty-corner from Washington High School

A walking audit is a good way to assess walkability in a specific area. Walking enables anyone to see how easy or difficult it is to walk there, not only for yourself, but also for others who may not be as experienced or able-bodied. Daniel Herriges of Strong Towns argues: You see how your neighbors go about their needs, how they interact with each other, and where they face difficulties in negotiating the environment. And you can take it all in and reflect on it in a way that you can't possibly do from behind a windshield (Herriges 2019).

Edward Erfurt's recent Strong Towns article examines a recent project in his hometown of Charles Town, West Virginia (not to be confused with Charleston, West Virginia, which is not quite 300 miles away). Two new blocks of sidewalk connect downtown Charles Town with civic buildings like the police station. However, [a] the street was also widened, which encourages drivers to go faster; and [b] a key intersection is missing crosswalks. As a result the objective of safe walking remains elusive. Erfurt's piece concludes with some appropriate policy remedies.

Choosing places to do a walking audit can bias the results. It's easy to choose places where walking is nearly impossible (any of our town's stroads, streets near schools that have no sidewalks), or rather pleasant (between downtown buildings). And the biggest obstacle to walking in my town--perhaps yours, too--is the lack of destinations within a popularly accepted walking distance. However, you don't need an analytical microscope to see what's clearly unacceptable or successful infrastructure. 

So let's try three walks that aren't quite as obvious:

(1) Geonetric Building to Lion Bridge Brewing Co. (0.5 mi). Geonetric is a health care marketing firm that relocated to New Bohemia in 2014, a key moment in that neighborhood's post-flood reconstruction. Its building also houses several other companies, the nonprofit NewBoCo, and the Vault Coworking space where I have written many of these posts. Lion Bridge started that same year, locating just across the Cedar River in Czech Village.

Lion Bridge is on 16th Avenue, which runs behind Geonetric's parking lot. It's not a particularly busy street, but it's a sort of bypass around New Bohemia's commercial district, and cars can move pretty quickly. It's best to get across as surreptitiously as you can.

Once across 16th, it's duck soup getting to Lion Bridge. You do have to walk past Tornado's, which people close to me rate as the best burger in town.

Tornado's Grub & Pub, 1600 3rd St SE

There's not much cross-traffic on this side of 16th Avenue, although that may change as the area develops. Another block, and you're at the river.

The Bridge of Lions over the Cedar River

The slope of the bridge seems gentle enough for a wheelchair to manage, although I'd like to see one in action before I proclaim it so. The sidewalks are at an unusual height off the street, so don't fall! There are painted bike lanes on the street, though some cyclists prefer the sidewalk.

Riv vu

Cross the bridge, and now we're on the southwest side. A pillar marks the entrance to historic and charming Czech Village.

Entering Czech Village

Made it!

Lion Bridge Brewing, 59 16th Avenue SW

An uncomplicated walk, as long as there's not too much competition for space on the bridge. Today--another cold one--there was none.

(2) My house to Washington High School (1.1 mi). Our six years as Washington parents ended in 2015, but we and it remain in the same places. There are sidewalks the whole way, mostly new or recently-repaired.

Some ice issues where the sidewalks cross alleys

To get to the high school, you have to cross Forest Drive sooner or later, and it's best to do it sooner, because the sidewalk on the west side of the street ends before Linden Drive. Moreover, the intersection of Linden and Forest can get interesting, because eastbound and southbound traffic can't see each other.  (One collision was narrowly averted this morning, in fact.) So it's best to be safely on the east side before you get to Linden. 

Intersection of Forest and Linden is complicated for walkers
(Google Earth screenshot)

The intersection of Forest and Cottage Grove, where the high school is located, is uninteresting except at the times when school starts and when school lets out.

Cars on Forest backed up at Cottage Grove

Could a roundabout ease this brief daily traffic jam? It's come up a couple of times, getting beaten back by vigorous neighborhood opposition. And how would a roundabout affect pedestrians' ability to cross one or both streets at school time?

Interestingly, I saw no one walking to school this morning... no one walking at all, in fact, except for one fellow and his dog. It was chilly, but...

(3) Somebody's house on 8th Street NW to Cultivate Hope Corner Store (0.6 mi). The Cultivate Hope Corner Store is a neighborhood grocery started by the Matthew 25 organization in 2022. The building housed a small grocery store a long time ago, and according to the 1953 Polk's City Directory was at that time the home of Shaheen Sundries; Cultivate Hope Corner Store is the third business in the building since the flood.

Most of the Near Northwest area west of Ellis Boulevard has been restored or rebuilt since the 2008 flood. I'm listening to Donald Shoup describe the wrecked state of Los Angeles sidewalks to John Simmerman, but here there are smooth new sidewalks all the way to the store...

Quiet street: 1300 block of 8th Street NW

...including the latest crosswalk treatments...

Ellis Road NW intersection

...unless someone does this. Why?

snow obstruction on 8th Street NW

It was easy for me to step over this, but it would trouble anyone in a wheelchair or with a stroller. And if someone trips over it, who do they sue?

Properties east of Ellis was predominantly bought up and demolished after the flood; only now that flood walls are funded has redevelopment begun, including these row houses.

row houses near Neighborhood Corner Store on 8th St NW

The intersections on Ellis at F and E Avenues have new roundabouts.

Ellis Road approaching roundabout at F Avenue NW

This could be a challenge for pedestrians if traffic is heavy, or there's a lot of in-and-out at the Casey's, but on my mid-afternoon walk they were easy to navigate.

Former site of Shaheen Sundries:
Neighborhood Corner Store, 604 Ellis Road NW

Made it! Again, no one else was out walking that I could observe.

I tried during these audits to put myself in the (literal) shoes of pedestrians with characteristics other than mine. It would have been easier to do that had there been actual pedestrians to observe, but perhaps it was too cold. Really, though, chilly weather is no obstacle in a truly walkable city. The infrastructure is there, for the most part; now all we need are the walkable destinations.

See Also:

"10th Anniversary Posts: What is a Complete Street?" 2 August 2024

Lyz Lenz, "I Have a Right to Be Here: A Year of Running in 2024," Men Yell at Me, 8 January 2025 [comfortable running, and walking, is affected by more than just infrastructure]

Strong Towns Sources on Walking Audits

Edward Erfurt, "How a Walking Audit Can Help You Quickly Improve Street Design," Strong Towns, 19 December 2024

Daniel Herriges, "Seeing Your Community With New Eyes Through a "Walking Audit"," Strong Towns, 2 May 2019

Sarah Kobos, "Is Your City Pedestrian-Unfriendly?" Strong Towns, 10 March 2016

Black Friday Parking 2024: BR 151

They were there for the deals at the Marion Wal-Mart

Even frigid temperatures could not deter this devotee of #BlackFridayParking, Strong Towns' annual photographic survey of excess parking. Cultural devotion to ensuring drivers have an easy (and free or cheap) time storing the cars wherever they go has created a profligate use of land. Case in point: I went to a bar with some coworkers the day before Thanksgiving. It's a small building, 1800 square feet. Do you know how many parking spaces would fit in that building? Ten. That's all. So you can just imagine how many alternative uses we're foregoing with just one single megaparking lot.

Northwest section of the lot, 9 a.m.

This year's observance of #blackfridayparking took me to the Wal-Mart at the edge of Marion, or what used to be the edge of Marion, at the intersection of US151 and SR13. Built in 2005, it is the most newest of our metro's three Super Centers. There were a lot of people shopping there, and a lot of cars parked, and yet, as busy as it was, huge swaths of the lot went unoccupied. I'd guesstimate it might have been 55 percent full.

View from McDonald's

Northeast edge

Marion has grown quickly, more than doubling its population since 1990. More recently they have reconfigured traffic to enhance their Uptown area, and are engaged in writing a comprehensive plan for the next 25 years. For thirty years, though, their growth was an explosion of suburban development, much of it along Business Route 151, which runs from this intersection through the center of town into Cedar Rapids, where it becomes 1st Avenue East. So for about two miles, it seems like the edge of town, because the edge has moved ever-outward as the town has grown.

Hy-Vee Grocery Store, 3600 10th Avenue.
Maybe 75 percent full at 9:30 a.m.

Average daily traffic counts along this stretch are 16700 across 151/13, 13000 above 50th St, 11700 between 50th and 44th, and 14400 between 44th and 35th; after a roundabout routes traffic onto 6th Avenue, 7th Avenue still carries 5600 approaching 26th Street.

Auto-Zone, 1055 Linden Drive.
Last picture I took before my camera rebelled.

I walked along BR 151 to a coffee appointment in Uptown. It really gives you a sense of how human scale is lost in auto-centric development, in that I could walk five minutes and feel as though I was getting nowhere. It's difficult to convey in photographs, particularly since my phone rebelled against the cold at this point--it was about 15 degrees, and windy--and refused to come out of its shell until we were safely inside the coffee shop. 

Best I could do: Google Earth screenshot
looking east from 31st Street

As Marion undertakes its new comprehensive plan, they may or may not try to diversify this route. There certainly is a lot of parking along the way...

Screenshot from Marion 2045 page,
showing 26th to 44th Streets

Screenshot from Marion 2045 page,
showing area around Wal-Mart and 151/13 intersection

...which arguably is a bigger issue than whatever's going on at Wal-Mart.

Spending land that could be productive and interesting on parking lots seems irrational to me. But so does waiting ten cars deep at a drive through, and I saw that at both Starbucks and Dunkin today. So do all the people huddled under blankets in the long line outside Da Bin consignment store. There is clearly much I don't understand, which keeps your humble blogger extra-humble.

SEE ALSO

"Marion 2045," Marion comprehensive plan page

"Uptown Marion Parking Study" (May 2024)

"Black Friday Parking 2024: Mount Vernon Road," 24 November 2024 [last year's observance]

"Black Friday Parking 2019," 29 November 2019 [last time I surveyed Marion]

Black Friday Parking 2023: Mount Vernon Road

2317: One of many smokeshops on the road, used to be a bookstore

I've gone a bit off-script for this year's celebration of #BlackFridayParking. Strong Towns has promoted this event since the mid-10s as a way of highlighting the high costs to cities of zoning regulations that mandate large commercial parking lots (Abramson 2023). Past Black Fridays have taken me to the parking lots of big-box stores on our city's outer edge, and to the vast parking lots all too close to our city center.

Amidst all the giddiness and photography, I've come to the conclusion that, in Cedar Rapids anyway, the problem is not the zoning code. Our giant Wal-Marts and Targets have parking lots even bigger than the code requires, because land is cheap here, customers expect it, and the city is designed in such a way that 90+ of people are going to drive to shop anyway. 

In 2017 I walked 16th Avenue SW, a mid-century commercial corridor that is now a model for discarded sprawl. 

Still empty in '23: former K-Mart parking lot, 16th Av SW, November 2017

The problem on 16th is not that even large Black Friday crowds couldn't fill the gigantic parking lots, but that there are no crowds at all. (That year I was accompanied by "the other Dr. Nesmith." I don't know whether the excitement was too much for her, but she hasn't been tempted by #BlackFridayParking since.)

This year I followed a similar impulse to Mt. Vernon Road SE. This historic corridor is getting some love from the city in the form on an action plan. Alas, its internal contradictions mean some of its goals are going to have to give way, probably to faster vehicle traffic.

The Mount Vernon Road action plan covers 10th to 44th Streets.

4035: At the east end of the plan area, acres of parking at the Mt. Vernon Road Hy-Vee

 The executive summary describes the challenge on page 19:

The Mt. Vernon Road corridor includes a wide variety of land uses including a neighborhood hardware store, a large grocery store, several gas/convenience stores, banks and credit unions, professional offices, restaurants, bars, and various specialty, variety, drug, auto parts, auto repair, and discount goods stores. The corridor also includes schools, churches, a residential care center, a fire station, and a cemetery.

2405: Used to be a pharmacy

However, the dominate [sic] land use is single family residential with just a few multi-family residential properties sprinkled throughout the corridor. There are several quick-serve and fast food restaurants but few sit-down style restaurants. There are vacant properties along the corridor and some occupied commercial sites that are dated and/or in need of renovation and maintenance. There are also several retail uses that are typically not considered neighborhood friendly including tobacco shops and liquor stores.

Because that's the kind of commerce wide fast streets get!

2663: Used to be a Greek restaurant

2700: Used to be an Italian restaurant

Unsurprisingly, public input sessions on the action plan revealed desires for small retail shops, redeveloping vacant lots, fewer "less neighborhood friendly uses," more separation between residential and commercial areas, turn lanes, and slower truck traffic. Bike lanes were nixed, as bicycling on this road is unsafe and slows car traffic (p. 19).

Word clouds generated by Mt. Vernon Road corridor public meetings

902 28th St: Cute shop for a walkable area

3605: Another vacant property, whose potential changes on a walkable street

The public's desires are reflected in the plan's goals (p 9): (1) promote new retail development and redevelopment along the corridor; (2) encourage neighborhood scale and neighborhood friendly uses; (3) improve traffic circulation and safety; (4) increase walkability and safety for pedestrians and cyclists. I expect the immediate pressure to improve traffic circulation to render the rest of this admirable list unfeasible. I hope I can explain why.

1841: Neighborhood retail lost to road widening

1901: Neighborhood retail lost to road widening

Neighborhood retail (goals 1 and 2) relies on walkability (goal #4), but that would require Mt. Vernon Road to become smaller and slower (goal #3b but not #3a). The stickler, as the plan's authors admit (p. 11), is that Mount Vernon Road has been developed into an arterial, the collector road for the entire southeast side. The authors claim it has too much traffic already--23000 according to the plan text, 18000 according to the state's average daily traffic counts--for its four lanes, and there are too many driveways for comfort as well. 

3303: Even small parking lots are between the (franchise) shops and the sidewalk

Since it is pretty much the only through street in that part of town, there's no reasonable alternative for truck traffic. 

3025: More franchises by parking lots

So the road will be reconfigured to restrict left turns across traffic at 15th and 19th Streets; it will end in a roundabout at 10th Street; parking lot access will where possible be redirected to side streets; and cyclists will be directed to alternative routes on parallel streets. 

Approaching downtown, new left-turn lane onto 15th Street,
creating more distance between core neighborhoods on either side

Cars and trucks will move more swiftly, past locations that could have supported neighborhood friendly uses. (See Herriges 2019 on how arterials work, and don't work.)

1420: Gargantuan c-store, nominally in Wellington Heights

This is the point where I should be telling you what the city should be doing to fix this. I confess I'm at a loss. What are we trying to build here? It's not a downtown, where we go for density, mix the uses, slow the cars, and ignore the parking-obsessed. It's not the suburbs, either, nor is it quite a highway. It's become an awkward mix of all three, so that anything you do to fix an immediate issue with Mt. Vernon Road--narrow it, widen it, add pedestrian infrastructure--is going to make something else worse. 

3401: Vernon Village used to have a small grocery and a French restaurant,
which then became a bakery/cafe. Now it might be a ghost kitchen?

(I would like to see bus service along the entirety of Mt. Vernon Road, just shooting straight from downtown to maybe Bertram Road and back. Currently, the circuitous Route 2 travels Mt. Vernon Road eastbound from 19th to 42nd, but not westbound. I don't know that it will fix anything detailed above, help the emergence of cute shops, cut down on vehicle speeds, or make walking safer, but it's curious that this has never been done.)

2714: Another auto parts store, next to another vacant building 

So, this year my #BlackFridayParking thoughts have wandered far from the subject of parking. But as we see here, excess parking is more than some unproductive government regulation. It is a product of the problematic way we build towns, and how we get around, just as it makes those problems worse. The result is stroads like this one. The parking lots are just the most obvious symptom, or maybe #2 behind the uninspiring commerce.

2000: Used to be an arts center, before that an elementary school

The public comments that informed the Mt. Vernon Road Action plan are not wrong, just naive. It's natural for us to want more of the things we enjoy, with fewer consequences. Why can't we have smoother traffic flow and plenteous parking, at cute shops, all at a neighborhood scale? Because, beloved readers, in this vale of tears, cars compete with everything else for space, and the easier we make it for cars to move the less likely they are to stop, to shop or for any other reason. 

2711: Big pharmacy with bigger parking lot

Same building, different side

The more room we make for cars in the form of parking lots, the less room there is for anything at a human/neighborhood scale. Anyone who's paid attention as Mt. Vernon Road has gotten wider and faster knows this. That's not politics, it's physics.

26th St: One of several cute dead-end streets off Mt. Vernon Road
Access becomes more difficult as the road gets faster

18th St: From here to downtown, access is limited by a barrier

Strong Towns video, "Are Parking Lots Ruining Your City" (15:40):

SEE ALSO: "Black Friday Parking 2022," 25 November 2022 

Mark Stoffer Hunter, "History Happenings: Changes Coming to Mount Vernon Road and 19th Street SE," Cedar Rapids Gazette, 24 November 2018

Ben Kaplan, "Mount Vernon Road is Dangerous by Design," Corridor Urbanism, 11 June 2021

Rahul Rejeev, "Children, Left Behind by Suburbia, Need Better Community Design," Public Square: A CNU Journal, 13 November 2023

Historical Aerials

3404: One of many vacant stores on Mt. Vernon Road

Black Friday Parking 2022

Strip mall, Edgewood Rd SW, 9:45 a.m.

On the southwest side of Cedar Rapids, there is a triangle formed by three stroads: Edgewood Road, Wiley Boulevard, and Williams Boulevard. Average daily traffic counts are roughly 19000 for Edgewood, 9000 for Williams, and (from 2017) 14000 for Wiley. Until about ten years ago, they surrounded Westdale Mall; since that was demolished, they serve a large Wal-Mart, a large Target, and numerous shopping plazas and stand-alone stores.

The area made for an irresistible subject for my 2022 #BlackFridayParking survey, part of the annual Strong Towns event. The area is clearly meant to be driven to; it is served by three bus routes (8,10,12) but the system runs only during the day, and today was running a reduced version of that due to the holiday weekend. Walking between stores is extremely difficult, I can attest. There's a lot of traffic, moving quickly, from various directions. I relied on my remaining agility and the kindness of strangers to get places and return safely to you.

It was a lovely day, sunny and unseasonably warm. I got to Target about 10:00 a.m., too late for the doorbuster sales, but still in time to see a sizeable crowd of cars and shoppers.

Even so, much of the parking lot was unused.

Target, 3400 Edgewood Rd SW, lot 2/3 full at 9:45 a.m.

Down the street at Wal-Mart, the situation was even more pronounced: Many, many shoppers and cars...

View from the front door

...but much unused parking.

Wal-Mart Supercenter, 3601 29th Av SW, lot 1/2 full at 10:00 a.m.

Away from the two retail giants, crowds were thinner and parking lots were emptier.

Strip mall across from Wal-Mart

Kohl's had some traffic near the entrance to their lot...

...but away from the entrance ir was empty.

Kohl's, 3030 Wiley Blvd SW, lot 1/3 full at 10:00 a.m.

The parking lots on the grounds of the former Westdale Mall were glaringly empty.

On the other hand, from a distance it looked like the parking lot of Menards (home improvement store) at Wiley and Williams was very full.

As I forded these lots, I also forded a number of access roads--some, as I said, busy with fast-moving traffic, and some seeing no cars at all. This leads from the Kohl's to Wiley Boulevard, but can only be accessed by southbound traffic.

It made me think that, as much of this event is designed to complain about parking craters, big-box stores and strip malls also generate an excess of infrastructure. Maybe next year we could do Black Friday Access Roads?

Meanwhile, the Westdale area is beginning to see a little of the development promised when the city sunk a fortune into its redevelopment. There is a mixed-use development with apartments.

Parkway West, 3998 Westdale Parkway

These apartments are within walking distance of a lot of shops. I wonder if anyone ever does walk? And what might be the attraction of living here, as opposed to a more human-scaled locale? Price? Highway access? 

The apartments are flanked by a hotel (Tru, a Hilton brand) and a construction project that will become a hotel.

Will these projects generate any foot traffic at all? And given the inherent risks of crossing acres of auto infrastructure, would it be a good idea if they did?

And then there's this guy, across from the Westdale bus stop.

Car wash? Oil change? Tire store? It's auto-oriented, in any case, consistent with its surroundings.

The main purpose of Strong Towns' annual #BlackFridayParking event is to highlight to #EndParkingMinimums, provisions of zoning codes that require large stores to have even larger parking lots. Cedar Rapids' zoning code has those provisions, but the parking lots I surveyed seem to be substantially larger than required, albeit I haven't counted spaces.

Even if zoning requirements do not fully account for this appalling design, public policy has a hand in it. Property tax policy allows property owners to pay low rates on large swaths of unproductive land. City officials everywhere have a preference for big "wins," including attracting and accommodating a large franchise operation, over the economic gardening that nurtures local businesses. (See Alter 2022 on the many benefits of small locally-owned businesses over the big-box franchises.)

The result is a car-chocked landscape, full of expensive infrastructure that the widely dispersed businesses ultimately can't support, stressing drivers and practically prohibiting pedestrians. For financial, environmental, and community reasons, we need to do better. We have what we have in unholy triangles like the one I haunted today, but we need to start thinking differently and designing our cities better. As they say at Strong Towns, "Having 'enough' parking is always going to be less important than creating a place people want to be."

SEE ALSO

"Black Friday 2021," 26 November 2021 [Blairs Ferry Road NE from Fleet Farm to Wal-Mart]

"Black Friday 2016," 25 November 2016 [same area that I visited today]

Lauren Fisher, "14 Photos That Prove We Have Too Much Parking--Even on Black Friday," Strong Towns, 25 November 2022

Daniel Herriges, "The #BlackFridayParking Exception That Proves the Rule," Strong Towns, 25 November 2022

Addison del Maestro, "Unplanned Vacancies," Deleted Scenes, 12 May 2022 [paywall] [which I haven't crossed so it might not be any good] [but he's brilliant so it probably is]

Jaclyn Peiser, "Black Friday Isn't What It Used to Be. Here's Why," Washington Post, 25 November 2022 [another annual tradition is declaring Black Friday "over"] [and indeed it may have run its course, or nearly so] [in the meantime we have all this parking]