or why I’m voting YES on Prop 1
I ran almost 9 miles yesterday. I went from my neighborhood, took the Country Club Creek Trail under Pleasant Valley to the Hike and Bike trail, ran to IH-35, crossed, and came back home.
I was running along the trail that the Amli South Shore has put in.
Tangent: That is a really nice piece of trail. They have it running from the street all the way to the shore. It adds about twice as much to the trail as if you were walking on the sidewalk. They have a firepit, lounge chairs, and park benches. All public property from what I can tell.
And I got spit back out on the sidewalk. Where I ran into a huge sign:
Vote No on Prop 1. Wrong priorities, Wrong Time.
Which is kind of interesting because it was right outside an apartment complex. I’ve highlighted it below in red.
I had to draw in the Amli South Shore and it’s trail. Please excuse the rought drawing. Of course the apartment complex in question is against completing the trail. They head out of their complex to the right and they’re on the trail. They head out to the left and they’re on the trail, and inside their complex they have their own private boat dock. Their land is completely at grade, and to complete the trail would simply involve removing two small pieces of fence. But instead the city has to build a boardwalk around this property to connect two pieces of trail.
Of course these people are going to be against the bond. It allows the public to use what they’ve been treating as their own private property. I get to run on sidewalk so they can have a private boat launch.
This isn’t where all the boardwalk money is going though. There’s a stretch under IH-35 that’s never going to be possible to complete without a boardwalk. The grade running from Joe’s crab shack to the McCombs Business School is a pretty insane change in elevation and barring dynamiting the cliff face, we’re not getting a trail on it.
But what about mobility?
So I found out last night that if I worked downtown (which I plan to do in my next job), I can have a 30 minute commute.
Running.
That’s almost entirely on trails. I’ll definitely be doing that. Especially if some of the bond money for sidewalks finally gets sidewalks along Pleasant Valley. This is insane to me. I started making mental notes last night of all the missing sidewalks on Pleasant Valley. Bear in mind this is where the South East HEB is. This isn’t a case of “if you build sidewalks people will walk”. This is a case of “these sidwalks (or lack thereof) are pretty crowded”. I dodged two strollers on my run last night.
But Pleasant Valley is still missing major chunks of sidewalk. I’ve outline the missing stretches in red below.
We should fix this. Just like we would fix a road that people drive on everyday. It’s ridiculous that people in the surrounding area, people who do walk to the HEB, don’t have sidewalks to walk on.