[ANH]

I recently drove from my home near DC to Manhattan and back. Exiting the Lincoln Tunnel and heading north, my expectations of "normal" traffic behavior were shattered. I wondered why there aren't bodies littering the streets and hulking wrecks of naive visitors' cars abandoned, leaking, everywhere. It was truly mind-expanding. NYC pedestrian deaths are on the rise, says Google.

Meanwhile, I look out my window as I type this and see the suburban road adjacent to my group of homes being resurfaced. It's a beautiful expanse of asphalt they're laying down. It's smooooove, and fast. The neighborhood toddlers want to cross that road, and parents have trouble explaining to them that this road in sight of their homes is just too dangerous. We live in a town renowned for its planning and quality of life.

I don't really have a point, but something is obviously amiss.

[wozniacki]

Commonsense dictates that you would have more people on foot rather than in their cars ( especially single-occupant driving cases ) if cities actually paid attention to the plight of persons on foot, on sidewalks.

It has to be said that I am uniquely referring to cities like SF known for their less than splendid sidewalk conditions. I am discounting the fact that SF is quite hilly and thus not very conducive for walking, unlike other flatter cities.

SF is notorious for its grubby, thrash-discharged, excrement-laden and generally deplorable sidewalks.

Just this week :

http://sfist.com/attachments/SFist_Jay/poop-map.jpg [1]

Anyone familiar with SF knows that whether you are on the sidewalks abutting the San Francisco Museum and Historical Society and right next to an upscale mall or in seedier parts of Inner/Outer Mission, you can never take a pleasant walk for granted.

Prominent sidewalks are openly defecated on.

Casual violence of vagrants and the professionally-homeless is quite common.

Entire sections of neighborhoods are poorly-lit, with dodgy surfaces to boot.

All this not even accounting for the unenthusiastically enforced sit-lie ordinances [2], a thriving homeless industrial complex supported by the city's SROs and rising crime in parts of the city [3]

This irks even otherwise civic minded, forward-thinking residents who have all but given up on the city's frowziness and its celebration of the unhygienic and unsanitary.

I think there is a strong Well that is SF for you. If you don't like it, go live in Marin ethos prevalent here (and in other cities like SF). And that is not one bit helpful.

[1] http://sfist.com/2014/09/03/photo_du_jour_poop_map.php

[2] http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Sit-lie-law-primarily-enf...

[3] http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Duboce-Triangle-neighb...

edit:rewording

[Swizec]

On that note, I run barefoot barefoot (no vibrams or such) in SF a couple of times a week and it is perfectly fine. I don't know what everyone is whining about.

The real issue with SF sidewalks is that they are made with those cement slabs and thus have giant cracks that make it extremely unpleasant to longboard.