I recently walked my 3-month-old niece from her home in Junius Heights to our office in the Wells Fargo Bank Building at Gaston and Abrams, and I quickly learned that neighborhood moms and dads have to battle it out on the sidewalks.
It’s not just that the sidewalks are uneven and full of cracks; it’s also that they stop abruptly and might all of a sudden switch to the other side of the street — or might not continue at all. Not to mention the number of curbs you have to maneuver to make it down just one street. Ramps are almost non-existent on neighborhood sidewalks.
I can’t imagine what this means for people trying to get around in a wheelchair. I could at least thrust my niece’s Snap-N-Go up or down to get around the curbs, but I don’t know if wheelchairs are that maneuverable.
Out of curiosity, I wondered if any studies had been done on stroller-friendly cities, and it turns out that Fit Pregnancy includes stroller-friendliness on its annual "Best Cities in America to Have a Baby" survey.
Dallas ranked 43 overall in 2008 out of 50 cities, and earned a C for stroller friendliness, which is not based on sidewalk quality but climate, access to pathways and trails, park acreage per city population, and number of public parks per city population.
The survey did note, however, that pedestrians have an 8 percent higher than average risk of being killed by a motor vehicle in Dallas — among the most dangerous in the survey. That should make all walkers and joggers nervous, perhaps especially those strolling children.
The only category in which Dallas ranked higher than a B- was fertility resources and laws, for which it received an A. Austin was the only Texas city to make the top 10 list, and Fort Worth ranked even worse at No. 45, but Houston, San Antonio and even El Paso beat Dallas as Nos. 35, 38 and 34, respectively.
