By Emilie Bahr
I noticed a teaser to an article in Journey + Leisure journal not too long ago declaring a sure southern metropolis probably the most walkable within the U.S. As an virtually lifelong southerner and energetic transportation nerd, the headline caught my consideration, as did the picture that accompanied it: Wrought-iron balconies dripping in ferns. Brightly-hued stucco facades on beautiful previous buildings. Might they be speaking about my hometown? I questioned.
I clicked on the hyperlink to find that, in reality, New Orleans was being held up as probably the most walkable metropolis within the nation – the fourth most walkable on the earth! And I laughed out loud.
I’m a proud Crescent Metropolis partisan. I’m ever able to make the case for my metropolis’s significance and exceptionalism and have been identified to recite to guests and newcomers the Tennessee Williams quote all longtime New Orleanians know by coronary heart: “America has solely three cities: New York, San Francisco and New Orleans…”
New Orleans appears, sounds, tastes and feels not like anyplace else on this nation, if not the planet. However if you happen to come right here anticipating to seek out the “most walkable” metropolis, you’re more likely to be about as shocked as you’d if you happen to got here anticipating to seek out the “best” or “least humid” or “most teetotaling.”
Naming New Orleans “most walkable” is a testomony, maybe, to simply how unhealthy off the American panorama is for walkability, although I might simply tick off a handful of locations better-suited to the mantle (together with, because it so occurs, New York and San Francisco.)
It’s true that New Orleans is extra walkable than your common American metropolis. It’s previous, based in 1718, round a century earlier than the appearance of the Mannequin T, and we profit from a transportation community and footprint that had been largely established earlier than the arrival of the automotive. There are lots of neighborhoods by which it’s doable to stroll to get locations, and in some components of city, these walks will be fairly nice. We’re additionally a poor metropolis with a fee of automotive possession that’s under the nationwide common, leaving many no selection however to get round by foot, bike or transit.
Even so, I’m sorry to say that we have now turned our metropolis over to vehicles about as a lot as another, as an unsuspecting vacationer from Seattle or Portland will uncover upon trying to cross the road; because the Metropolis Council made clear just a few years in the past when its French Quarter consultant efficiently argued for the removing – at important expense – of a protected bike lane in one other a part of his district; and as we see yr after yr in a pedestrian fatality fee that stands among the many highest within the nation.
Just a few weeks in the past, the newly-minted police chief, a lady whom I’ve met and respect, made headlines for putting two pedestrians along with her police automotive within the French Quarter. The information protection centered on the truth that she handed a breathalyzer take a look at performed per protocol and that the pedestrians had been apparently going to be okay. I anticipated that the incident may spark new requires restrictions on driving by way of the Vieux Carre – the oldest and most-visited neighborhood within the metropolis and one constructed fairly actually for strolling – one thing the mayor unsuccessfully lobbied for just a few years again.
As a substitute, the feedback posted on social media spoke to our auto myopia.
“Pedestrians deal with the French Quarter prefer it’s some sort of pedestrian mall,” learn a consultant one.
A part of me needs that Journey + Leisure had declared my tourism-dependent metropolis the worst for pedestrians. Perhaps that may have gotten coverage makers’ consideration.
