A Tale of Two Cities

I rode the bike today to work, the day after Christmas, under a 34 degree cold front (cold for Northern CA). Not too many folks will ride a bike with gas at a buck fifty, let alone ride when you can see your breath. "What is that dolt doing?" they ask, as they motor around him in their heated vehicles. "Thank God I'm not as poor as that schlub."

As I ride up Franklin towards East Sacramento, where I work at SMUD, I've noticed how much better the roads are as I get closer. This is the pedestrian crossing at 59th and Broadway, about .6 miles from SMUD:



Last spring, road construction crews ripped out two inches of existing asphalt and installed a whole new, quiet, rubberized open grade asphalt along the entire length of 59th. They also bricked this crosswalk across Broadway. Where I'm standing while taking this picture is the north entrance to Curtis Park. Smaller, older homes in Curtis Park command many tens of thousands of dollars more than newer, bigger homes in Elk Grove precisely because of the park (embedded in the neighborhood and accessible by foot, not only by car), of their arrangements (walkable & engaging), of their architectural character (where 2/3rds of the facades aren't swallowed up by blank garage doors). Not just because they are located in East Sacramento.

So...as I rode the bike home today down Franklin Blvd., I passed the new signaled intersection of Franklin and Turnbridge, where road construction crews recently performed a state/federal tax funded road beautification project. Look at this mess:

If you click on the photo, you'll notice that this ain't brick. It's a simulated brick paint job on top of a chip-sealed surface that was deteriorated to begin with. In a few years this chip seal is going to slough off, the cracked bottom road bed will become re-exposed and this whole intersection will fall apart. They stopped the chip seal just south of this intersection, too. Just couldn't seal it all the way to Florin. Nope. That old section of road will always be even worse than this 'new' road.

Tell me...on this road, across this intersection...who is going to push that walk button, huh? Who? You? Who is going to walk that one and a quarter miles from this intersection to Florin Rd, or to anything of interest? You? Yeah, right. I've not seen a single person hoofing it across this intersection in the past nine months.

The city, however, also knows this. They assume any pedestrian here in South Sacramento is a fucking moron who wouldn't know the difference between a brick walkway and a faux brick asphalt strip. It's the only possible explanation why city-core neighborhoods get "real" roadways, new quiet asphalt surfaces, and brick walks while the fringe neighborhoods get painted bricks and thinly sprayed hydrocarbon sealers. It's just one more little example of how and why I believe that suburban neighborhoods are always destined to become slums.

This is not an intersection worth caring about, and it shows. Pedestrians don't care about it (why there aren't any), the city doesn't care about it (why it gets thermo-plastic paint bricks), and drivers don't care about it (why they travel 75 mph past it).