In Stephen King's short story Trucks, a group of people are trapped in a diner by trucks and cars who have come to life and started killing people. It's a pretty stupid premise for a story. However, if those same trucks had retained their evil consciousness and designed a car-and-truck-friendly suburb with the torment and eventual death of humans in mind, it would have been Richardson, TX. None of the "walk" buttons at the intersections actually work. Streets routinely have both sidewalks torn up for maintenance that takes months to finish (and Mexicans driving backhoes swear at you if you try to sneak past them rather than walking out into 6 lanes of traffic). All the little roads between the major intersections lead to fenced off parking lots or gated housing communities plastered with NO TRESPASSING signs. It's a pedestrian's worst nightmare. Of course, as far I can tell I'm the only actual pedestrian out of 100,000 people, so I guess it serves me right.RATING: 2%, but I'll add another 1% for every (intact, living) pedestrian I see in the next 7 days.
(Image from www.askville.amazon.com.)
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7 comments:
Yeah, you can't really be a pedestrian in any Texas city I've seen, except maybe Austin. But if you move to Austin you have to deal with hipsters, hippies, yippies, yuppies, etc., so it's not really worth it.
There was recently a letter to the editor in our local paper suggesting that the sidewalks be turned into bike lanes, since nobody walks anywhere. I guess I don't count?
I've lived in small towns, small cities, and big cities on 3 continents, and the ratio of (huge) cars to pedestrians in Dallas frankly disgusts me. At least people don't drive cars and motorcycles down the sidewalk at full speed like they do in Korea, but if they did, they wouldn't hit anyone, because no one walks.
We can look at all these things in Texas as a negative, or maybe it's just right. I usually find the odd man out is right. My family lived near Richardson once and my Father hated it.
The Pearl Jam song "Jeremy" is based on a kid in Richardson who shot himself in front of his English class.
Well, guess you are only in a certain part of Richardson as I can walk the kids to school and church and can easily walk to get most of my needs met. On-going road construction is a valid complaint this summer as they are repairing sidewalks and putting in curb cuts but to damn all of Richardson as walking unfriendly is to ignore, at least, my area on the west side.
Fair enough, anonymous. I guess I'm really only complaining about leaving UTD and crossing Coit, which I don't even bother trying to do on foot any more.
Also, you have to understand that we're very creative with things like facts and grammar here at R3. These reviews are really for entertainment only, and if you're enough of a geek to actually find them entertaining, you should probably join the team and review my review of Richardson.
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