Our friend Abby continues her Week without Driving adventures. You can read her preview here or follow her E-Trike journey here.
A week after I bought my house in Santa Rosa I read in the local newspaper that the city was planning to install a flashing crosswalk on Montgomery Drive, a block from my house.
The crosswalk was completed several months ago, and I used it on day 2 of my Week Without Driving when I walked over to Montgomery Village, a large 1950s-style one- story shopping center that takes up three blocks in my suburban neighborhood. It has everything you need: a wonderful post office, an independent bookstore, many restaurants and bars, an independent coffee place, lots of gift shops and clothes stores, two nail salons, a branch of every bank imaginable, and a Penzeys Spices.
I was meeting up for coffee with the community organizer from Generation Housing, our local housing advocacy group. Montgomery Village is less than a mile from my home, but getting there requires crossing busy Montgomery Drive.
Hence the new crosswalk.
The beg button worked, and cars and trucks actually slowed down for me at the flashing intersection. Hooray!
It was a pleasant walk. Our neighborhood is starting its seasonal decorating blitz and I had a chance to see the first wild displays at a leisurely pace. My next-door neighbors have 13 skeletons dressed up around a fake swimming pool in their front yard. Other neighbors are going for the fall harvest look. One large truck was parked up on the curb, not as a decoration but perhaps as a result of inebriation.
The sidewalk abruptly ended at the shopping center! Pedestrians who are heading to the post office or any of the other businesses on the southeast side of Montgomery Village must walk in the street or through a parking lot. There are many purposeful barriers to pedestrians, including signs and bollards.
I walked through a planted strip and then a parking lot to get to the coffee shop, and I noticed that there were no bike racks at that crowded site. I’m going to bring this to the attention of shopping center management.
After coffee I had a pleasant walk home before the temperature rose to 101 degrees. It was such an easy walk that I am likely to change my habits, which is one of the goals of a Week Without Driving. Tomorrow I’m heading into San Francisco on the SMART train!
