Even the bitter cold and rain couldn’t stop a dozen-plus citizen activists — and plain old moms and kids — from gathering on Dec. 20 in front of One Texas Center to rally on behalf of sidewalks and the people who use them — which would, of course, be everybody.
One Texas Center is home to the City’s Public Works and Transportation Dept., which is responsible for what fitful efforts the city makes to equip all neighborhoods with adequate pedestrian facilities. The efforts are fitful for obvious reasons; as in many cities, our sidewalks have not traditionally been considered part of the public rights-of-way, so building and maintaining them has been the responsibility of property owners. This is why so many of our neighborhoods — particularly the older ones that we use as models for ped-friendly Smart Growth — have no sidewalks. The only places where sidewalks are guaranteed by public funds and effort are around schools, where they’re paid for by the Child Safety Fund in partnership with school districts, and to and from bus stops, where they’re built and funded by Capital Metro.
That’s the policy landscape; the political landscape is quite different. Austin is, after all, a progressive town, where citizens chafe at the notion that we can spend millions upon millions on “necessary” roadway infrastructure but begrudge a few thousand dollars for “optional” pedestrian infrastructure. And if our civic religion holds that we should be a walkable community, well, it’s time for the city to tithe.
In response to these politics, the city in 1996 formed a Sidewalk Task Force, thus converting sidewalks into a major city issue and identifying $50 million in needs. But members of that panel have been, shall we say, underwhelmed at the city’s alacrity in implementing the Task Force recommendations. The city also included $5 million for sidewalk construction in the 1998 bond package, but $300,000 of that has already been allocated away from the neighborhoods and to the CSC/City Hall project’s showpiece streetscape.
This last outrage, from the neighbors’ perspective, was compounded by the recent nixing of a state-awarded, federally funded grant for sidewalks in the Hyde Park and Old West Austin neighborhoods — disqualified because the city wouldn’t agree to maintain them, because that’s the property owner’s responsibility, etc., etc. “It is outrageous,” says transportation activist and Old West Austin neighborhood leader Karen Akins, a member of what she calls the “Sidewalk Task Farce.” “Instead of using scarce city resources and leveraging them with federal money to make them go further, the city has now put itself in a position of having to pay for 100% of the cost of neighborhood sidewalks.”
The neighbors point out that, despite decades of standard practice, there’s nothing in the Land Development Code that requires sidewalk maintenance to be the responsibility of property owners. In fact, the City Charter specifically entrusts sidewalks, as part of the streets they enjoin, to the city’s care — and empowers the city to assess property owners for maintenance costs. “The city needs to … not just run around touting the benefits of building new neighborhoods on the traditional model while allowing the model to crumble,” says Hyde Park leader Suzee Brooks. “Families will continue to leave the central city if they feel it’s not safe for their children to move about freely. Urban families need urban amenities. Sidewalks are vital to a high quality urban life.”
This article appears in December 31 • 1999.