It sounds like it’s only a matter of time.
Just a point of clarification here: the right-of-way and private property are two distinct areas. A lot of folks might think their property extends out a certain distance to the road, but more often than not, it doesn’t. Any land that’s in the ROW isn’t yours even if you’ve been using it as such. iMAPS is a good resource to determine that.
Yes. That’s understood by me. Not so sure it is by others.
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Yeah, I meant that to be more of a PSA than a reply to you specifically.
I was looking at iMaps this morning and found the right of way in the suburban neighborhood where I grew up to be interesting. While the neighborhood has sidewalks, it often only has them on one side of a street, while having none at all in cul-de-sacs. In the case of my immediate childhood neighborhood, the side of the street with a sidewalk seems to have a deeper right of way than the side that doesn’t. The right of way in cul-de-sacs also seem to be narrower. Sidewalks in this specific neighborhood have that strip of landscaped land between the sidewalk and the street. I suspect that any additional sidewalks there would have to be immediately against the street without the buffer.
(Boston)
This sidewalk is roughly 7’ wide, imagine if it were 4-6’ like the majority of the existing sidewalks on the outskirts of town.
This is an ADA issue that needs be addressed in every neighborhood with a school, especially elementary and middle schools.
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We’re getting some raised crosswalks!
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I’m watching the Design Review Commission meeting from yesterday on YouTube and a developer is seeking complete relief from having to install sidewalks on a small redevelopment site on the far west side of Bragg St., between Wilmington St. & S. Blount.
What struck me the most is that while this site is within a TOD corridor, the developer’s representative is arguing to not build sidewalks to maximize the number of townhouses and to preserve (get this) the character of the two streets at the site: which don’t currently have sidewalks. The applicant’s representative (in my opinion) exaggerated the possible number of units that would be lost if the developer conformed.
This site seems to be first out of the gate with redevelopment (gentrification) in this pocket sized neighborhood, and the commission was wisely skeptical of granting full relief to this developer and its impact on the entire neighborhood’s walkability to an identified transit corridor.
The applicants representative requested tabling the case for a month when it became obvious that the commission was going to vote down the request for full relief. The commission discussed with the applicant’s representative for a bit and expressed that there needed to be a proposal for public connectivity.
The commission tabled the case for a month, and I’m happy that they didn’t capitulate to the developer for full relief.
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I guess this is the correct forum to post this:
The city has installed two raised crosswalks on St. Mary’s Street, near Clay and Brooklyn Streets! 
(Broughton High School and Fred Fletcher Park area)
This pilot better be permanent given the proven safety track record this design has worldwide!
https://www.instagram.com/p/DHTLUFFu9gM/?igsh=NXQ1enIxbGxvOXR2
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Awesome! I love when they install jumps on these roads. My car can get some serious air as long as I am driving fast enough!
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whose says pigs can’t fly?
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It’s incredible that there’s already a flex post KIA in the official announcement photos
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Pour two out, there’s another one down on the near side as well.
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I’ve biked this a bit on my way to work. I definitely enjoy it and the bike lanes that were put in alongside it.
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Maybe they’ve recently painted them, but they’ve been bumped up for a while now. I appreciate that they not only slow down cars for Broughton walkers, but they also slow down traffic as it approaches downtown and its downtown-wide 25MPH.
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I came across this StreetsBlog article about an MIT researcher who found something intuitive but crazy about perceived heat versus walking. He and his coauthors used data from a smartphone fitness app to measure something called the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI):
Or to put it another way: if it feels like it’s hotter outside by 2 degrees Fahrenheit, your walk will also feel longer by over 260 feet. …and this scales exponentially with higher temperatures, too.
This may be important to think about, with city upgrades like a potential redesign of Fayetteville St. coming up while the heat island effect makes our heat waves feel worse, with each passing summer.
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RIP to the Raleigh climate action topic 
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I am glad to see your trip north recharged your irreverent sacasim tank.
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Not sure where to put this, so I’ll put it here.
This post is prompted by something that happened to me last week, and while I was not going to share the story, the pedestrian death of the NC State Assistant Professor has changed my mind.
A week ago Tuesday I was on my daily walk and at the corner of Glenwood and Hillsborough waiting for the light to turn and the crosswalk sign to come on. Specifically I was at the corner of
”The Avenue” and waiting to cross Glenwood Ave. I pushed the crosswalk button and waited. When it came my time to walk, I started walking across Glenwood. As I was moving in front of a car that wanted to turn right (west) on Hillsborough, the driver started moving toward me while looking to his left (east) to see if the coast was clear to turn right on red. Not once did he look to his right to see if someone was crossing on foot. He almost hit me. I yelled “Hey” really loudly as a reflexive action toward him until he saw me. He was startled that someone was in the crosswalk. With a blank face, I then used my right hand and pointed to my eyes and then at him, to signal that he needs to look for pedestrians (he had his windows closed). No doubt that I was not happy about this, but I kept my behavior neutral. I then pointed to the crosswalk sign that he was completely ignoring. As I continued to make my way across the street, he rolled down his window and started yelling at me and saying really nasty things. Then his female passenger took out her phone to start recording for some reason or another. I suspected that she was trying to trap me into saying something that shouldn’t be said (spoiler: I didn’t). After he was done berating me for some reason or another, he said that he was going to beat my ass and then hocked a loogie that almost hit me. At this point, I was probably 15 feet away from him. Frankly I was never closer to him and never approached his car window or made an aggressive or threatening move toward him. He angrily sped off onto Hillsborough Street before I could even think about getting out my phone to take a photo of his license plate. The whole episode was completely baffling to me. He wasn’t paying attention. He almost hit me when I had the right of way. He reacted violently when he was called out about it, and then he both threatened to assault me and then spit at me. I was never aggressive toward him. I never approached his car. I was just trying to not get killed. I suppose using hand signaling to call him out on his behavior was a bridge too far?
While I am not a fan of unnecessarily slowing down traffic, perhaps we need to eliminate right on red downtown and around the universities/colleges if folks are not going start behaving like they have to share infrastructure with pedestrians (and probably cyclists too).
Reading about the death of the professor, and the fact that she was killed by a teenager driving a giant pickup truck both saddens and angers me. I would hope that the man who almost hit me and then literally spit at me reflects on this, but I somehow doubt it. FWIW, the man who almost hit me was NOT young. He was at least in his 50s if not older.
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