Amid all of the transportation chatter to be found in the cacophony of the T-SPLOST campaign, precious little attention has been paid to the oldest form of transportation- walking. Not to be left out of the conversation, the Atlanta pedestrian advocacy group PEDS has launched a campaign to get the city to start allocating money for sidewalk repair and maintenance as a line item in the city budget as opposed to just coming out of the public works' allocation. An infrastructure audit of the city stated that 25% of Atlanta's sidewalks are in serious need of work, and the tab to get all of Atlanta's street-side walkways up to snuff would amount to a whopping $152 million. For anyone that regularly walks in Midtown and Downtown (and really, all over the city), the deplorable state of the city's sidewalks isn't news. One of the liabilities of having a city full of trees is that their roots get in the way (like the one pictured). But many of the city's sidewalks are busted up because of good, old-fashioned neglect. Fixing them makes sense not just from a quality of life standpoint, but also from a risk management perspective...the City of Atlanta has paid out over $4 million in recent settlements of lawsuits filed against the city by people injured on crumbling sidewalks.
· Atlanta sidewalk system 'broken' [11Alive.com]
· PEDS [official site]