It turns out we can, in fact, build things. Time to build sidewalks.
I-95's collapse and resurgence within two weeks should give us hope: we can build infrastructure if we gave even one single sh*t about it. Who's got a trillion dollars?
A few weeks ago, FHWA Administrator, and former Colorado DOT Executive Director, Shailen Bhatt posted this on LinkedIn:
He’s right, of course. There was a united focus. The affected portion of the highway that burned and broke was retrofitted with new support and asphalt within two weeks. Transit saw a bump and people didn’t collectively lose their minds because they had to reroute or change commute modes for a few weeks. SEPTA’s ridership bumped—very likely directly correlated or explained by the fact that people couldn’t take their “normal” commute. This is the most obvious outcome.
What wasn’t so obvious was the amount of nice each of the agencies played with each other. Historically, and the proof is in the “we don’t build stuff,” but lots of this is either because of our vertical federalism—the Feds own infrastructure and policy process, the states own infrastructure and funding process, localities own the operations, and so forth. In between there are separate ports, authorities, regional governments, and cross-state compacts. These entities all compete for power and ultimately say in the fits and starts that pass for operations. There’s also a ton of money to be made and spent and invested. Who wins? Hard to say. But you and I lose.
There’s also horizontal federalism—cities and states compete with each other for the investment that brings new economy destinations and new and old economy jobs. The prosperity of places depends on this investment from both public and private actors. The correct approach, given the power capital has, would be for these places to collaborate—to unionize or at least understand how working together creates a larger pie. In many cases, we don’t do this. We fight for scraps while the corporate “people” run roughshod over everything and plunder places.
We showed that we can work together and that federalism can work for us instead of between or among us. Makes you think. It probably starts with leadership and trust.
So What’s the Issue?
So here’s what we need and here’s what I want. I want us to band together—vertically and horizontally—to build a system of sidewalks we can be proud of. And by proud of, I mean one that can help to cut down on the absurd number of pedestrian fatalities we allow to happen each year because of our negligence and lack of attention to and investment in pedestrian infrastructure. Our streets kill over 7,000 people per year on our state and local roads and the trend looks to kill more year over year.
Why isn’t this a national crisis? Why aren’t we gathering every available resource to pull together the will needed to build safe sidewalks everywhere all at once? We have a template: we build the Interstate Highway System. Why not a National Sidewalks System? We leave ownership to the current owners and the Federal government pays for between 90% and 100% of all sidewalks that are built. We require all new non-limited access roads to be built with sidewalks; we retrofit the rest. It would take a few years: we have to identify, prioritize, plan/schedule, and execute. It could be a national jobs program and a national safety program.
This is how we achieve Vision Zero, folks. But it’s actually Executing Zero.
But How Do We Pay For It? Numbers Incoming.
The challenge here is twofold. First, getting a somewhat accurate count of the sidewalks we need is more challenging than a first glance might suggest.
Fortunately, we know where roads are for the most part—we have pretty good detection software and an asset audit somewhere at the state DOT level for each state. If we don’t know where the roads are, we can map them. These are available data points. But, we don’t necessarily know where all the sidewalks are and, if there are sidewalks, we may not know their condition. We don’t know if state DOTs, counties, localities, and private owners keep records in the same manner. We have a data quality problem to contend with. There is an ongoing project to try and identify the sidewalk network via machine learning and spatial data science. It’s a start.
The 50 states, DC, Puerto Rico, and Guam will need to build their own networks. It’s too hard to gather all this data at once, vet it, and use it to manage a huge project like this. But that’s the thing about federalism: all of these entities together “national” do make.
Second, we have to know which roads have or need sidewalks, and for this, we can gather some data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, which happens to keep a record of roads by typology (highway, arterial, collector, or local) and density (rural or urban). I think the best way to narrow the 4.2 million miles down is to start with the most local roads, so for this initial skeleton, let’s start with the rural and urban local roads. Just so we’re on the same page here are USDOT’s classification definitions1:
The Interstate System is the highest classification of roadways in the United States. These arterial roads provide the highest level of mobility and the highest speeds over the longest uninterrupted distance. Interstates nationwide usually have posted speeds between 55 and 75 mi/h.
Other Arterials include freeways, multilane highways, and other important roadways that supplement the Interstate System. They connect, as directly as practicable, the Nations principal urbanized areas, cities, and industrial centers. Land access is limited. Posted speed limits on arterials usually range between 50 and 70 mi/h.
Collectors are major and minor roads that connect local roads and streets with arterials. Collectors provide less mobility than arterials at lower speeds and for shorter distances. They balance mobility with land access. The posted speed limit on collectors is usually between 35 and 55 mi/h.
Local roads provide limited mobility and are the primary access to residential areas, businesses, farms, and other local areas. Local roads, with posted speed limits usually between 20 and 45 mi/h, are the majority of roads in the U.S.
Assuming we start with the “local” network, that’s 2.9 million miles2—and 2/3 of this mileage is rural. Estimates I’m finding put the construction of a square foot of sidewalk concrete between $6-$12 per square foot; and the USDOT recommends a minimum 5-foot width for ADA compliance. Friends, these calculations feel ridiculous and sticker shock is likely. The arithmetic works out to $684.9 billion to cover every foot of local roads in the US with new sidewalks—times two to cover both sides. $1.37 trillion.
Of course, this is the baseline estimate and spread proportionately over 50 states over 10 years, the numbers feel less insane. It also doesn’t take into account the safety, economic, recreational, and environmental benefits sidewalks confer vis-à-vis mode shift away from trips made by cars; conferring new access to the transit that runs along these corridors; by making walking short distances fun and safe; and by providing new access to new jobs and other destinations—schools, retail, doctors. One would have to think that this investment would be worth it over time.
Let’s start whittling this number down to reality. First, we do not have to build every foot of sidewalk from scratch. Lots of places have lots of sidewalks already—that’s a given. Conservatively, let’s estimate that 50-75% of the local roads have some level of sidewalk activity. That cuts the costs from a balmy $1.37 trillion to $342.5-684.9 billion. Second, the Federal government likely has significant purchasing power and can likely build for the lower end of the cost window—$6/sqft. The costs drop to $228.3-456.6 billion. It’s a lot of money, but don’t forget we spend close to $860 billion per year on defense—to keep our citizens safe. Surely there’s a $35 billion carveout to ensure homeland equity as well as security, quite literally.
So what? What can YOU do about it?
I’m calling on Secretary Buttigieg and Administrator Bhatt to do something about this. It starts with a state-by-state audit of missing sidewalks and unkept walking pathways that contribute directly to thousands of safety hazards and undignified commutes. It starts with identifying the problem and communicating it effectively. It’s not obvious why a disjointed sidewalk network is a pressing problem. We, as leaders, and they, as leaders with limited power, must make the case.
And like everything else we do as an infrastructure-poor nation requires coordination, compact, and collaboration. If the Justice40 initiative is serious, and if we’re serious about “Vision Zero,” we need sidewalks. We need an Interstate Sidewalk System the same way we needed and still need an Interstate Highway System, and it’s up to our leaders to make the case for prioritizing it.
The best thing you can do is go walk your neighborhood and your city. Write down the parts of your local grid where it feels unsafe to walk. Take a ton of photos—confer with neighbors (voters…maybe!) and with visitors about how it feels to exist in the space. Then, armed with information and proof, take a trip or make a phone call to talk with your local elected official. Be a part of the solution. It’s worth it to make sure you stay alive.
https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/speedmgt/data_facts/docs/rd_func_class_1_42.pdf
That’s a little over 15.2 billion feet.
I wanted to mention here, in the comments, that there is a huge disparity in where there are no sidewalks. I didn't have the data on hand, but it's safe to build upon what we know about what we've gotten really wrong in the past, much of the sidewalk disconnect is concentrated in Black and Brown communities and there is very likely a deep inverse correlation between average median income for an area and sidewalk coverage.
An honest audit would confirm or confound these predictions.
This is why I enjoyed working with you, Sam.
We have built our nation around cars and not humans, and we're slowly starting to understand how problematic that trade-off was. Thoughtful and analytical, this captures what needs to be said so that more folks stop what they're doing and start considering how we can collectively fix this mess.