Nashville has Designed Roadways for Cars but not Pedestrians --- what can be done? A look at San Diego's similar issues.

Nashville feels like it has designed our roadways for cars and maybe bikes but definitely not for walkers.  Like public schools, post offices, roads, courts, and libraries, decent sidewalks are a basic civic right and yet Nashville is coming in woefully deficient with only 37% of our roadways set up with sidewalks. 

Other cities are being served with lawsuits for lack of safe infrastructure.  The article below is about how San Diego is being sued for lack of safe bike infrastructure despite a big push to bike more in order to curb traffic and pollution. 


Sound familiar?  We, in Nashville, have had many similar messages these past years to get moving via foot or bike but with an alarming pedestrian death rate to match.  This alarming pedestrian death rate is likely closely tied to our lack of sidewalks.


Maybe a lawsuit is in order as there is seemingly no other way to get Nashville to provide. 


Nashvillians have certainly been complaining about the lack of safe interconnected walking options for many years and yet our current sidewalk funding will make the job complete in 1000 years.   Not a typo:  ONE THOUSAND YEARS. 


And, what about the many walkers who have died this year walking in Nashville?  We have an alarmingly high rate of pedestrians killed on foot.  A walker is killed every 21 days here in Nashville.  We have speed limits of 30+ in residential neighborhoods.  We have little to no enforcement of pedestrian laws.  We have horrible lighting conditions and very few sidewalks making Nashville an incredibly deadly environment for walkers.  Frankly, we have a city that does not care about walking and it is a shameful and possible illegal situation.   There are federal laws that cities must comply with and we do not seem to be getting even close. 


https://www.nashvillepedestriandeathregistry.org/











San Diego facing three new bicycle injury lawsuits in wake of $5M payout


http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/politics/sd-me-bike-lawsuits-20171103-story.html


David Garrick


Eight months after San Diego paid nearly $5 million to a bicyclist severely injured by damaged sidewalk, the city is facing three more lawsuits from injuries related to bicycling.
One suit blames the city for a bicycle-on-bicycle crash in a Balboa Avenue eastbound bike lane, which is frequently used by cyclists traveling both directions because the city hasn’t built a westbound bike lane on the street.




Another suit blames the city for a bicyclist being launched by damaged concrete in a bike lane in Carmel Valley. And the third suit blames the city for a man getting electrocuted by a bike rack on El Cajon Boulevard in Talmadge.




The lawsuits come as San Diego is encouraging more people to commute by bicycle to fight climate change, reduce traffic congestion and ease parking scarcity.  They highlight the city’s lack of adequate infrastructure to accommodate a sharp surge in bicycling commuters, a problem city officials say they are focused on fixing with a regional network of bike lanes that’s being slowly constructed.




Cycling advocates say the network will fix a glaring oversight by city planners, who designed streets in San Diego with specific places for cars and pedestrians but no designated travel lanes for bikes.


San Diego is also grappling with cyclists using sidewalks on streets that lack bike lanes because they feel safer there.

The man who got $4.85 million from the city in March was riding on a tree-damaged Del Cerro sidewalk city officials had been notified about five months before the September 2014 crash.


The crash left Clifford Brown with torn spinal cord ligaments, several lost teeth and brain damage that makes him incapable of functioning independently.




The man injured in the Balboa Avenue bicycle-on-bicycle crash describes similar injuries in his lawsuit, which was filed in September.




The November 2016 crash into another bicyclist allegedly threw Douglas Eggers backward and caused a serious brain injury when his head struck the ground on Balboa near Tecolote Canyon.
He was hospitalized for six weeks and then transferred to a neuro skills facility in Bakersfield where he is still being treated.




Eggers’ lawsuit says the city is at fault because the bike lane it built on Balboa Avenue in 2008 is ripe for head-on collisions.  That’s because the street has only one bike lane that is designated for eastbound cyclists, but westbound cyclists also frequently use the lane to avoid the dangers of riding on such a busy street.




His lawsuit says the city should have created a wider bike lane on the north side of Balboa with a divider to accommodate two-way traffic, or the city should have constructed a separate westbound bike lane on the south side of the street.




The suit also notes that the city’s Bicycle Advisory Committee has received complaints about the lack of a westbound bike lane on Balboa.




The injured cyclist in the second lawsuit, Michael Cizaukas, describes somewhat less severe injuries he suffered after being thrown from his bicycle by a two-inch “launching ramp” in a Carmel Valley concrete bike lane buckled by a tree.




Cizaukas says he suffered fractured bones, a separated shoulder, muscle tears, hearing loss and a concussion from the crash, which took place in May 2016 on Carmel Canyon Road near Tarantella Lane.




The suit, filed in August, says the city is obligated to provide cyclists with a hazard-free bike lane and that the city should have known about the raised concrete and fixed it.


In the third lawsuit, also filed in August, Jasper Polintan says he was electrocuted while locking his bike to one of three blue metal bike racks on El Cajon Boulevard near 50^th St. in Talmadge.
His suit says he suffered damaged to his upper extremities and other injuries that have reduced his earning capacity.




Polintan says the city failed to provide adequate safeguards and should have either properly installed, repaired or maintained the bike rack.




In preliminary responses to the suits filed with the court, attorneys for the city say city officials were unaware of the problems and that the injured cyclists didn’t take proper precautions.