From Flickr user lindaaslund, courtesy Creative Commons

Once again, it’s summer in central Texas, and we have to get used to walking and bicycling in the heat. Our pedestrian advocacy group is now called Walk Austin, and has a rudimentary website at WalkAustin.org. Please feel free to contact us, join us (it’s free), and post writings about walking on the website. Our goals are to get the city to finish the sidewalk system within 20 years, and to spread appreciation for walking, walkers, and walkways in Austin.

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Here are a few books about walking.

The Pleasures of Walking, edited by Edwin Valentine Mitchell.  A collection of essays, some of them funny, published in 1948.

Wanderlust: A History of Walking, by Rebecca Solnit.

The Uncommercial Traveler, by Charles Dickens.

Life On Waller Creek, by Joseph Jones.  Memoirs and history of Austin by a UT English prof who used to hang out on Waller Creek.

Please share your thoughts on these books, or share other books related to walking.

Spring is here in central Texas, and we’d better get moving before we get clobbered by summer.  Our fledgling pedestrian activist movement has an e-mail list, courtesy of Sam Placette.  The address is http://lists.walkaustin.org/.  Like many people who like to walk and bicycle, I don’t really like high-powered machines, including computers.  So I haven’t posted much to the list yet.  But I will do so, because communication is necessary, if we wish to get Austin’s walking network finished.  If the way to a connected sidewalk network is through the computer, I’ll grit my teeth and use the machine.  At least I don’t have to drive a car, or ride in one.

A reporter from KUT news called me one morning in April to interview me about a sidewalk resolution I was bringing before the Bicycle/Pedestrian Subcommittee of Austin’s Urban Transportation Commission.  I was surprised, particularly as I never actually got to the subcommittee meeting on March 29.  Instead, I suffered my first bicycle crash in Austin since 1996.  I’m hoping that this was a very unusual crash, and that a similar thing won’t happen to anyone else.

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Walk Austin began on Earth Day, April 22, 2010, when Amy Babich and I decided to start a group with the goal of making Austin a better city to walk in for everybody, including the young, elderly, and differently abled. Specifically, we want to help promote walking facilities, raise awareness of pedestrians, foster a walking culture, and respect our public walking spaces. We have discussed hosting events, publishing an Internet journal with writing from members of the community, advocating for pedestrian facilities with the city, and providing a public forum for discussing walking topics.

I invite you to join us in discussion on our mailing list. This is a mutually supportive place to discuss safety, facilities, social walking, recreational walking, walking as transportation, routes, events, walking and public transit, laws, equipment, special needs, wheelchair access, or anything else related to walking in Austin.

If you know other people who enjoy walking in Austin, please tell them about our group and mailing list. Anyone can sign up for the list at http://lists.walkaustin.org/listinfo.cgi/discussion-walkaustin.org

Thanks!
Sam Placette