MyWHaT

Carrying on with this week’s theme pointing out the lack of city priorities concerning pedestrians, here are images by year-round daily bicycle driver John Robert Williams taken and sent in yesterday morning. This is located in the southwest corner of the Holiday Inn parking lot. John lays out the scene as, “The plow driver blocks the city sidewalk, the sidewalk has foot prints, but no tracks from cars in the lot.”

"wheelchair tracks on the trail next to salt cleared Parkway. Stop spreading salt, save the bay and spend it on sidewalks."JR Williams

This is just bad form. Who is on top of this?

Whoever they are, we can help remind them.

Mentioned this morning was the Michigan Complete Streets Flickr group. A resource for providing the visuals of poor design across the state. Images from that site have been used in presentations to state representatives to support complete street legislation.

There is also another valuable tool: SeeClickFix. The idea is to upload images of problem areas that can be monitored by public service departments. You can actually set it up to automatically send links to images posted to the proper department heads. And, if they are on their game, can include the tool as a widget on government Web sites.

The potential of this is promising. The first image from Traverse City was posted yesterday.

Anyone can take advantage of these tools.

It’s a practice of seeing the issues and creating some images. Add them yourself, or MyWHaT is open to collecting your images and adding them to both the Flickr Group and SeeClickFix sites.

Happy shooting!

What obvious issue do you see on a regular basis? Have an image?

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One of the many head scratchers at the Michigan Complete Streets Flickr Group.

UPDATE: The image at right is looking into a school parking lot!

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The goals of this BLOG are wide and diverse. It’s focused on increasing transportation choices and intentional use of public space–designing ‘places’ (including roads)  based on our values & improving quality of life.

To have an impact, collaboration with trailblazing organizations (many are listed in the sidebar) is crucial.

This is a statewide & national movement. People everywhere want communities built at the human scale.

It’s with this in mind that MyWHaT is excited to become a community partner with Michigan Complete Streets. Northern Michigan is not alone in trying to get transportation planners and engineers to “consistently design and operate the entire roadway with all users in mind,” as MI Complete Streets calls for on its about page,

A statewide hub will be increasingly valuable. MI Complete Streets is actively working on the legislative side to support bills like House Concurrent Resolution 34 that connects complete streets to health.

Their Web site currently provides current news and action alerts, a resource page with a complete streets vocabulary page & additional resources like the Michigan Complete Streets Flickr Group. The image and video resource was established “to share photos and videos of Michigan roadways in need of Complete Streets“. MyWHaT has already been adding images to compliment the mostly downstate contributions…I can’t wait until the snow melts. If you have images to add, but don’t want to join, feel free to send images to MyWHaT and we can load them for you.

If you are affiliated with an organization advocating for complete streets,  Michigan Complete Streets is looking for additional community partners.

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If you see something you like, please subscribe to this BLOG’s feed and also pass this link on to a friend.