I don't have a car, so the pictures above a good look at what I deal with every day. It's far worse in the winter when people and businesses don't shovel away the snow. Then I'm stuck either climbing over snowbanks several feet high or walking on slippery roads.

Heh, my aunt lives near the Portland picture -- I recognized the bridge as the sign to turn off. There are a lot of streets like that in Portland, where the sidewalk just sort of cuts out for a bit. While many of them, like the one I live on, are tiny residential streets with a small speed limit, others are not. It's amazing that a city which ostensibly cares so much about people who don't drive puts up with this.

It was one of the major, major things I notice about the US when I visit, especially away from the oldest cities.

Relevant journal article on Jaywalking and the Invention of the Motor Age Street [PDF]

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwork.colum.edu%2F~zfurness%2Fcity%2FNorton-Jaywalking.pdf&rct=j&q=Technology%20and%20Culture%20Jaywalking%20filetype%3Apdf&ei=Hi6XTqPXHoLy0gGkpKXNBA&usg=AFQjCNGkQTGB6Ao5vJaDwR2jM0F7w-KdRg&sig2=0DI0ZEUqqFoTWNoFvgfyWw&cad=rja

My grandpa was nearly arrested for walking along the side of the road in the USA in the 1970s (I don't know what state - he was a business traveller so many possibilities). The police were convinced that this must be some sort of crime; he was only let off because he was a  visitor from the UK and his strange 'walking' behaviour was just because he was English. 
I'm very glad to live in a country where jaywalking isn't an offence. There are still some problems with non-dropped pavements and poor clearing and gritting of pavements in winter (do you walk on the sheet-ice pavement and fall, or on the gritted road and risk being run over?). This rather highlights the issue of accessibility for all - a street safe for a young, fit, non-disabled person may not be safe for someone using a wheelchair or walking with sticks. 

I tried to walk with a stroller to take my daughter to daycare a few times, but while there are wonderful sidewalks on the quiet side streets, the really busy street has places where there are no sidewalks at all and others where there is a nearly one foot drop from the curb to cross a side street.   I gave up and just got in the car and drove the 1.4 miles.  As silly as it felt, it was safer than pushing a stroller along the edge of a road that doesn't even have a bike lane.

Oh yes, I remember having my heart in my throat everytime I've been in the US (apart from the designated areas) and walking anywhere. Not that it's a strictly american problem, we have the same on in our town, with a trafficked streed that constantly gets crossed by kids who don't want to take the long way to the bus stop. One has to wonder what we're paying city planners for.

 I first noticed this when i was visiting Texas (I'm Irish), it's the reason the friends I was visiting thought I was crazy when I went for a walk to alleviate boredom, and why I found it hard to accept their assertion that Fort Worth was a city (I didn't ask to see a cathedral, just find me a footpath! What I saw before me was an industrial estate.)

It was pictures like these that finally convinced the La Cañada city council to put sidewalks on Chevy Chase Dr. People were walking their strollers in the middle of the street to get to the preschool at the top of the street. The biggest opponents were some neighbors who said that sidewalks would wreck the "rural" feel of our community. Rural? We're 10 miles north of Los Angeles, have 20,000+ people, have a huge interstate freeway bisecting the town just a block north of the new sidewalks.

I recently looked at a house for sale and presume that the low list price is at least in part because it's in a neighborhood that, while very close to the much desirable downtown shopping-and-socializing district, is isolated from that area by the street layout. You can't take the quick direct route because the highway cuts through. Unless you're fit you can't walk or bike, and if you take your car you must then pay for downtown parking. The result being this neighborhood of very pretty old houses that have been, for decades, maintained far less nicely than the those similar ones, same age, same style, on the other side of the highway, and are worth much less.

The neighborhood of Nelson's apartment looks like it suffers a similar fate. Many of the photos seem to indicate that, too. The result being that the people who most need to use public transport and shank's mare also find it necessary to live in places where doing so is difficult and dangerous.

It does seem to me that affluent neighborhoods are always set up so it looks like one could take a nice stroll, even though it also seems that most people seldom, if ever, do, unless they're in an area where it's easier to walk than find a place to park.

This does concern me. The most basic of human modes of transportation - walking - is neglected any accomodation. Meanwhile automobile drivers get catered to.

The US seems to have some serious hatred for pedestrians.

I went to high school in Minnesota, in a town of over 50,000; I swear there was maybe twenty whole feet of sidewalk. I thought this was always demonstrated perfectly by the local park had paved walking paths but not a single sidewalk that led up to it. Though, it did have a parking lot.

I just today passed a man pushing a small cart along the side of a major freeway entering downtown Houston. My heart leapt into my throat when I saw him; he was on a narrow shoulder by the median divider, and (like many of our highways) the road is actually elevated above ground-level (not quite an overpass yet) and walled off, so the only way to get off is at the nearest exits. And since he was in the center of the highway, he would have had to cross four lanes of 60mph traffic (note this was also at rush hour) to do so.

He's far from the first such pedestrian I've seen (in fact, I saw TWO different people walking along the grass at the side of the road because there was no sidewalk when I was leaving the airport last week). I definitely agree that the sidewalk situation in most of this country is abysmal. Even out in the suburbs where I live - in a planned community famous for its walking/biking forest paths - sidewalks usually only exist on one side of the street, and generally only on strictly residential streets within subdivisions (the main road has no sidewalks, and speed limits of 50-55mph). And of course, we suburbians only use the sidewalks for "leisure" activities because we all have cars, while the people living in poorer areas who are less likely to have cars and NEED to be able to walk/bike places don't get any sidewalks at all. Sigh.

A few years ago, I came across walkscore.com, where you can input your address and discover the "walkability" of your neighborhood (or of a place that you will be visiting). Mine is 88/100 where I work, and 11/100 where I live.

(Of course, the website does point out that their scores do not -- presently -- include street design. However, street design -- especially the presence and quality of sidewalks -- tends to be highly correlated with other factors used in their algorithm.)

While living in Clarksville, TN, I noticed this issue almost immediately. There were public transit buses, but all of the stops near Ft. Campbell Army Post and along the "main drag" were located on one side (or the other) of a 6 lane road, with no crosswalks and no sidewalks. It made me upset enough to complain to the town... though nothing was done to address it at this point. 

My guess is that it comes from assumptions about wealth, perhaps?  I see this lack of sidewalks more in suburbs than in cities, and furthermore, in suburbs assumed to be wealthy more than suburbs assumed to be for the middle-middle and lower classes (as well as regionally, I see it more on the west coast and in the south than in the midwest or on the east coast).  The assumption is "everyone here has a car" and the busses are just for show, I guess, even though many of these towns do have houses and apartments than are relatively inexpensive and could reasonably be inhabited by people who can't afford a car.

It's interesting that I see so many campaigns for "sharing the road" with recreational cyclists, but very little for pedestrians who have to or choose to walk.

What?! That's pretty extreme.

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None of the jurors on her case had ever taken public transportation.
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How is that even possible? What is counted as public transportation? Only local bus in that city? (Or bus or train between cities? Bus to the airport?)

I'm British and worked in the US for 6 months and the attitude to pedestrians really shocked me. I was treated like I was insane because I walked everywhere through choice. The town I was living in was small enough to be easily walkable for an able-bodied person, but so many of the roads did not have pavements. The only bank in town was a drive through one, but did not have a pedestrian crossing. I nearly got flattened trying to get to their door!

I got the impression that public transport users were seen as lower class, but I wondered whether the attitude was different in New York? I know in London people from all economic classes use public transport and some people see it is an ethical choice (because of environmental and pollution issues re: using cars).

This seems to be an American thing and I don't understand it. I was shocked to find out from a friend that it's normal to have entire neighbourhoods with no footpaths! 'How do you get around?' I asked her. 'What a bout short journeys, under 3 kilometres or so?' She looked at me like I'd grown an extra head and said 'Um, we use the car...' 

This is really sad, and drivers should of course always stop when a pedestrian is in the road legally or illegally, but shouldn't she have crossed at the corner, rather than in the middle of a block?

I know it varies from state to state, but at least in Massachusetts, one can legally cross at an unsignalled intersection if there is no crosswalk within 300 feet. Crossing in the middle of a block (unless there's a crosswalk) is always illegal. Drivers are generally doing more scanning at intersections than in the middle of blocks, so it's safer too.

(And yes, it's horrible city planning that there's no signalled crosswalks near the bus stop.)

This! I live in a Seattle suburb and our cul de sac has sidewalks, but the main road our cul de sac is connected to does not. There are restaurants, stores, and even our vet only a 10 to 15 minute walk away, but we don't feel comfortable walking to them because of the lack of sidewalks. We tried it once, using the bike paths and the grass strip off to the side, but it was way too scary, especially since we had our dog with us. Such a shame.

This story sickens me

I live in an apartment complex in not the best neighborhood with a bus stop right across the street as well as a grocery store and strip mall. I, as well as my neighbors, routinely just run across the 45mph 4 lane road instead of going to the nearest light, especially as there isn't technically a crosswalk there anyway. To make matters worse the local high school is just up the street and at lunch a lot of kids head towards the grocery and the food places in the strip mall. I've almost hit at least one teen that wasn't paying attention.

My job is actually almost exactly a mile a way. A 3 minute drive. I'd love to walk or ride a bike, but the sidewalk ends at the end of my apt complex and I'm afraid to walk along said busy road in the grass. I do see people walking along there and I'm always afraid of hitting somebody.

Oh, she got probation instead of jail time? That's fantastic news. What a disgusting travesty it would be if she were to have been imprisoned. Now let's hope that the second trial (isn't that unconstitutional? Double jeopardy and all that?) she gets a jury of her actual peers, people who understand...

It was a horrible case and I remember thinking that her lawyer must not have been very good. I wonder if images like the one above were used to illustrate that distance did not equal access for the suburban Atlanta jury? Granted the issues of race and class may have still tainted their ability to view the accused sympathetically but perhaps it could have helped?

I'm lucky enough that my neighborhood is quite walk friendly.  We have sidewalks everywhere and you can even get to the local supermarket without difficulty. During the summer I walk with my daughter to the local park most evenings.

Of course, the presence of sidewalks and stop-signs doesn't always make you safe.  My daughter and I came within inches of being run down by a driver who STOPPED at the stop sign, then proceeded to accelerate right towards us.  I am at a loss as to how they could fail to see a six foot man carrying a bright blue camp chair and a little girl on a tricycle. 

I could understand if we were jaywalking or had jumped out in front of this driver, but when I had looked previously, they hadn't even gotten to the stop sign.  Absolutely crazy.

I know. I've done walking on the side of dangerous roads myself. Outside of New York City most US doesn't think about those who don't have a car. Luckily I live in a city that cares more then most.

I grew up in Minnesota, St Paul actually, and rode my bike all over the damn place!  There wasn't a single street I can think of that didn't have sidewalks on both sides.  It wasn't until I moved to Texas, Huntsville and Odessa that I came to realize this was a problem.  I was spoiled by considerate city planners growing up and now pine for their bipedal-centric views!  I'll miss you Sidewalks!  Allso:  This is a clear case of "Judge and Jury need to get out more!"  It was a messed up call on their part and I can't help think that, uh, maybe these weren't her peers after all? 

In this case and most cases of children left in hot cars, the loss of the child is punishment enough. For more on the latter, Gene Weingarten did an excellent piece for The Washington Post.