A tale of two desire paths on Reservoir Street
One for students got paved. One for working class residents remains steep and treacherous.
In this week’s edition of the Citizen’s Friendly City series of reflections on walking in Harrisonburg, my friend and author Sofia Samatar writes about two very different desire paths near the shopping center intersection on Reservoir Street. Desire paths are those well-travelled bare strips in the grass where there is no official paved path, but people walk there anyway — out of necessity or convenience (or both). Samatar writes:
Here on Reservoir Street, observing the two sides of this bustling four-lane road between the shopping plaza and the university, we can see the two responses planners generally take to desire paths. Sometimes the responsible authorities listen to desire. They pave the insistent, unforeseen paths that spring up from the texture of daily life, recognizing them as an expression of the wisdom of the crowd. This is what’s happened between the shopping plaza and the university, where students carved a line down the hill to the crosswalk, repeatedly tramping toward the cheap goods at Walmart and the big lot where they park their cars, avoiding the high campus fees. Their track was paved, made safe and easy to walk. But on the other side, the one that gives on a community of townhomes and apartments, we can see the alternate response. Here, desire is ignored. The sidewalk that crosses the overpass abruptly ends. A railing blocks the way.
Reservoir Street near the Harrisonburg Crossing shopping center is a stroad: a suburban arterial not walkable enough to be a street, and not efficient enough to be a road. The crosswalk from the shopping center to JMU campus looked like this several years ago: an unofficial dirt desire path from Walmart to East Campus.
Here’s a clearer satellite image of the old dirt path from Google Earth. Some people may be walking from the bus stop in the middle of the shopping center parking lot, but it’s no secret that some students park in the Walmart parking lot and walk to campus to avoid paying parking fees.
JMU responded to the clear demand by paving the path. Here’s what it looks like today:
This is good urbanism in practice: observe how people are using a space, and adapt the rules and infrastructure to serve the evolving uses. Instead of putting up a fence to block foot traffic, the university paved it to provide a safe and accessible route for people walking or using mobility devices.
On the city side of Reservoir, however, there is another desire path that has been used for decades by working class residents of townhouses and apartments on the east side of Reservoir between 81 and MLK (e.g. Holly Court and Dutch Mill Court).
You can’t see it from inside your car on Reservoir Street, but there is a well-worn desire path to Walmart down a steep embankment, after the sidewalk abruptly ends and the guardrail guides pedestrians into oncoming traffic. This is inaccessible for anyone in a wheelchair.
There is a sidewalk on the west side of Reservoir, but as Samatar points out, the only “safe” way to get there from the residences on the east side “adds about twenty minutes to the walk … Instead of twenty minutes to go to the store and back, they will have to set aside one hour. For half that time, they will have to carry their laden shopping bags.”
This is what car-centric planning looks like: assuming everyone will be driving a car. Anyone who isn’t a driver or a passenger is an afterthought. Judging from how worn the desire path to Walmart is, many people do not arrive inside an automobile.
How did this happen? The shopping center site was rezoned in 2001, after the Dunham-Bush HVAC manufacturing plant closed. Harrisonburg had just built a new municipal golf course, and was preparing to build a new high school. Initially delayed because of market uncertainty following the attacks on 9/11, the Dunham-Bush site was ultimately granted permission from the city to become a shopping center.
According to the minutes, there were apparently no proffers to build a sidewalk along the eastern side of Reservoir St. City council agreed to enter a master development agreement with developer AIG Baker in which the city promised to repay off-site road “improvement” costs of up to $1.8 million. The money was anticipated to come from additional tax revenues generated by the shopping center. Strong Towns founder Charles Marhon has criticized what passes for “improvements,” but I’ll save that for another post.
Pedestrian infrastructure at this site is something I’ve been advocating for for many years. Pedestrian improvements along that section have been approved and funded, but it will take another several years before it actually gets built — almost three decades after the shopping center rezoning was originally approved. A parent that walked with their young child to Walmart down that desire path may very well be a grandparent by the time any suitable pedestrian infrastructure is accessible near that overpass.
I’m hopeful the city can be more thoughtful than simply installing a sidewalk from the overpass to the intersection, making pedestrians walk all the way around the corner of a large parking lot. We should learn from the “wisdom of the crowd” and try to find a way to allow people to take a safer, accessible, and improved version of the route they’re already taking. The placement of the guardrail will also be important. Show me which side of the sidewalk a city places a guardrail, and I’ll tell you if they value the safety of people walking.
Sure it would be nicer if concrete or paved but people have walked dirt trails since the beginning of mankind.