Steps Milestone

By Drew Hanson

Last spring, I decided to up my pedestrian game. I set a goal of getting a minimum of 10,000 steps each day. I missed a day here and there for the first few months but not again since July 5th. That means I have been able to get over 10k steps for 187 consecutive days—every day for over six months. That’s not an average. It’s a minimum that equates to at least four miles per day.

My neighborhood rail-trail

Some days I drive to a trailhead for a hike. Some days I add a walk to a driving errand. Other days my work in outdoor recreation gets me steps. About half of days, though, my steps come from within my home neighborhood. Having a rail-trail nearby is helpful and is one of the reasons I chose our house.

In spite of WalkScore.com’s surprisingly low walk score of 45 for my home, in various directions within a comfortable 0.7 mile walk of my home are a grade school, middle school, hardware store, public library, parks, playgrounds, and a few restaurants. My family and I frequently walk to these and other destinations. (I first wrote about walk scores in 2014 in Move Reveals Walk Score Flaws.)

Attaining at least #10kStepsPerDay satisfies something I was seeking for a decade. I wrote about it in 2012 in A Daily Walk. Goal accomplished!

The #10kStepsPerDay routine has me feeling more energized, more positive, and I lost a few pounds. Give it a try and follow #10kStepsPerDay.

How long can I can keep this streak going?

Move Reveals Walk Score Flaws

by Drew Hanson

We moved recently. The new house provides us a higher quantity and quality of nearby walks. But walkscore.com rates it 32 points less walkable than our former home. That’s not right.

A couple years ago an article appeared here which bemoaned a decrease in daily walks. Posted at http://pedestrianview.blogspot.com/2012/04/walk-each-day.html, it ended with the goal of a life with walking recast in a central role. We now have that. But in the process of finding our new home, flaws in the “walk score” used by many real estate web sites were uncovered.

According to Walk Score’s website, “Walk Score measures walkability on a scale from 0 - 100 based on walking routes to destinations such as grocery stores, schools, parks, restaurants, and retail.” The web tool “measures the walkability of any address using a patented system. For each address, Walk Score analyzes hundreds of walking routes to nearby amenities. Points are awarded based on the distance to amenities in each category. Amenities within a 5 minute walk (.25 miles) are given maximum points. A decay function is used to give points to more distant amenities, with no points given after a 30 minute walk. Walk Score also measures pedestrian friendliness by analyzing population density and road metrics such as block length and intersection density. Data sources include Google, Education.com, Open Street Map, the U.S. Census, Localeze, and places added by the Walk Score user community.”

Sounds good. So how could my old address receive a walk score of 77, or “very walkable”, while my new address scores only 45?

My old address was on a busy, commuter street through a traditional neighborhood with houses close to each other and the street. Weekday traffic counts averaged over 10,000 cars per day. Its two lanes of traffic were narrow and book-ended by on-street parking on both sides. Traffic tended to include a fair number of aggressive drivers who sometimes unsafely passed slower or turning traffic on the right or left. Getting in and out of a car’s driver’s side while it was parked on-street was scary thanks to unruly drivers—especially when trying to get a child in or out of a car seat.

Because of the preponderance of disrespectful, unsafe and unlawful driving habits on our former street, about half of bicyclists rode on the sidewalk instead of in the street which further diminished its walkability. There were four automobile-related deaths on the street within three blocks of the former house in the past ten years. For these and other safety reasons, we rarely let our children play in the front yard or walk unchaperoned to neighbors’.

From the former house, walking our kids the half-mile to elementary school involved crossing our own busy street plus a street that carried 14,000 cars per weekday. There were no signalized crossings of our street and drivers rarely stopped for pedestrians entering a crosswalk.

Our new home is in a less densely populated neighborhood even though houses on our block are as close or closer together as they were at our previous address. Fewer than 1500 cars pass our new home on an average weekday. Our children are now free to play in the front yard and walk alone to neighbors’ as far as five houses away.

Whereas a walk to the library from the former house took 3 minutes, it now takes 20. Whereas a walk to the pharmacy from the former house took 4 minutes, it now takes 24. Within 5 minutes of the former house were two restaurants we liked and within 20 minutes were several more. We have to walk 12 minutes from the current home to arrive at a restaurant we like, 24 minutes to a second one we like and more than 30 minutes for any others.

For a hardware store, however, it is a 13 minute walk from the new house. A walk to a hardware store from the former house was more than 30 minutes. The former house was closer to most commercial amenities but the walk to many of them meant the unpleasant hassle of crossing and/or walking along our street.

Walking our children to school is where things get more interesting. Like the walk to their former school, the new one is about a half-mile away. But instead of crossing a street with 10,000 cars/day with aggressive drivers who rarely yield to pedestrians and a second busy street with 14,000 cars/day, we now have to cross a boulevard with 22,000 cars/day. This would be six in one, a half-dozen in the other were it not for the fact that drivers on the boulevard very often yield the right-of-way to pedestrians in a non-signalized crosswalk. Accounting for such driving habits is missed by Walk Score.

The most significant difference in walks between old and new is the presence of more nature near our new address. There are more and larger parks, trails and native trees. Our former street terrace was dominated by less interesting young-to-mid-aged locust and ash trees while our new street and neighborhood have many inspiring mature oak and maple. Our former address had parks nearby but they were mostly small or with more developed areas like baseball fields. Our new address is near a large nature park and a walking/biking commuter greenway that are both great for walking. As discussed at sites like http://wellnessiis.com/2011/05/30/forestbathing/ and http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/27/easing-brain-fatigue-with-a-walk-in-the-park/?_r=0, walks in nature are good for our physical and mental health. An accurate walk score would account for these factors.

In general, Walk Score apparently omits several positive and negative attributes of good walking. The score seems to be based overwhelmingly on simple distance measurements.

Walking/Biking Path and Greenway Behind Our New Home

As an aside, walkscore.com also provides bike scores. But this rating can be inaccurate too. Riding a bike on our former street was unpleasant at best. Amazingly our former address received a bike score of 99 for “biker’s paradise”. That’s just wrong. By comparison, our new street is nice for biking and our backyard is along a walking/biking path that extends for tens of miles in each direction including to the downtown of our city of a quarter-million residents. Our new address garners a probably accurate bike score of 89.

Walk Score may know something about New Urbanism. But people who know walking know there is more to walkability than proximity. For families with young children shopping for a different home or anyone attuned to walk quality, beware of potentially misleading Walk Score (and Bike Score) numbers.

From Bowling Pins to Land Conservation

by Drew Hanson

As a boy, I heard a story about a maple woods that was in the family long ago. The woods were handed down from one generation to the next until all the grandest old trees were cut down. The story ended with how the maple trees were turned into, of all things, bowling pins.

The story stuck with me and in my mind the woods slowly took on an enchanting quality.

I grew up in rural Marinette County, where my dad’s family has been since the Meyers arrived during the Civil War. Some of them survived the Great Peshtigo Fire of 1871. The land where my parents built the home where I grew up was part of another family line—farmsteaded by my great-great grandparents, the Kellers. Other family lines, like the Jaegers and Hansens, had farmsteads nearby.

Going through the Marinette public schools, quite a few other kids were what my grandparents called shirt-tail relation. So when I left college at UW-Marinette to attend UW-Madison, I joked that I needed to leave town so I wouldn’t accidentally marry a cousin.

Years later I was searching microfiche for old family stories in newspapers at the State Historical Society Library in Madison. There I found a story from 1896 of my great-great grandfather Jaeger who was delivering milk when the horse pulling the wagon lost all composure at a railroad crossing. Jaeger was thrown to the ground, the wagon badly damaged and the horse injured so that it was shot on the spot. Not the sort of thing you see today, eh?!

More satisfying, though, were the small news items that mentioned the place Hansen Maple Grove or just Hansen Grove. It was noted as a meeting place for church and school groups to gather for picnics and as the residence in the obituaries for some family members. This was the maple woods of my family lore and judging from the stories, it was a place that must have held special meaning for not only my ancestors but for their neighbors too. It made me proud.

Thrilled, I soon visited. But today it is a different place—nothing enchanting or grand about it. A private home stands in the middle. As a place for family and neighbors to gather, relax and recreate, Hansen Maple Grove is gone. It is like a ghost town—only a ghost woods. It would be easy to blame the landowner for the loss of that woods but they probably had few options. We should assume they needed the money from the harvest of those big trees. They did what they needed to do and they had every right to do it.

As a place shared with the community, Hansen Maple Grove existed for about a half-century. It was a time, at least in northeast Wisconsin, before public parks and public picnic grounds. In the vastness of rural America in those days, neighbors let neighbors walk through each others’ woods.

Out of my combination of pride and sadness came a motivation to be a conservationist, to do my small part to help other places like Hansen Maple Grove be around for hundreds of years or more. In a world that is changing faster all the time, we need to be conservative about land and water by conserving special places for generations to come.

When my ancestors settled Wisconsin a century and a half ago, the state was still dominated by nature. Today it is increasingly dominated by highways, powerlines, subdivisions, mowed lawns and No Trespassing signs. Fortunately, today we have public parks and picnic areas and several options to help save other special places.

Two of the more important of these options (sometimes we think of them as tools) are conservation easements and the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program.

A conservation easement is a legal agreement between a landowner and a land trust or government agency that permanently limits uses of the land in order to protect its conservation values. It is the most traditional tool for conserving private land and offers flexibility in crafting the terms. It allows landowners to continue to own and use their land, and they can also sell it or pass it on to heirs. An easement may apply to all or a portion of the property, and need not require public access.

The Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program was created by the Wisconsin Legislature in 1989 to preserve valuable natural places and wildlife habitat, protect water quality and fisheries, and expand opportunities for outdoor recreation. It accomplishes these through the acquisition of land and easements, development of recreational facilities, and restoration of habitat.

If Hansen Maple Grove had existed during today's era of conservation easements and the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program, there is no guarantee the landowner would choose to conserve their land instead of trading it for bowling pins. But one thing is certain: these tools give landowners options.

If you are a private landowner, options are good things.

A Neighborhood Ice Rink

by Drew Hanson

Madisonians will know it as the Union Corners rink, perhaps someday anyway. That big snow that lasted a few weeks was followed by a warm week and now this flash freeze—perfect conditions for creating a shallow frozen pond. It made a delightful swath of ice for a five year old to learn to skate and then stamp around in winter boots. It's only a one block walk from our home.

For those who don’t know the 11-acre area, just a decade ago it was a Kohls grocery and old battery factory. A developer had plans to transform it into a new neighborhood that became a casualty of the recession. The city bought it a few years ago to guide its future. It is a future that would be especially nice for families with kids if it included a small ice rink. Wouldn’t that be a sweet neighborhood destination and gateway feature along East Washington Ave/Highway 151?

A Daily Walk

For fifteen years, I walked, biked or bused to and from work every day. For ten of those years it was a two mile commute. On weekends and vacations, I usually hiked. I was fit.

For the past two years, I have been driving my daughter across the city to a great Waldorf school--a commute that takes 20-30 minutes (longer if we have fresh snow). I want the best for my daughter and I love her school, but the commute is taking a toll on me. My days include too much sitting and breathing the exhaust of the car(s) in front of me. I am not fit and I long for more outdoor exercise that is part of each day.

There was a great story on NPR yesterday that really struck a chord. I especially liked the parts, "We've engineered walking out of our existence and everyday life" and "I've walked myself into my best thoughts". Read or listen to the article here.

A related realm the NPR article did not explore is how Americans also spend too much of their free time being sedentary. Ray Zillmer foresaw this problem more than fifty years ago. On March 2, 1956 Zillmer wrote, "The free time, which people have and which is increasing, should be used in a constructive way, ... so that they will use their body instead of watching other people use theirs." A few years later he left these prophetic words in his will: "I believe that there is a great danger that the physical condition of our people will gradually deteriorate because of the increased use of ingenious labor saving devices."

My daughter will be of kindergarten age this autumn. As I evaluate various school options for her and try to create a plan for our next decade-plus, I hope to design a life for us that includes daily walking and other physical activities in the outdoors. I think we will be happier and healthier. Someday I'll write about it to tell you how it's going.