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The city did a good job on the ped summit workshops. Here are some observations:

Disabilities & Older Adults

This was the best-attended session. It was located off Frankfurt Ave.

This was also the session where Light Rail kept on popping up. If CART wants to locate a base of support for transit, it need only take a few steps out it's front door. I should have brought information about CART to the meeting - now most of those people I'll have to re-contact through nets of personal connections - if I can even remember.

During a brainstorming session, the emcee encouraged us to come up with more "crazy" ideas. I turned to Stacey Burton of KIPDA, and intoned under my breath "Hurm. I'm from CART, and we don't ever have crazy ideas." That got a chuckle.

These people are really committed and serious about what they want.

Safe Routes to School

Safe Routes to School, for those of you that don't know, is primarily the name of a federal -> state aid program, which funds capital improvements to pedestrian infrastructure around schools, with the goal of getting kids to walk to school. Nominally, there are also programmatic aspects.

Meyzeek Middle School was the destination of a walking trip. This school's neighborhood suffers more than it's fair share from crime. Though nobody said that, I think it was on a few people's minds. SRTS has a framework for addressing that issue, but it wasn't what we chose to dwell on that day. I like to think that for each Mayzeek, there are three other schools where crime is of no concern, and crossing big streets is the main issue.

I'm sad I didn't get to stay for the interactive bit of the session.

Jackie showed up and informed the attendees that crimes by drivers against pedestrians weren't prosecuted in Louisville. He advocated for creating pedestrian-right-of-way zones within three blocks of schools and parks. That seemed like a very focused demand in what was a very broad educational session, and it was an awkward fit that nobody was happy with. The audience wanted to look at all nature of improvements: Engineering, Enforcement, Education, yadda yadda.

The Junior League was out in force. I hope they take a serious role moving forward.

Building Walkable Communities

I thought this session was going to be with land developers (who I'm keen to empathize more with), but apperantly that meeting was some other place and time. That left me pretty confused on the focus of this group. The people that showed up seemed like middle class folks coming out for walkability. That's great. I wonder where they came from?

The chief balked at Mark Fenton's spur-of-the-moment idea of creating a citizen-writable mailing list of attendees. I would have loved for that to happen. What a pity!!! Mark using his charisma to get ~40 email addresses spilled with a Walkable theme, it would have been so easy to mobilize them politically. Now the city has those human connections, but there's no way for the other attendees to network. DRAT!

Recreation

I wasn't able to make it to this session.

Summary

The sessions were well organized and thoughtful. They were essentially advertisements for walkability. The result was each person in the session was encouraged to demand more walkable designs and policies, and also to be a part of the process with their own volunteerism. Good.

Now we need to be able to talk to each other!

Moving forward, it's clear I missed an opportunity here. I need to better prepare to network at the main summit, and I need to mobilize the laconic CART board to get out and do it too.