brewcrew1000 wrote:I feel like Midtown is very safe in terms of walking, I walk my dog at midnight a lot without any issues at all.
I think the thing I think that hurts midtown walkability are the Major North/South Roads cutting thru it. At almost any stretch of them they act as basically a freeway, SW Trafficway is the worst of the 4 and its unwalkable from start to finish, Main Street is not great for many stretches, Broadway (Unwalkable in Penn Valley Park) and Troost are probably most walked and have the most potential but they are not ideal.
I feel like once you are entering Brookside, everything has a very calming traffic effect and it makes it very walkable and you really only have 1 major N/S and one Major E/W but they are a joke compared to what you have to deal with in Midtown, I would feel 100 times more comfortable walking right on Brookside Blvd vs Main Street from 31st to 45th. The funny thing is that Wornall feels unwalkable/freeway-like after 75th.
I think we need to put Focus on not making midtown basically a Thruway/Expressway for Plaza/Waldo/Brookside/Golden Triangle folks. It would be nice to cut Main Street down to 2 lanes and make that a bike only lane or SW Trafficway down to 2 lanes. Once we get road diets, Midtown is super walkable, i just don't know if it will happen.
100% on this. Midtown is walk able as long as you stick to your North - South section, once you have to cross it becomes very unfriendly.
On the plus side, I've heard that the city is making 31st to 39th, Gillham to Broadway (essentially, OHP) a major priority to getting walkability improvements made before the streetcar comes through. There's some very very very early work being done on a walkability study that would point to the major areas of improvements.
