For runners, there are too many near-misses when it comes to cars

We’re looking out for you. Please look out for us.

About a week ago I was out on a run, hoping to kick it into high gear on the last mile of a 3-mile jaunt. The weather was great. I was feeling pretty good, if a bit gassed. And as I approached the exit of a corporate parking lot in downtown Tulsa, I saw it: a commuter pulling up to the street, looking to make a turn.

I locked my eyes on her because I know how this goes down. She’s looking for cars on the street to see if it’s clear to turn. She’s not looking for me. And sure enough, she pulled right up into the street and stopped when she saw traffic, then finally noticed my movement close to her passenger side fender. She sheepishly looked my way with an apologetic smile, then turned into the street.

I know the law gives me the right-of-way to keep going, but I’ve played this game long enough to know otherwise. I stopped just short of her car because otherwise she would have driven right into me. Even in a pedestrian-dense place like downtown, people’s habits are trained to see my streets – any streets, for that matter – like they were driving in the ‘burbs. They’re only looking for other cars. Runners are an afterthought.

That’s why I’m cautious at intersections. Maybe overly so. But I don’t want to end up on someone’s hood, or under an F-150. Might makes right in any auto-pedestrian collision, law be damned. It’s just the way it is.

***

I got to thinking about this latest near-miss (there have been a few) because of some news in my state. It hit me pretty hard.

On Feb. 3, a driver speeding along a thoroughfare in the city of Moore, an Oklahoma City suburb, slammed into a group of high school cross-country runners. One runner was killed outright. Another died soon after. And just this past week, a third victim succumbed to his injuries. All involved were where they were supposed to be, running on the sidewalk.

Three promising, young lives, all cut short. Three grieving families who must be ripped to pieces right now. Three more runners whose lives came to an end through no fault of their own.

The circumstances surrounding this tragedy are different than what I’ve experienced in that the driver was drunk. But at the same time, the incident underscores just how vulnerable runners – any pedestrians, really – are when they’re navigating our communities on foot and in proximity to automobile traffic.

If you live in a rural area or a suburb that’s light on regulations concerning sidewalks, it’s hit-or-miss when it comes to safe places to run. Even when sidewalks are present, you’re still not safe.

We’re told to run against the flow of traffic so we can see what’s coming. To wear bright, reflective clothing. Maybe even headlamps and flashing lights attached to safety vests, just so we can be more visible. To cross at intersections, and only when the walk/don’t walk light gives us the OK. But even then we’re all one distraction away from a driver leaving their lane or breezing through a stop light… and right into us.

I don’t want to break my leg or crack open my skull when I’m on a run. I’m a solid 190 pounds, but that’s nothing compared to the 5,000 pounds of steel and glass a lot of you choose as your ride. And that’s why I’ll stop cold if I feel a driver isn’t paying attention.

***

So here’s the rub: I don’t know what the solution is. There are park trails I could go to that are sufficiently separated from the streets as to be practically immune to auto-pedestrian collisions. But if sidewalks aren’t meant for people to, you know, walk on, then what’s the point?

I guess all I can do is lend a voice to it. Paying attention to the road also means paying attention to what’s near the road. When you’re at an intersection, it means looking for people who might be crossing. It means not being in a rush just because someone isn’t moving through as quickly as you’d like. It means looking both ways at traffic – street traffic as well as sidewalk traffic. And if you’re driving in an area with a lot of pedestrians, it means slowing down and paying even more attention to your surroundings.

The car culture in this country runs deep. It’s entrenched to the point where cities, despite their best efforts, are ruled by how to make auto traffic flow smoothly. Anything on foot is mostly an afterthought. But a change in mindset is needed. Cities are only growing and becoming more dense, and with the cost of driving only rising, you can bet more people are looking to live and work in places where they don’t have to drive if they so choose.

In other words, when you’re behind the wheel you need to put those of us on foot on your visual checklist before hitting the gas. We’ll try to be safe, but you must do your part, too. A dent in your front fender could be all she wrote for us.

Bob Doucette

Seen on the run: I’ve run my city’s streets for eight years, and the change has been dramatic

I run here.

When I first moved to Tulsa, I used running not only as a way to get in shape, but to get to know the part of the city I lived in. Since I live downtown, that had me running in urban environments, and the mix of residential and industrial areas that exist on the fringes of the city’s core.

At this point, we’re talking nearly eight years ago. Back then, the downtown was what you’d expect: high-rise offices towers, stony buildings built for government business, and a mix of people that included buttoned-down professionals, trendy hipsters and transients.

Change was underway elsewhere. On the north side of downtown was an old warehouse district. It was in the midst of what would be a major transformation. You could see its beginnings – a baseball park, some restaurants, a few clubs and some coffee shops. Mixed in were plenty of those old warehouses, industrial sites and, on the west side, the county jail, the sheriff’s office, a bunch of bail bondsmen’s offices and social service organizations aimed at helping the down-and-out crowd that seem to flock in most cities’ urban centers.

I liked the mix. The new and the old coexisting, sometimes awkwardly, but moving ahead just the same. I’d see signs of new money flowing in, and in the shadows of their enterprises, the lonely desperation of those being left behind. Why did I like this? Because it was unsanitized, a daily reminder that the optimism so many of privilege enjoy is not shared, and that’s something to which we need to pay attention. In the cleaned-up boundaries of the suburb, all you see is the edifice of prosperity. No one really know what’s going on in all those cookie-cutter homes. But on the streets where I run, everything was laid out plainly: People dressed to the nines for a night on the town, stepping around some homeless dude who drank too much, sleeping it off on a corner next to a puddle of puke.

I’ve never felt uncomfortable running in these areas, never felt unsafe. But always engaged. This was raw, unvarnished reality.

Home of what used to be the Downtown Lounge, next door to a tattoo parlor. They’re both gone now, replaced by a craft brewery.

Of course, not all of the contrasts were so drastic or dire. There was this one block I particularly enjoyed, wedged between those tony restaurants on one side and the jail on another. An old two-story brick building housed a dive bar, a tattoo shop, some garage slips and what I assumed to be an apartment. It was a stubborn place, resisting gentrification on one side while trying to make a buck in its own gritty way. I’d zip by this block before turning south and going up and over a bridge back to my gym and a locker room shower.

Well, things have changed. An empty lot is now a small park that is home to food trucks and free concerts. New museums and art centers have sprung up. Apartment buildings were built. More restaurants, more bars, more places to spend your money and have a good time. It’s flourishing.

And that gritty old block? All the old businesses there are gone, the building gutted and transformed into brewery and taproom with an outdoor deck on the roof. As you can imagine, the clientele at the taproom is different than that of the dive bar and the tattoo parlor. It looks nice, and at some point I’ll probably pop in for a beer. But I wish I’d have bought a drink at that dive bar, and maybe even gotten some ink at the neighboring shop.

This is how part of my mid-week route used to look. A lot has changed over the years, as many apartment blocks and homes have been fixed up.

The neighborhoods surrounding downtown have changed, too. It’s part gentrification, part urban renewal, and part inevitable evolution of the city. One of my go-to runs goes east of downtown toward the University of Tulsa. Years ago, this meant going through some neighborhoods that were, generously put, dodgy. Many of the houses and apartments of the Pearl District and the Kendall-Whittier neighborhood were abodes of last resort, often bordered by abandoned properties and more neatly kept homes of people who were stubbornly hanging on. Throw in some manufacturing sites and you have some real grit.

But both the Pearl and Kendall-Whittier are undergoing an upswing similar to what’s happening downtown. Condemned houses are being torn down and replaced with newer homes. Shitty apartment blocks are being renovated, and to be frank, they look pretty good. Derelict factories and warehouses are being reclaimed, many of them turning into, you guessed it, craft breweries and taprooms. At the rate it’s going in Tulsa, the love of the suds might be what saves much of urban America from the wrecking ball.

But every now and then, I get reminders that despite the change, there will always be something shady going on.

A few weeks back, I was running that route east of downtown, maybe half a mile from my turnaround point. A beat-up old import car was stopped in the middle of the street for no real reason, and some random dude walked up to the passenger side. An exchange through the driver’s side window occurred. Random dude then jogged out of the street and into an alley by some apartments and disappeared inside. The car drove off.

And here I am, chugging away at my mid-pack pace, thinking, “I just saw a drug deal go down.”

I’m not gonna applaud this transaction or the maladies that come with it. Having a drug house in any neighborhood makes it a more dangerous place (we had a black tar heroin dealer get busted in my neighborhood awhile back, and once that racket was broken up, the character of my streets changed for the better). But there is a trend among cities that hopes to wipe out the bad (the drug dealers and the crime that comes with them) and replace it with something cleaner and more palatable for the masses. And if you can make a buck or two in the process, so much the better. The result is often a drop in those crimes and the loss of the historic identity of distressed neighborhoods where those crimes used to occur. In a lot of ways, it’s a zero-sum game where few win and a bunch lose.

Downtown as seen from the Tulsa Arts District. The area used to be a rundown warehouse district, but is now home to a number of galleries, restaurants, pubs, music venues and a sweet little park that is home to live music and food trucks. I run here a lot, and there is usually something pretty cool to see.

So in eight years of running Tulsa’s streets, I’ve seen this transformation go down in real-time. A semi-sketchy tract of warehouses is now a vibrant arts district. A decaying section of the inner city is cleaning up, turning around and showing signs of prosperity. Less obvious but just as real is a loss of a former community identity that had seen its high and lows.

Who knows how different it will all be eight years from now. Hopefully I’ll still be running those same streets. And maybe, in some corners, not all of the grit will have been washed away. The shiny and the new get your attention. But the grit is what makes is interesting. The grit is where the history lies.

Bob Doucette

Getting priced out of the walkable life

A 1920s-era high rise, the 320 South Boston Building, reflected on a more modern glass tower. The contrast of old-style art deco and modern architecture in downtown Tulsa is beautiful.

Imagine this little scene:

You’re standing at the corner of a moderately busy street. People are all around, walking or biking to wherever it is they need to go that day, sunglasses on, phones in hand, and otherwise preoccupied while darting from one place to the next. Bike couriers zip by, carrying packages or fast-food deliveries. There are a couple of beggars roaming around, but they’re pretty harmless.

In any direction, you’re within a 10-minute walk from work, your favorite restaurants, a performing arts center and a convenience store. Also within a few hundred feet from your doorstep are destinations like your gym, neighborhood bars, pizza joints and all sorts of street-level businesses selling anything from jewelry to photocopies.

Once the work day ends,things quiet down, but life doesn’t stop entirely. Many of the buildings that once housed offices have been converted into apartments, evidence of which is seen by the mix of dog walkers mingling with kids skateboarding emptied sidewalks and lovers taking photographs by a colorfully lit fountain or a rustic brick wall.

Looming overhead are office towers: some modern, some boasting 1920s and 1930s-era Art Deco stone fixtures that are distinct to my home city.

This is my neighborhood, or it least it was. I moved here more than four years ago, taking a new job and a radically new tack toward how my daily life would look, snagging a reasonably priced apartment tucked away under the shadows of nearby high-rises.

For more than 15 years, I joined tens of millions of you who hop into metal boxes on wheels and while away hours every week to go to work, burning time and gas while fighting increasingly crowded highways and decreasingly patient fellow travelers. It was an expensive endeavor that went anywhere from 70 to 100 miles a day, depending on which job I had at the time.

In my new home, things were different. I took advantage of a new trend here in Midwest, one in which developers turned empty spaces in downtown districts into living quarters. My 90-mile-a-day driving habit turned into a two-minute walking commute.

I learned more about Tulsa when I moved downtown. You get to know your community so much better on foot than you do behind the wheel. All those places you breeze by while driving are much more vibrant when you stroll by, unencumbered by the barrier of metal, glass and rubber. Walking or running, this fit into what I hoped life would become — more active, more outdoors, more connected. I grew to love it.

And so did a lot of other people. So much so that there are 13 other downtown residential projects underway right now, with almost every existing apartment in downtown Tulsa occupied, and a year-long waiting list for some of the more sought-after addresses.

Property owners, being the savvy entrepreneurs that they are, see the potential for making profits. One area where I run by often, called East Village, has a number of apartments and townhouses going up. Those townhouses have a starting price of $875,000. We’re not talking Denver, Chicago or even Houston here. This is Tulsa, of all places.

I have a hard time believing that someone would pay that much for a house here, but I should have also realized that someone smarter than me sees something I don’t. And I should also have seen what signs like this would mean for me.

All these people seeking what I sought — a walkable neighborhood, surrounded by all the good stuff to which suburbanites have to drive — would do what I did. They’d downsize, leave the ‘burbs and head to the city’s urban heart.

I’m a middle class guy. Not rich, not poor. A few bills, but nothing big. No extravagant habits and no car payments. But like most folks, I live paycheck to paycheck while putting back a a few dollars here and there. Saving some money on driving far less (I drive maybe once or twice a week) was one of the appeals to living here, mostly because I used to drop $250 or more on fuel every month. There were added costs — monthly parking fees, for example — but for awhile, it was a wash. Having 90 minutes of my life back was worth it.

But then it happened. And by it, I mean capitalism. Supply and demand. More people wanted to live here than could be housed. You know how this story ends.

In this case, it concludes with rent hikes (four in a year) and increased parking fees, as well as a few other ways that we all get nickel-and-dimed to death. With half a month’s salary disappearing into that cozy 650-square-foot pad on the 10th floor, it was time to go.

I won’t lie, it was sad. I came downtown to live in a place that had been, residentially speaking, forsaken for decades. White flight and the boom of the suburbs had robbed downtown areas across the country of people, and reclaiming that became a trendy, and in my mind, positive thing to do. A lot of us loved the idea of fleeing the sameness of the suburbs and opting out of the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses lifestyle that permeates the white-picket world. We wanted to own less stuff and live a little more. Walk more, and burn fewer dinosaur bones.

I should have known a lot of us would eventually get priced out. It would be a wicked irony if people like me, hoping to save a buck by being able to walk to work, would get beaten back into suburbia by high rents and an arsenal of other rising costs.

Fortunately, the new home is about a mile from the job. I could walk it if I chose, or bike it. So I won’t get sucked into the suburban maw just yet.

But I hope that the dream of living in a walkable community here in the heartland isn’t dead for people like me. I don’t begrudge the well-heeled for wanting to live where I lived. It’s a healthy, interesting an engaging way to do life. But if that life is reserved for the higher levels of the middle class and up, it would certainly feel like a loss.

Bob Doucette

Why cities need urban wild spaces

It’s been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. A bit cliché, I know. But the funny thing about clichés is they are often based in fact.

So take a look at the photo below…

What you’re seeing here are a couple of things. At first glance, it looks like rolling, wooded countryside on a warm, bright spring day. You’d be right in concluding that.

But it’s also something else. It’s a snapshot of land inside the boundaries of a mid-sized city smack in the heart of Middle America. Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness is a slice of forested acreage, complete with dirt trails that’s 7 miles away from downtown Tulsa. In an area of town that is ripe for housing and commercial development, leaders in the public and private sectors of this city had the foresight to set aside this place for something else.

And man, I’m glad they did.

I can remember having a discussion about the concept of “urban wilderness” with another person who admitted she got a bit of a giggle out of that phrase. I can understand that. It’s not really possible to have a “wilderness” in the middle of a metro area of a million people.

But you can have a wild place, and it’s important for communities to recognize that.

Most towns and cities already have parks filled with ballfields, playgrounds, jogging paths and pavilions for picnics. Those are great, but they aren’t wild. They’re as man-made as an office park.

Similarly, most cities of any size have entertainment districts, theaters and shopping malls. They’ll also have their fair share of fitness centers — big-box gyms, Crossfit “boxes,” YMCAs and martial arts studios. All places that you can get a workout in.

But all these places share something in common — they’re all very much part of the decidedly unnatural environment of a city. There’s nothing wrong with that, except that they offer no escape from urban and suburban environments.

There are a lot of reasons why people start exercise programs, see some success, but ultimately end up quitting. Some of that could be injuries. Or life circumstances. But I think A lot of people quit because they get bored.

Think of it. How many months do you think you could stand of running on a treadmill, staring at a TV screen before it became a chore? How many laps around the neighborhood can you go on your bike or on foot before the sameness of a subdivision gets on your nerves? How many sets of 8 to 12 reps of the same exercise three times a week will you do before you just choose not to walk into the gym?

All of these things are fine, but sometimes you need escape — a place to go that does not look, sound or smell like what you see every day. You need somewhere you can move and grab some solitude without fear of getting hit by a car or getting hit on by some d-bag.

You might also need a place to challenge you. Big, steep hills. Difficult terrain.

That’s the beauty of urban wild spaces. For an hour or five, you can get away. Have a mini adventure. See some wildlife. Throw down on a leg-blasting, lung-busting workout and get a little fresh air and sunshine in the process. Or just take a walk on a lonely path and absorb a little quiet.

I’ve been a gym rat for years, but I’ve long needed balance — something outside the gym. I’ve embraced running, going from a slow 5K guy to a marathoner in a span of less than three years, but I can promise you that without my local trails, I probably would not have gotten that far.

Besides, nature is just awesome. Anyone can go outside, and I think you should. But going outside in a wilder setting trumps everything else. People need a connection to nature, especially those of us living in places that are completely manufactured.

I’ve lived in a lot of cities, and surprisingly few have wild places set aside. If your city has one, use it. Promote it. Protect it.

If your city does not have one, see what you can do to encourage the establishment and preservation of open spaces.

So take another look at that picture. What does it say to you? What it says to me is that if you find some land and just leave it alone, you’ll find a whole new crowd of people who will use it — hikers, cyclists, runners, horseback enthusiasts and more. It’s a lesson on finding new and better ways to get people moving at a time when our country desperately needs to get up and move more.

Not every square inch of a city has to be developed. Lord knows, we’ve got enough subdivisions, malls and movie theaters. Golf courses aplenty. Maybe it’s the anti-“Field of Dreams” philosophy — if you don’t build it, people will come.

Bob Doucette

How your community is probably killing you

Safe, quiet, peaceful — and slowly contributing to your early demise.

One thing that concerns me today is how much people move these days. Or should I say, how little people move.

I love the stories of friends I know who have broken loose from sedentary lifestyles and found not only healthy living, but a sense of empowerment and a bigger world available to them.

The father of three who dropped 50 pounds and got his hypertension in check.

The woman, beaten down by a lot of what life has thrown at her, doing her first 5K. Which turned into a 10K. A half marathon. And then the full 26.2.

A woman who tried on her kid’s discarded hiking boots, hiked to the top of Pikes Peak and developed a habit that, 60 pounds later, has turned her into a lean, mean hiking machine.

But I know for each of these stories, there are scores of others in which people do not succeed in getting healthy. Surrounding them are forces that conspire to keep them inactive, eating junk and sleeping erratically. Awaiting them are obesity, hypertension, heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes and premature degradation of their musculo-skeletal system.

Call it death by underuse.

There are a lot of factors in this. Admittedly, some people choose to slowly kill themselves via lifestyle choices. But in other instances, things are done to us that work us into an oddly stressful state of physical inactivity.

One of those things: Our cities.

More than 80 percent of the U.S. population lives in urban areas. Different historical and socio-economic factors have determined how these communities are designed and grow. What is mostly true, especially in the Midwest and West, is that our cities are compartmentalized in ways that inhibit the free flow of people moving in things other than our cars. Let’s take a tour so you can see what I mean.

Here is where we work.

Here is where we shop.

Here is where we entertain ourselves.

And this is where we live.

And this is how we get to all these places, which are often disconnected from each other, sometimes at distances of 10, 20, or even 50 miles or more.

For a lot of us, that means sitting in a car for anywhere from 10 to 90 minutes a day to get to and from work; 8 to 12 hours a day sitting at work; 10 to 30 minutes each way to go shopping; 10 to 60 minutes going somewhere to sit and eat, then jump back in the car to sit and watch a two-hour show; and when it’s all done and over with, plop down at home in front of the TV and spend the last waking moments of our day sitting.

By the way, sitting a lot is not good for you.

A lot of us, in an attempt to escape these confines, buy a house on land in the country, with the thought of being able to relax in peace and quiet, in nature, and away from the stresses of battling city congestion. The reality is that it usually just increases our drive times, because a home in the exburbs or out in the country is just another compartment of a life filled with disconnected compartments in which navigating the to-and-from requires more time on your butt, driving.

This is the reality of modern, zoned development. Want an ice cream cone? Get in your car and drive. Need to pick up some groceries? Get a bite to eat? Meet someone for a brew or two? Drive time is involved. And on Sundays, a lot of us pile the family into the car (big SUV?) and drive a good ways to church, sometimes to buildings that resemble malls, complete with sprawling parking lots to handle all those wheeled metal boxes toting the faithful to their respective houses of worship.

Notice I haven’t even mentioned things like going to the gym for a lift or heading somewhere to go run run or ride your bike. Most times, you’ve got to drive to those places, too, because neighborhood fitness centers have been replaced by big gyms in strip malls and shopping districts, many neighborhoods aren’t pedestrian-friendly and most parks aren’t designed for much else outside of playgrounds or your kids’ baseball/softball/soccer games in mind.

Now picture instead a community that grows more organically, a place where you work, shop and play is all mixed together, with most everything within walking distance. Imagine being able to walk out your door, stroll a few blocks and be at the doorstep of your favorite restaurant or pub. Your gym is three doors down. Your office is 10 minutes on foot, or 5 minutes by bike. Your community is a place with quick access to walkable, runnable, bike-able paths where you can get a good sweat. Green spaces are designed for everyone in mind, regardless of age.

If you lived in that kind of a community, you’d not only save a ton of money on gas, but you’d move your body a lot more. Our bodies are designed to move, not sit. Chances are, you’d also be a lot more connected to your community, as being in its midst on foot tends to feel a lot different than being inside your car – itself a tiny compartment of life, complete with its own climate, entertainment and communications.

Our communities are already built, so it’s not like we’re going to tear them down and rebuild them into some pedestrian utopia. But I have to wonder what, if any, steps community leaders will be taking in the future to help their cities and towns evolve into something healthier for their people.

We need to move more. We need to feel more physical connection to the places where we live, something beyond being the place where we mow a yard once a week and go to sleep at night. I can’t blame people for wanting to live in affordable homes, places with good schools and communities that are safe, peaceful and quiet. I just wish more of them were places that weren’t making us sicker.

It’s something to think about. Maybe if you agree, you can demand better. And if not, maybe it’s a good time to re-examine where we live, and find somewhere that might help you live longer – and live better.

Bob Doucette

On Twitter @RMHigh7088