Are Bricks Really a Hazard?
The Current newspapers are built to channel gripes. The paper's reporters blitz ANC meetings, zoning hearings, and council sessions, the better to fill each Wednesday's edition with the latest on the NIMBY front. If there's a liquor-license spat, a row over dog poop, or someone bitching about traffic flows, the Current is on it, provided that it occurs within its reportorial jurisdiction (essentially, wealthy Northwest).
But the latest edition is stretches the formula a bit, with an extensive report on the dangers of brick sidewalks. Titled "Bricks bring worries for some pedestrians," the piece inventories various concerns from activists about brick's unevenness and the potential for treacherous sidewalk conditions. Here's one: "'As much as I like the look of brick sidewalks...they cause a lot of wear and tear on a scooter,' said Laurie Coburn, a Dupont Circle disabilities advocate who uses a motorized scooter to get around."
Not to dis the disabled, but if this is as bad as the case gets against brick, I'm not switching allegiances. Brick sidewalks are one of the greatest ever streetscape accomplishments of the District government. And sure, there've been detractors, like former Washington Post reporter Vernon Loeb, who in the late '90s wrote a nasty piece slamming the city for putting in brick sidewalks and nice curbs on a then-desolate stretch of Massachusetts Avenue east of the NPR building. Well, look at that real estate now: It's a booming part of the city, and I'd like to think that the city's foresight in installing the nice sidewalks had something to do with it.
There's no gray in this picture whatsoever: DDOT does fabulous work in installing brick sidewalks in all kinds of neighborhoods. The real wonder is how well it's all done. Sure, there may be a place or two where the brick is uneven or a touch dicey, but by and large it's solid as a rock. I wish the brick in my entryway were as well laid.
2:19 pm
Dude, you didn't mention the granite curbs and their dangerously sharp edges.
2:29 pm
Those are hell on cheap hubcaps.
4:02 pm
These are the same people who think Comet Ping Pong's outdoor table is a menace to public safety.
Let them have their little tea-time discussions about the relative merits of under-ten-pound dog breeds. Their taxes are paying for all the public transportation and police services the rest of us use, so just humor them and keep the gravy train comin'.
10:49 pm
Well, bricks do have a lower coefficient of friction than typical concrete- especially when they're wet. That makes them a greater slip hazard for people *and* cyclists.
But I like them, too. A tree root will will make a greater hazard pushing a 3'x3' concrete slab into the air, 'cause the gap will be sharper, than it will make if the surface is brick. And the bricks blend better with the dominant housing material choice in old neighborhoods, too. Therefor brick sidewalks help create a more integrated appearance to the street in those environments.
11:41 pm
I think they look ridiculous. They seem to represent a city that has its funding priorities out of whack. A district with failing public schools and no universal healthcare seems to think that granite curbs and brick sidewalks will make people not notice that the city is built on lies and corruption. They are an embarrassment and a complete hazard. They are not at all ADA compliant. They are difficult for people with canes and are tend to pop up in weird places and make it difficult for others. There are wonderful amazing world-class cities out there that wouldn't even THINK of putting in brick sidewalks because its so ridiculously over the top. It's like dubs on pinto. Let's use concrete and asphalt like the rest of the free world and get our priorities in order first. And if you want to clean up the streetscape -- how about burying the miles and miles of above ground power lines that disgrace the city. Undergrounding of utilities has been going on since the mid-19th century. It would be nice if we get beyond some faux 17th century version of ourselves and at least move into the 19th century -- eh?
2:09 pm
"how about burying the miles and miles of above ground power lines that disgrace the city"
All of the above ground lines I know of are either phone or cable. They look trashy, true, but none of them are power lines. It may be different in outlying neighborhoods.
10:04 am
I'm surprised DC1974 didn't know that all power lines are legally required to be buried in the district.
Throwing more money away on the permanently failed schools and increasing the government's share of healthcare beyond 55+ percent, destroying what's left of the market, don't seem to be good ways to spend DC's money.
It is a bad idea to tell DC to quit spending money on the things that work, or that it can do acceptably, and instead throw more money on the failures.
I don't want DC to be Copenhagen, London, Stockholm, etc., I want it to be DC. DC needs to build on what makes it distinctive, not abandon it. Read Richard Layman sometime about what makes cities successful--it's building on what makes urbanity different, and an individual city. If you don't like the atmospherics of DC, you are never going to be comfortable, any more than I would be in Santa Fe. I hate Southwestern.
I could appreciate a simple concern about the cost, or even issues for the disabled, but we need to invent a fallacy to describe whenever someone in DC says something shouldn't be done because "the schools are crumbling".
11:24 am
Very interesting post you wrote. Glad I have stumbled upon it. Cheers!