Black Friday ... on foot

I find sitting in holiday shopping traffic about as appealing as fingernails on a blackboard, which is why I decided to try a bit of local Black Friday shopping as a pedestrian. Instead of driving over to Kohl's, across from Shoppers World and all its traffic, I left my car at Stop & Shop and walked.

How did it go? Thanks to the pedestrian path alongside of Lowe's (back to back with Stop & Shop), the walk from my car to Rte. 30 was actually pleasant. Thumbs up to the new sidewalk that's actually designed to make walking attractive as well as safe -- as opposed to the ludicrous yellow stripes painted on the busy street that was supposed to pass for pedestrian access between BJs and Target across the way.

Crossing Rte. 30 is always a dicey proposition, and trying to cross an intersection on foot with 5+ lanes of traffic and no pedestrian-friendly separator is even more so. However, at least there are clearly painted crosswalks (although I'd prefer something like the brick crossing at Elm Street & Potter Road), as well as traffic signals that stop traffic all ways.

It's still a bit scary crossing Rte. 30 on foot, even with the light, since most drivers don't expect pedestrians at that intersection; if they're looking to make a right on red, they may be checking for oncoming vehicles to their left and not walkers to their right. Plus, you've got to use a pretty brisk pace to make it across the multiple lanes of traffic in the short amount of time you're given to cross a rather wide multi-lane road.

However, it all worked out fine. It only took me 7 or so minutes each way -- really not much longer than driving through traffic-choked roadways. And much to my surprise, I saw other people out walking between Target, Shoppers World and/or Kohl's, despite the light rain. I'm not the only one who's discovered that even in an area not well designed for pedestrians, it can be less hassle to walk from place to place than take your auto.

Bonus: When I got back to my car, I was well positioned to pop into the grocery store and pick up some post-Thanksgiving, non-turkey-related weekend dinner ingredients, without having to make multiple stops.

As I've said in earlier posts, it's unlikely many of us who need to travel to work each day can realistically live car-free in a suburb like Framingham. Existing development patterns tend not to support meaningful public transit, especially in areas of town with lower population densities. Instead, planners need to strive toward commercial and retail development that encourage parking once and walking to multiple destinations. How much traffic would be reduced if there were a safe and visually appealing way to walk between destinations like the Natick Mall, Shoppers World, Target, Kohl's, the Logan Express Bus and nearby offices on Speen Street, Route 9 and Old Connecticut Path?

Hospital hypocrisy

Does anyone else find irony in a company that brings for-profit capitalism to healthcare complaining about "unfair competition" if another institution invades what it considers its monopoly-protected turf?

MetroWest Medical Center is owned by Vanguard Health Systems, a multi-billion-dollar company that turned a $16 million profit from the (continuing) operations of 15 hospitals around the country in the last quarter. Vanguard Health Systems' Web site boasts that the company brings "the business acumen of a privately owned organization" and "the strengths of a for-profit corporation" to its hospitals (although good luck finding anything about that on the MetroWest hospitals' own site).

You can't have it both ways. You can't take advantage of free-market capitalism to earn a profit for investors from treating people's injuries and illnesses, and then complain about competition.

Route 30: What Could Be

With numerous nearby office buildings and hotels and loads of retail, Framingham's Route 30 still has the potential of being a park-once, walk-to-many destination with a real sense of place (despite the numerous chain stores).

Rte. 30 now has two specialty food shops with the potential to draw traffic from miles around: B&R Artisan Bread (a Boston Magazine Best of Boston for bakery bread and North End Treats (run by the same family that owns Bova Bakery in Boston's North End).

Imagine if you could park someplace and had a pleasant -- or even possible -- walking environment to go from one to the other, how many more people would be drawn to come to the area and patronize these local businesses? Now imagine they were up at the sidewalk - wide, attractive sidewalks with landscaping between walkers and the cars whooshing by. Imagine some attractive outdoor seating to enjoy a cup of coffee and pastry at North End treats.

Add to that some interesting restaurants, both ethnic and chain, -- which already exist in the area -- all in an attractive walking corridor, which doesn't exist. Actually, Rte. 30 already has several eateries with outdoor seating -- John Harvard's, Panera -- but you'd never know it from driving or even walking down the street, since both seating areas are surrounded by oceans of asphalt. Imagine if these establishments were at the sidewalk too, all in an appealing pedestrian corridor.

This is the potential of an area that already has the necessary critical mass of retail. However, we need town officials to make it more of a priority to create a walkable destination, so people who live and work (and are visiting) in the immediate area would find it attractive and compelling to walk from one place to another, instead of needing a car to drive a quarter-mile because it's either impossible to cross a street or feels dangerous and highly unappealing to walk down the street.

It would help, too, to encourage clustering of same-type businesses within walking distance (like Waltham did with restaurants; right now, B&R Bread and North End Treats are separated by the Mass Pike exit dumping cars onto Rte. 30, making it impossible to walk between them even if they were a bit closer). But even without that, it's crazy that there's not a more appealing walking corridor from the nearby hotels and offices to North End Treats.