I had an interesting yet fun hours tonight. It was not an average night by any means. A friend and I took off about 8:20pm and got back to campus at 12:20am. We took a 9.5 mile hike, but not in the mountains or hills or even in the woods. This was a far more dangerous hike. This was a hike across busy roads, down dark roads, and roads without sidewalks. This was a hike from Arkansas State University, down Matthews to Stadium to Harrisburg Road to S. Caraway Road and back to ASU.
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Once we got to Stadium Blvd., the fun began. Many areas don't have crosswalks. Some have crosswalks but no signal lights. Where there are signal lights, as soon as they tel you to walk, they start flashing the red hand to stop. They don't give enough time to cross a road. Of course, in Washington, D.C. we just ignore the signs all together. If there was no car coming we went. I'm not sure how Jonesboro Police would feel about that around here.
I don't even know how many ridiculous things people were doing. Countless cars blew their horns for no reason. Even more had their windows rolled down and started to yell at us. I don't know what they said. It was annoying is all I know. The weirdest was when we were almost back to campus, someone yelled my name.
There were a few times I was walking on the shoulder of the road-- NOT a turn lane-- and a car tried to run me over. Of course, there are almost no sidewalks in Jonesboro so we had to walk through ditches, yards, in the road, and on the shoulder of the road. Jonesboro needs more public transportation but I think they need to work on some major sidewalk and pedestrian improvements first. Even if we had the transportation, there is nowhere safe to walk. Yet there are students and other people around here that have to do it almost every day.
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Once we got to Stadium Blvd., the fun began. Many areas don't have crosswalks. Some have crosswalks but no signal lights. Where there are signal lights, as soon as they tel you to walk, they start flashing the red hand to stop. They don't give enough time to cross a road. Of course, in Washington, D.C. we just ignore the signs all together. If there was no car coming we went. I'm not sure how Jonesboro Police would feel about that around here.
I don't even know how many ridiculous things people were doing. Countless cars blew their horns for no reason. Even more had their windows rolled down and started to yell at us. I don't know what they said. It was annoying is all I know. The weirdest was when we were almost back to campus, someone yelled my name.
There were a few times I was walking on the shoulder of the road-- NOT a turn lane-- and a car tried to run me over. Of course, there are almost no sidewalks in Jonesboro so we had to walk through ditches, yards, in the road, and on the shoulder of the road. Jonesboro needs more public transportation but I think they need to work on some major sidewalk and pedestrian improvements first. Even if we had the transportation, there is nowhere safe to walk. Yet there are students and other people around here that have to do it almost every day.
I'm totally with you. Like most International students at ASU i don't have a car, i don't mind walking but it's simply too dangerous to walk around Jonesboro. You have to walk facing oncoming traffic and that's pretty scary. I wonder whose bright idea it was to build a city with no sidewalks.
ReplyDeleteI read an article in the Herald recently which said JETS had cut back what poor service they already had also. I wrote a previous blog about public transportation in Arkansas as well. (http://toddfogle.blogspot.com/2011/03/public-transportation-in-arkansas.html)
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