I received an email today from a friend and resident of Ward 3 inquiring about public rights-of-way in his area. The neighbourhood chatter is that these rights-of-way are slowly being made completely inaccessible and thus diminishing the walkability of the neighbourhood.
The newer areas of Brighton, like many areas of the city, don’t appear to have been designed with pedestrian conerns in mind. There are many instances of two places that are very close together “as the crow flies”, but require you to walk a long circuitous path along streets and sidewalks to get from one to the other.
There are a few good examples of public footpaths that make the life of pedestrians easier in Ward 3 (particularly if you’re a student west of North River Rd). There are, however, a couple of examples — off the top of my head, and in my immediate vicinity — of rights-of-way being lost to new developments that have plunked themselves, literally, right in the walking publics’ path.
I’m in the process of making some inquiries to the city’s planning department and to our solicitor to try to find out how the city can defend these rights-of-way. What would it take to target some of these and put them into active use to make our neighbourhoods more walkable and family-friendly?
I may be mistaken, but I believe this was addressed to some extent in the excellent recent report on Charlottetown’s park system.
To some extent, yes.