Walk this way

EDINBURG -- Mark Peña, an Edinburg resident charged with making the city pedestrian friendly, notices one big problem on his walks to survey the city's needs.

Nobody else is joining him.

The problem isn't laziness by city residents or even a lack of interest in walking, said Peña, a member of the Edinburg Environment Advisory Board. It's that there's a glaring lack of sidewalks, crosswalks and other walking amenities in the city.

"You realize that there just aren't a lot of people that walk in our community," Peña said. "We need to find places for them to do that."

The Edinburg Environment Advisory Board is hosting a series of monthly meetings - the first of which occurred Wednesday night - to allow residents a chance to help develop a pedestrian plan for the city.

The plan will be presented to the city council sometime in the spring for review, said Irma Garza, a spokeswoman for the city. The council will review the recommendations and consider adopting some of the measures.

The plan is part of the city's effort to reduce its 1990 greenhouse gas emissions by 7 percent by 2012, a pledge the city made when it became the first Rio Grande Valley city to sign onto the U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement.

Peña, a member of the advisory board and coordinator of its climate change initiative, said reducing automobile emissions by encouraging walking by creating a pedestrian friendly city is one way to do it.

The board is trying to identify areas where sidewalks are needed to encourage people to walk to the grocery store, work, school or walk for fun.

The biggest impediment to walking in the city is a lack of sidewalks, which pedestrians need to avoid traffic, Peña said. In places where there are sidewalks, many of them are deteriorating or are obstructed.

By identifying where most of the foot traffic would be if there were more sidewalks, Peña said, the board can develop a plan to handle future pedestrian activity.

The board is also planning to partner with Los Caminos del Rio's efforts to further develop running and biking trails in the irrigation canals that line Valley.

Los Caminos del Rio is working with the National Park Service to identify areas where trails could be added to existing irrigation and drainage ditches, said its executive director, Eric Ellman. The eventual goal is to develop a network of interconnecting trails.

Peña envisions an urban city where residents can walk out their door, follow a sidewalk to a nearby canal and walk a couple of miles along it to work.

He said it's the urban planning that has made cities such as San Francisco, Seattle and Austin consistently ranked as the most livable cities in the country.

"Instead of making sidewalks an afterthought, they have made them forethought in designing the city," Peña said. "That's we want to do. We want to promote walking and biking."

Jared Janes covers Hidalgo County government and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4424.