The new courthouse is proposed for a different section of downtown. Fifteen minutes on foot, give or take. From a desk upstairs, fifteen minutes sounds like nothing.
Then you look at what is in between: a rail corridor, and underpasses that were not built with pedestrians in mind.
Jessica Rossi of Kimley-Horn led the courthouse relocation study, and she walked it herself. Her finding is not that the new walk is longer. It is that a walk with an obstacle in the middle of it is a walk people stop making — and that the businesses on this side of the tracks have spent decades being built around the fact that people do make it.
Small daily choices compound. A lunch not taken here. An errand not run here. The word she uses for the potential disruption is immense.
If you walk this downtown, the clip is worth ten minutes of your day.
Watch the whole video here.
