Out of Step
After living in England for 20 years, my wife and I decided to move back to the United States. We wanted to live in a town small enough that we could walk to the business district, and settled on Hanover, N.H., a typical New England town — pleasant, sedate and compact. It has a broad central green surrounded by the venerable buildings of Dartmouth College, an old-fashioned Main Street and leafy residential neighborhoods. 2 It is, in short, an agreeable, easy place to go about one’s business on foot, and yet as far as I can tell, virtually no one does.
Nearly every day, I walk to the post office or library or bookstore, and sometimes, if I am feeling particularly debonair, I stop at Rosey Jekes Café for a cappuccino. Occasionally, in the evenings, my wife and I stroll up to the Nugget Theatre for a movie or to Murphy’s on the Green for a beer, I wouldn’t dream of going to any of these places by car. People have gotten used to my eccentric behavior, but in the early days acquaintances would often pull up to the curb and ask if I wanted a ride.
“I’m going your way,” they would insist when I politely declined. “Really, it’s no bother.”
“Honestly, I enjoy walking.”
“Well, if you’re sure,” they would say and depart reluctantly, even g uiltily, as if leaving the scene of an accident without giving their name.
In the United States we have become so habituated to using the car for everything that it doesn’t occur to us to unfurl our legs and see what those lower limbs can do. We have reached an age where college students expect to drive between classes, where parents will drive three blocks to pick up their children from a friend’s house, where the letter carrier takes his van up and down every driveway on a street.
We will go through the most extraordinary contortions to save ourselves from walking. Sometimes it’s almost ludicrous. The other day I was waiting to bring home one of my children from a piano lesson when a car stopped outside a post office, and a man about my age popped out and dashed inside. He was in the post office for about three or four minutes, and then came out, got in the car and drove exactly 16 feet (I had nothing better to do, so I paced it off) to the general store6 next door.
And the thing is, this man looked really fit. I’m sure he jogs extravagant distances and plays squash and does all kinds of healthful things, but I am just as sure that he drives to each of these undertakings.
An acquaintance of ours was complaining the other day about the difficulty of finding a place to park outside the local gymnasium. She goes there several times a week to walk on a treadmill. The gymnasium is, at most, a six-minute walk from her front door.
11 I asked her why she didn’t walk to the gym and do six minutes less on the treadmill. 12 She looked at me as if I were tragically simple-minded and said, “But I have a program for the treadmill. It records my distance and speed and calorie burn rate, and I can adjust it for degree of difficulty.”
I confess it had not occurred to me how thoughtlessly deficient nature is in this regard.
According to a concerned and faintly horrified 1997 editorial in the Boston Globe, the United States spent less than one percent of its transportation budget on facilities for pedestrians. Actually, I’m surprised it was that much. Go to almost any suburb developed in the last 30 years, and you will not find a sidewalk anywhere. Often you won’t find a single pedestrian crossing.
I had this brought home to me one summer when we were driving across Maine and stopped for coffee in one of those endless zones of shopping malls, motels, gas stations and fast-food places. I noticed there was a bookstore across the street, so I decided to skip coffee and head over.
Although the bookshop was no more than 70 or 80 feet away, I discovered that there was no way to cross on foot without dodging over six lanes of swiftly moving traffic. In the end, I had to get in our car and drive across.
At the time, it seemed ridiculous and exasperating, but afterward I realized that I was possibly the only person ever to have entertained the notion of negotiating that intersection on foot.
The fact is, we not only don’t walk anywhere anymore in this country, we won’t walk anywhere, and woe to anyone who tries to make us, as the city of Laconia, N.H., discovered. In the early 1970s, Laconia spent millions on a comprehensive urban renewal project, which included building a pedestrian mall to make shopping more pleasant. Esthetically it was a triumph — urban planners came from all over to coo and take photos--but commercially it was a disaster. Forced to walk one whole block from a parking garage, shoppers abandoned downtown Laconia for suburban malls.
In 1994 Laconia dug up its pretty paving blocks, took away the tubs of geraniums and decorative trees, and brought back the cars. Now people can park right in front of the stores again, and downtown Laconia thrives anew.
And if that isn’t sad. I don’t know what is.
不合拍
在英格兰住了20年之后，我和妻子决定搬回美国。因为想住在．二-个可以步行到商业区的小城镇，所以我们决定定居在新罕布什尔州的汉诺威，一个典型的新英格兰城镇，令人愉快、宁静而紧凑。城镇中心有一大块宽阔的绿地，周围是达特茅斯学院那庄严的建筑、一条老式的主干道和绿树成荫的住宅区。
总之，这是一个怡人、舒适的地方，适合步行去上班。不过据我所知，实际上没有什么人这样做。
我几乎每天都步行去邮局、图书馆或书店，有时，如果心情极好，我会在罗斯杰克斯咖啡店喝上一杯卡布奇诺咖啡。有时，我会和妻子在晚上漫步到纳吉特剧院看上一场电影，或是到格林街的莫菲店喝杯啤酒。我做梦都没想过开车去这些地方。人们对我的古怪行为已经习以为常，但是开始的时候，熟人们会将车停在路边，问我是否要搭车。
“我和你同路，”他们坚持道，“真的，一点也不麻烦。”而我婉言谢绝。
“说实话，我喜欢步行。”
“哦，那随你吧，”他们这么说着然后不情愿地离开了，甚至带着点负罪感，就好像离开了事故现场却没有留下姓名。
在美国，我们已经习惯于事事用车，时时开车，我们都没想过伸展双腿，看看自己的下肢到底能做些什么。我们已经进入了这样一个时代，大学生希望课间开车去上课，父母会开车去三个街区外的朋友家接孩子，邮递员在街上开车在每一条私人车道上进进出出。
为了不走路，我们愿意忍受最可怕的身体扭曲。有时甚至到了愚蠢可笑的地步。一天，我正在等着接上钢琴课的孩子回家，这时一辆汽车停在了邮局I"1口，车门砰地一声打开了，一位男士和我年龄相仿，他走下车冲进邮局。只在邮局里呆了三四分钟，他就出了邮局，钻进汽车，开了16英尺(我也没什么事可干，正好用步子量了量) 到隔壁的百货商店。
情况是这样的，这个人看上去身体健康。我相信他会长跑、会打壁球，参与其他各种有益于健康的运动，但是我也相信他会开车前往这些运动场所。
某日我们的一位熟人抱怨本地健身会所外很难找到停车的地方，她一周有几次会去那里在走步机上锻炼身体。从这个健身会所走路到她家前门最多6分钟。
我问她为什么不步行到健身房，这样在走步机上少走6分钟就行了。
她看着我，好像我是个可怜的傻瓜似的，然后说，“但是步行机上有我的锻炼程序。它记录我锻炼的距离、时间和卡路里的消耗量，我还可以利用它调整锻炼的难易程度。”
我承认，过去我从来没有意识到我对这个问题是多么地思虑不周。
1997年《波士顿环球报》刊载的一篇有点骇人听闻的相关社论说，美国在专为行人
做出的交通设施预算不到全部交通预算的百分之一。事实上，让我惊讶的是预算数目还挺高的'。到几乎所有近30年来发展形成的市郊走走看看，你会发现那里没有一条人行道，很多时候连人行横道都找不到。
发现这个问题是在某个夏天，我开车经过缅因州，在一个购物中心、汽车旅馆、快餐店林立的地方我想停车喝杯咖啡。看到街对面有家书店，我决定不喝咖啡直接去书店。
尽管书店仅在七八十英尺之遥，我却发现没有任何办法可以步行过街，除非你能在汽车急驰的六个车道上左闪右避。最后，我不得不回到车里开车过马路。
那时，我觉得荒唐至极并且气急败坏。但是，事后我想到，自己可能是惟一一个想到要步行穿过那个十字路口的人。
事实在于，在这个国家我们不但现在不会步行前往任何地方，将来也不会步行前往任何地方。而且正如在新罕布什尔州的拉哥尼亚市所发生的事情那样，谁要让我们走路谁就会倒霉。在20世纪70年代早期，拉哥尼亚市耗资数百万进行全面的市区重建计划，其中包括一个让购物更加愉快的步行购物广场。在美学上这是一次成功之举——众多城市规划者从各地赶来，相互交换意见并拍照留念——但是从商业上讲，这是一个巨大的失败。由于从停车场不得不步行整整一个街区，购物者们放弃了拉哥尼亚的中心城区而转向市郊购物。
1994年拉哥尼亚刨掉了漂亮的路面，移走了一盆盆的天竺葵和用来美化环境的树木，带回了一辆辆汽车。现在人们又可以直接在商场门口停车了，拉哥尼亚的市中心地区又恢复了往昔的繁荣。
如果那不是悲哀的话，我都不知道什么是悲哀了。
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