Public Officials Who Sit on a Pedestrian and Bicycle Council Should Actually Walk or Bike

There’s a troubling tendency for public officials in charge of U.S. transit systems not to actually step foot on the buses and trains they oversee. The result is a totally unsurprising failure to anticipate basic problems: if you’re used to parking right beside your destination, for instance, you can’t appreciate the importance of a good sidewalk network leading to a transit stop or station. Your understanding of the challenges facing daily riders is theoretical at best.

Jesse Bailey at the blog Walkable West Palm Beach points us to an especially egregious instance of this windshield perspective in action. The Florida Bicycle and Pedestrian Partnership Council, convened under the auspices of the state’s Department of Transportation, is supposed to help people get around on bike or on foot. And yet a recent meeting agenda explains—at great length, and at the very start of a 115-page document—where council members can park.