来源：《洛杉矶时报》
原文刊登日期：2021年11月23日
Sidewalks are essential transportation infrastructure in dense, urban Los Angeles, but thousands of miles of walkways are broken, cracked and dangerous. At the current level of funding and with fixes delayed by inefficient repair policies, Angelenos may have to wait centuries for safe, smooth sidewalks.
在人口密集的洛杉矶市区，步行道是必不可少的交通基础设施，但数千英里长的步行道已经破损、开裂，十分危险。以目前的资金水平，再加上低效的维修政策延误了修复工作，洛杉矶人可能要等上几个世纪才能看到安全、平整的步行道。
That’s unacceptable. Sidewalks are crucial to community livability. Broken sidewalks make it dangerous for the average pedestrian to simply walk down the street, and make travel nearly impossible for the disabled. The lack of safe sidewalks also undermines the city’s environmental goals. How can we expect Angelenos to forgo polluting cars when walking on city sidewalks is a risky endeavor?
这是不可接受的。步行道对社区的宜居性至关重要。破碎的步行道使普通行人在街上行走变得危险，使残疾人几乎无法出行。缺乏安全的步行道也破坏了这座城市的环保目标。当在城市的步行道上行走是一个冒险的尝试时，我们怎么能期望洛杉矶人放弃污染环境的汽车呢？
And the ongoing failure to fix the sidewalks costs taxpayers millions of dollars a year. L.A. has been hit with more than 1,700 claims and 1,020 lawsuits for sidewalk injuries over the last five years, and paid out more than $35 million in settlements.
而目前未能修好步行道每年要花费纳税人数百万美元。在过去的5年里，洛杉矶已经收到了1700多起关于步行道伤害的索赔和1020起诉讼，并支付了超过3500万美元的和解费用。
The problem goes back decades. More than 45 years ago, the city adopted a well-intentioned but ultimately disastrous law that transferred the responsibility for fixing sidewalks damaged by tree roots from property owners to the city. But the city never fulfilled its maintenance obligation and by about 2010, roughly half of the city’s sidewalks were in bad condition.
这个问题可以追溯到几十年前。45年前，洛杉矶市通过了一项初衷良好但最终造成灾难性后果的法律，将修复被树根损坏的步行道的责任从业主转移到了市政府身上。但洛杉矶市从未履行过维护义务，到2010年左右，洛杉矶市大约有一半的步行道状况不佳。
In 2016, Mayor Eric Garcetti and the City Council settled a lawsuit brought by disabled residents over the dire condition of the city’s sidewalks by committing to spend $1.4 billion over the next 30 years on sidewalk repairs. Around the same time, city leaders adopted a “fix and release” policy under which the city would repair the sidewalks first and then return responsibility to property owners.
2016年，市长埃里克·加塞蒂和市议会通过承诺在未来30年内花费14亿美元进行步行道维修，解决了残疾居民因洛杉矶市步行道糟糕状况提起的诉讼。大约在同一时间，城市领导人采取了“修复和释放”政策，根据该政策，城市将首先修复步行道，然后将责任返还给业主。
But that fix-and-release program is moving too slowly. The city is choosing to rebuild entire stretches of sidewalk rather than just focusing on the damaged segments. Fewer than 1% of the city’s sidewalk parcels — 640,000 in all — have been certified as repaired and turned over to property owners; at this rate it could take 500 years to certify all the sidewalks.
但这个修复和释放计划进展得太慢了。洛杉矶市选择重建所有步行道，而不是仅仅关注受损路段。在洛杉矶市总共64万块步行道上，只有不到1%的地块得到了维修并移交给了业主；按照这个速度，要认证所有的步行道可能要花上500年。
Plus, the city doesn’t track how many sidewalks need repair — it mostly relies on residents to call in complaints — or how much all the work will cost. And it still takes the city much longer — 41 days on average — to temporarily patch a broken sidewalk than the three days it takes to fill a pothole in the street.
此外，这座城市并不会统计有多少步行道需要维修——它主要依赖于居民的投诉——或者所有的工作将花费多少。而临时修补一条破损的步行道平均需要41天的时间，远比修补街道上的一个坑洞需要3天的时间长得多。
And that gets to the heart of the problem: Sidewalks are treated as second-class transportation infrastructure, compared with streets and highways. L.A. has many millions of dollars from local transportation sales tax, plus state and federal infrastructure funding, but the city still only dedicates a fraction of its budget to sidewalk repairs.
这就触及了问题的核心：与街道和公路相比，步行道被视为二级交通基础设施。洛杉矶有数亿美元的地方运输销售税，加上州和联邦基础设施资金，但洛杉矶市仍然只将其预算的一小部分用于步行道维修。
It’s time that Los Angeles leaders live up to their pledge to make this a more walkable and livable city. It’s time to treat and fund sidewalks as an essential piece of the city’s transportation network.
洛杉矶的领导人是时候兑现他们的承诺，让这座城市更适合步行和居住了。是时候把步行道作为城市交通网络的重要组成部分来对待和资助了。