“So you have no crosswalks across six lane highways, and no sidewalks along those roads. Is that what you’re saying?
Also, are there stop lights at any of the intersections of those six lane highways?”
Look around when you are driving. Do you see any 6 lane roads that are safe to cross? In florida, for example, the arterial roads are so wide that crossing them is particularly onerous especially for an older person. Moreover, the crossing opportunities might be a half mile apart. They are, by design, for car travel.
In contrast, Disney built a town in Florida called Celebration. It’s walkable by design with lots of smaller streets that inter-connect allowing for traffic flow on multiple streets thus keeping them 2 lane and human scale.
Many states have older towns built in the 1920’s and 30’s that are walkable and highly desirable. Of course, as others have mentioned, many urban cities are violent God-forsaken squalid dumps.
There’s a balance, of course. Building communities that allow for safe pedestrian connections from house to shops, dining, and services is a lot different from building high density many-story low-income government-subsidized criminal incubators connected to crime-ridden trains and buses, in a survival-of-the-most-violent Hobbsian nightmare.
“Look around when you are driving. Do you see any 6 lane roads that are safe to cross?”
I don’t need to look around. I’ve walked them. Santa Margarita and Alicia Parkways come to mind. El Toro Road, Beach Blvd, etc. I can’t think of a major six lane street in Orange County that can’t be walked and crossed safely.
That being said I’ve traveled outside Southern California enough to know that the presence of sidewalks here is much more universal than in other parts of the country. Though I’m sure that places like Newark and other major cities in NJ have plenty of both sidewalks and crosswalks.
In the context of commuting to work in the snow I’m not sure walking would be a viable option in any case.