The Hutchinson Community Foundation hosted Mark Fenton, a national public health, planning and transportation consultant for the past three days. He serves as an adjunct professor at Tufts University and the former host of the ‘America’s Walking’ series on public television.

He was also the guest speaker at the Hutchinson – Reno County Chamber of Commerce breakfast Wednesday morning and gave an interesting presentation about the city of Hutchinson and how we can make our city better for health and the economy.

He’s from the Boston area, but tells us, he’s been to Kansas many times and says Hutchinson is very similar to other cities across the Midwest and elsewhere in the country.

He says, “some of the issues that small towns, towns of this size face are somewhat universal, you know, they were all built around the same time, many of these communities, they have a set of good raw material, you know, the grid network of streets, a once thriving downtown, with some great architecture, and often have great assets like neighborhood schools, churches and parks.” He says many of things about Hutchinson are positive things for healthy living.

But, says Fenton, over recent decades, “we kind of went the other way, becoming more like suburban America, even towns like Hutchinson, sort of did things, like built suburban malls on the outskirts of town, and housing developments that have only one entrance to arterial road.”

He adds, “some of those homes we built without even sidewalks in front of them, we did a lot of that.” He believes those decisions undermined healthy choices. He says, “it discouraged parents from letting their kids walk to school, walking to a nearby park, or hoping on the bike to get a quart of milk.” He says, “that’s something you would have done a few decades ago, but now we get into our cars to do everything.”

Fenton believes Hutchinson’s downtown area has huge potential. He says, “you have great architecture here, wide sidewalks that are really walkable, nearby neighborhoods, it’s not like they’re far removed, many people live within an approximate area of downtown.” He says the advantage is, “you’re stating in a good place.” He was also very impressed with the Jim Martinez Trail which has been in place in Hutchinson for years, and likes that the city continues to add to that. Plus, he says the city has other wonderful attractions such as Carey Park and the Dillon Nature Center and says you don’t have to go dozen’s of miles to find this good stuff.

He says the bad news, that we have what he called massively wide streets with all the lanes made for cars. He says, “we don’t have bike lanes, just lanes for cars, and says in some cases, perhaps more then we need.” He cited Avenue A, which is a wide street that could be redone to include bike lanes using what he called a “road diet.” He says the idea of a road diet is take a four lane street like Avenue A, cut it down to a single lane going each way, and bike lane on each side, plus a center turning lane. He adds, “where there is nothing to turn into, you could make the center lane into a median island, similar to 1st Street. He suggested planting trees or greenery to kind of soften the street a little, reduce storm water runoff, but also create a refuge for pedestrians crossing those middle islands. He says, “all of sudden you’ve taken a road that felt once like it was designed to land an airplane on, you know a big landing strip, and turned it into a boulevard that really knits the neighborhood together rather then slices it apart.”

Fenton does these kind of presentations where he speaks on creating more livable, sustainable and successful cities and towns.

He also told of changing the way we use angle parking. He says as it is now, we pull into a stall and the doors open and where do the kids have to go? “into the street.” The mother putting groceries or packages in her trunk, where is she? “in the street.” He suggest having people back into the stalls. He say then when the kids open the doors, they no longer go to the street because the door blocks them, and the mother is no longer in the street putting packages into the trunk. Just another example of things he suggested in his presentations while in Hutchinson.

For more information about Mark and his ideas, and work, you can visit his website at www.markfenton.com.