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One Cure for Pandemic Doldrums: Walking Every Street in Your City

PEORIA, Ill. — Walton Road does not get many pedestrians.

The street, about the length of a high school track, separates a vast Walmart parking lot from a field of soybean stubble. There is so little traffic that semi-truck drivers park there to rest. And though there is a sidewalk, no one had bothered to clear the snow off it for several days after a storm last month.

But Walton Road was the only public street in Peoria, Ill., that Mary Hosbrough and Jennifer Jacobsen-Wood had not walked. So, before dawn on a Friday in February, the pair set out through the slush to conquer that stub of concrete on the fringes of the city limits, pausing only to take a few photos and return a runaway shopping cart to a Walmart corral.

Ms. Hosbrough and Ms. Jacobsen-Wood, longtime friends who began a quest to stroll down every Peoria street just before Covid-19 hit, were among thousands of Americans who wound up countering pandemic boredom with long walks. Most people were content to meander through their own neighborhoods or jog on nearby trails. But a select few took it much further, marching down every last street in their towns and mapping their progress — a pursuit that they said eased virus doldrums, brought a sense of purpose and helped them appreciate long-overlooked hometown sights.

“During the pandemic, I actually sort of went into a funk and sort of lost my equilibrium a little bit,” said Ralph Yeilding, a lawyer from Mountain Brook, Ala., who walked every street in his Birmingham suburb last fall, tracking his movement with red and blue markers on a paper map. “It was really an effort to sort of get myself back into the groove of normal work life.”

Ms. Hosbrough, left, and Ms. Jacobsen-Wood have blogged their outings on Facebook through a page called Pedestrians in Peoria.Credit…Taylor Glascock for The New York Times

The women tracked their progress on an app called CityStrides, which highlighted the streets they walked.Credit…Taylor Glascock for The New York Times

Covering every street in a city by foot is not a new idea. It has been attempted repeatedly over the years, to great fanfare in places like New York City and San Francisco, and with little note in other parts of the country. But as the pandemic upended routines, kept people close to home and limited options for fun, the pursuit took on new life and meaning. All across the country — as chronicled in local news stories from Brockton, Mass., and Corvallis, Ore., to Branford, Conn., and Cedar Falls, Iowa — Americans set out to walk or run down every road, street, avenue, circle, terrace and boulevard in the places where they lived.

James Chevalier, who developed and manages CityStrides, a website that many in the every-street cohort use to track their progress, said that about 32,000 of its 43,000 total users joined the site since the beginning of 2020, around the time that scientists discovered Covid-19. Worldwide, more than 1,500 CityStrides users have completed the task of walking or running down every street in a city since the start of 2020, making up three-quarters of all the users who have done so since the site launched in 2013.

“Those people that found it because of the pandemic talked to other people, and everybody is talking to each other about what they’re doing to stay sane,” said Mr. Chevalier, who created CityStrides as he tried to run every street in Holyoke, Mass., a feat he did not finish before moving to another town.

James Chevalier created CityStrides after attempting to run all the streets in Holyoke, Mass., where he used to live.Credit…Yehyun Kim for The New York Times
Mr. Chevalier stretched before running through his neighborhood in Easthampton, Mass.Credit…Yehyun Kim for The New York Times

The Pedestrians in Peoria, as Ms. Hosbrough and Ms. Jacobsen-Wood took to calling themselves on the Facebook page where they chronicled their walks, covered about 1,247 miles on 170 walks over 23 months before finishing their circuit last fall. Though they have mostly moved on to hiking nature trails, they have gone back to Peoria’s streets a few times to check off small roadways, like Walton Road, that were newly added to CityStrides.

Their walks, sometimes lasting several hours and covering as many as 20 miles, took them through parts of Peoria they knew well and to areas they had never been before. They found a surprising abundance of war memorials and scenic green spaces, as well as a burial site for Civil War veterans that is now a parking lot for a muffler store.

“I did a lot of the research and writing, and that was a nice distraction and something else to focus on rather than Covid,” said Ms. Jacobsen-Wood, a librarian, who shared historical information about the sights they encountered on their Facebook page.

The walks included gratifying moments, like when one of their 2,700 Facebook followers recognized them at a bar and bought them drinks. There were somber days, like when they came across a sidewalk memorial and met the family of a young man who had been shot dead. And there were scary encounters, like when a pit bull charged at them.

There were also the logistical challenges of walking during the pandemic. In spring 2020, when most of the country was shut down, the pair continued their walks but would try to stay six feet apart and wear masks. Stopping at a gas station to use the restroom or at a McDonald’s to buy coffee suddenly seemed risky, so they packed more snacks and brought devices that would allow them to discreetly relieve themselves outdoors.

“We just got creative,” said Ms. Hosbrough, a counselor. “We were determined not to shorten the length of our walks.”

There were perks to pandemic walking, too. Justin Robbins, who walked every street in Longmont, Colo., in late 2020 and early 2021, said the pandemic seemed to inspire more ambitious Christmas decorations in his city.

“People went big — bigger than they typically would,” said Mr. Robbins, a software engineer who had grown bored walking the same route near his house, and who credited his 586-mile tour of Longmont with improving his physical and mental health.

But the pandemic also brought about an increase in reckless driving and, in some places, record numbers of pedestrian deaths. Crashes killed more than 6,700 pedestrians in 2020, up about 5 percent from the estimated 6,412 the year before, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association. The Peoria police said there had not been an increase in pedestrian deaths there.

Both Ms. Hosbrough and Ms. Jacobsen-Wood, who are 50 and who grew up in the Peoria area, said they saw their walks as a way to counter what they considered to be a pervasive but unwarranted fatalism in how some Peorians viewed their city. Local journalists sometimes joined them on their strolls.

Peoria, situated about halfway between Chicago and St. Louis, has seen its population stagnate at around 110,000 residents in recent decades. Caterpillar, the manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, moved its headquarters out of the city a few years ago. And homicides surged to record levels during the pandemic, according to The Peoria Journal Star, leading some commenters on the Pedestrians in Peoria Facebook page to question whether it was safe for the women to walk through certain neighborhoods.

Ms. Hosbrough and Ms. Jacobsen-Wood were insistent that they would go down every road in every neighborhood. And without glossing over Peoria’s flaws, they said they tried to focus more on the city’s history (like the women’s club near the river that was converted into a hospital during the 1918 flu pandemic), its amenities (like the downtown alley filled with murals) and its surprising delights (like the plastic coyote stationed without explanation near a golf course).

Ms. Hosbrough and Ms. Jacobsen-Wood highlighted Peoria’s landmarks and history in many of their Facebook posts.Credit…Taylor Glascock for The New York Times
Ms. Hosbrough and Ms. Jacobsen-Wood walked toward Walton Road after returning a lost shopping cart.Credit…Taylor Glascock for The New York Times

The pair came away with some critiques about the city they love. Sidewalk coverage in Peoria is spotty. Drivers can be oblivious to pedestrians. And the streets in some newer, fancier neighborhoods can seem like paths to nowhere, with plenty of sidewalks but no easy connection to other communities.

Indeed, after two years of walking every street, they reached a verdict: For all the city’s charms, Peoria is not very walkable.

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