There was a time in Austin’s recent past when a “nature trail” existed along South Congress Avenue. Just north of what is now Home Slice Pizza, it was a steep dirt path that everyone had to navigate single-file if they wanted to walk from the Church on Congress Avenue to the Continental Club. About a decade later, I’m blessed to live a quarter-mile away from Home Slice and about a mile away from downtown. Yet, even though the dirt path is now cement, getting to either of these places still requires navigating the route “Austin style”—down the middle of side streets, with headphones on, wondering once again why I chose to wear all black and hoping that a driver doesn’t hit me. This walk is a fitting reflection of Austin’s pedestrian infrastructure: There are sidewalks, but they come in fits and starts, sometimes only as long as a single lot.

At the moment, we have slightly more sidewalks than we don’t have—51 percent of the sidewalks on the master plan exist, while 49 percent are MIA. That means there are 2,580 missing miles of sidewalks. (A single sidewalk that long would reach from here to deepest Quebec.) According to the city’s Public Works Department, it would cost $1.64 billion to build all of the sidewalks Austin has planned. At current funding levels, it would take just shy of 200 years to construct them. The city also classifies only 20 percent of existing sidewalks in “good condition,” meaning 80 percent are in a bad state, ranging from pockmarked by potholes to overrun by vegetation.

Taking a measured view of the 2016 Sidewalk Master Plan, the City Council set a 10-year goal to address some of the missing and damaged sidewalks that keep our city weird and our neighbors walking down the middle of the street. That goal is to address “high priority” sidewalks that are within a quarter-mile of schools, bus stops, and parks—about 390 miles (or 15 percent) of the city’s missing cement walkways at a cost of $250 million. For some context, though, the money set aside for sidewalks in the $720 million mobility bond that voters approved in 2016 is only $37.5 million. Doing the math, that’ll cover just 15 percent of the city’s high-priority goal.

The vast majority of currently available sidewalk funding comes from bonds—about $39 million. Cap Metro kicks in about $13 million, sidewalk fees-in-lieu add $1.8 million, and a grant for North Lamar sidewalks is for $1 million. The 10-year goal is funded through the first quarter of 2021, which is projected to net the city 40 to 60 miles of sidewalk total.

For some people, this slow rollout will likely come as a relief. Believe it or not, since I started covering City Hall about six years ago, I have been repeatedly shocked by people fighting against sidewalks based on concerns that criminals and strangers will walk into their neighborhood or fears that landscaping would be ruined. Once I even watched placard-carrying parents show up in force to protest a sidewalk that would connect their neighborhood to their school. School district policy meant that a bus route could disappear if the school was within walking distance of their homes via sidewalk. There were tears.

For others, the underfunding of a basic municipal service presents a real hardship. That bare-bones goal of putting sidewalks around schools, bus stops, and parks would provide access, which for some people means safety—and it’s the law. The 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act states that sidewalks or pedestrian paths must be accessible to the maximum extent feasible for all people. What does this mean? For Los Angeles, it meant $1.3 billion after settling a lawsuit alleging its broken and missing sidewalks constituted an ADA violation. Other municipalities, more than 800 according to the Complete Streets movement, could also be threatened with legal action if compliance isn’t met.

One of the single rudest awakenings of my young and easy life was when my parents moved us to the suburbs in order to secure their children a good education and an irretrievable loss of street cred. I was 10, and up until that point had enjoyed an alarmingly autonomous existence—roller skating with friends, riding my bike to Baskin-Robbins, and generally navigating my elementary school self far beyond the perimeter that my parents suspected. When we moved I was horrified to discover that there were no sidewalks. I felt trapped and suddenly dependent. My freedom to explore had been taken away.

Without sidewalks, without this basic city infrastructure, this is where we are: suburban against our will. It’s where people who can’t drive are, it’s where people with disabilities are, and it’s where people who just like to walk are. Lacking inspiration at a state and federal level, our city officials (some more than others) have, of late, seen fit to tackle the “Big Ideas” that liberals crave and would like to see reflected in their elected officials. That’s all well and good, and I appreciate an anti-gentrification task force and Smart City Award as much as the next gal. But local government is, above all else, boring minutiae. Would it be so terrible to act like it and take a minute to be boring? Focusing on the small things beneath our feet, and working on building a several-thousand-mile path, is how to become a real city, one that offers these freedoms to everyone.

Elizabeth Pagano is editor of the Austin Monitor. Read the Monitor’s continuous coverage of local government at austinmonitor.com.