Hi! My neighborhood is missing a section of sidewalk over a levee. There are restaurants / paved trails on one side & housing on the other. The only link is a busy road that you can’t walk/bike on. I filed a sidewalk request with the City of Houston, but was denied. What steps would you take next?

As the title says, what would be your next steps to appeal or find an alternate solution? It's an annoyingly sad state of affairs that if I want to go to the restaurants or hike and bike trails a mile or less away, that we are expected to have to drive or uber there and have no other options. I'd be more understanding if I was the only person alongside this stretch but there are usually pedestrians or cyclists along this route also dodging cars or stuck walking through the mud.

So the letter that was sent in reply to me a few months later includes description of "there is a portion with existing sidewalks from [redacted] to [redacted]", but there is no actual sidewalk there going over and no link between the two sections further back on either side for a couple hundred feet other than the driving lanes reserved for cars/trucks only. Said letter also describes "steep drop offs along the side of road were identified" which I can kind of understand but am also annoyed about when TxDOT had no problem building non-steep grades over the area for cars and trucks.

I'm going to presume there isn't a whole lot that can be done personally other than continuing to take my bike through the mud along the side and maybe start taking some garden cutters to trim any low hanging branches myself on that section by the road, but I really wish it didn't have to be this way. It's even more annoying when said area is in City of Houston jurisdiction so I'm not sure if contacting Harris County instead would help :/

This is sort of a rant at our lack of non-car infrastructure but also a bit of a plea. What would you do next if you were in this situation?