Walkable West Chester Challenge: the Cone Zone

I've been thinking about walkability for a little over a decade. These thoughts are usually philosophical, analytical. But lately they're also, occasionally, pragmatic. And this is my pragmatic thought: the collection of neighborhoods in which I live needs pedestrian access to existing retail areas within walking distance.

Our neighborhoods are rare in this area in that there are even places to walk to. Rarer still that one of these destinations is The Cone, a roadside soft-serve establishment that buzzes with activity from Spring to Fall and possesses a large and wildly loyal customer base. Sports teams, both winners and losers, end up there as the sun sets in June. Teens congregate after they clock out from their summer jobs - often to chat with the dozens of high school students The Cone employs. Parents and grandparents bring toddlers to sit outside and enjoy one of America's gifts to human culture.
A few years ago, when my uncle and aunt were visiting from the Netherlands (a densely populated and very walkable country), I thought it would be nice to take a stroll to The Cone for dessert. A little over a mile each way, the walk would be a pleasant way to spend time, and would burn some of the calories, too. Though walking down unshaded asphalt after a day of sun proved to be less than pleasant, it was the last few hundred yards that pushed the walk into the "not to be repeated" category of activities.
These last few yards are similar to the climax of Frodo's journey to unload the Ring. We were walking along a major two lane road whose posted speed limit was 40 mph. Half way along it, the road dips down, with the effect that oncoming traffic becomes aware of you only at close range. There is no sidewalk, of course. There is also no paved shoulder. Though not quite as bad as Fountains Blvd, where the white line is painted in the gravel beside the pavement, there is really no safe place to walk. A large ditch separates residences from the road, and the topography indicates that the ditches are almost always moist. We were, for the most part, walking through the yards of the houses along the way.
That's not a bad way to go, but at one point the houses stop, and we were forced onto the roadside in order to get to The Cone. That was the point at which I said to myself, "never again".

So the challenge is this: devise a safe, pedestrian route from the residences on the south west corner of Tylersville and Cincinnati-Dayton to the Cone. Everyone I've talked to agrees that this one change would improve life significantly for everyone who lives here.

Strategy meetings at my house until The Cone opens this Spring.