This is one of my pet peeves. I live less than two miles from one of the largest universities in the US (65,000+ students). Driving past it reminds me of an old time shooting gallery full of targets zipping back and forth. Students are constantly running across the 8 lane highway without looking and are running in every conceivable direction. Some of them only a few feet from the marked cross walks. ALL of the intersections have lights for pedestrian crossings but none of the pedestrians and bicyclists pay the slightest attention to them. The TV news in this area is FULL of complaints about pedestrians and bicyclists getting hit by automobiles but every time that I drive past this university I see at least 6 people crossing the road in the middle of the block or ignoring the pedestrians crossing signals. On game days, you can count on seeing 30+ people doing the same.
This is one of my pet peeves. I live less than two miles from one of the largest universities in the US (65,000+ students). Driving past it reminds me of an old time shooting gallery full of targets zipping back and forth. Students are constantly running across the 8 lane highway without looking and are running in every conceivable direction. Some of them only a few feet from the marked cross walks. ALL of the intersections have lights for pedestrian crossings but none of the pedestrians and bicyclists pay the slightest attention to them. The TV news in this area is FULL of complaints about pedestrians and bicyclists getting hit by automobiles but every time that I drive past this university I see at least 6 people crossing the road in the middle of the block or ignoring the pedestrians crossing signals. On game days, you can count on seeing 30+ people doing the same.
I do have to wonder if you watched that video and took in any of the points made..
This is one of my pet peeves. I live less than two miles from one of the largest universities in the US (65,000+ students). Driving past it reminds me of an old time shooting gallery full of targets zipping back and forth. Students are constantly running across the 8 lane highway without looking and are running in every conceivable direction. Some of them only a few feet from the marked cross walks. ALL of the intersections have lights for pedestrian crossings but none of the pedestrians and bicyclists pay the slightest attention to them. The TV news in this area is FULL of complaints about pedestrians and bicyclists getting hit by automobiles but every time that I drive past this university I see at least 6 people crossing the road in the middle of the block or ignoring the pedestrians crossing signals. On game days, you can count on seeing 30+ people doing the same.
I do have to wonder if you watched that video and took in any of the points made..
I started to watch and the ADD kicked in. FFowared a few times. Still came away empty handed. From what I saw I suspect the pertinent info and the punchline could be condensed down to two minutes not half an hour. Jesus Christ.
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I do have to wonder if you watched that video and took in any of the points made..
I started to watch and the ADD kicked in. FFowared a few times. Still came away empty handed. From what I saw I suspect the pertinent info and the punchline could be condensed down to two minutes not half an hour. Jesus Christ.
And the points made in those two minutes could be read in <30s.
There has to be a good reason before I start to watch any video.
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Crossing the street should be safe, convenient, and easy, but it isn't. And that's because in the US and Canada, the roads are designed for exactly one purpose: to move lots of cars as quickly as possible.
A real issue in the US (some states, at least) is that it is only relatively recently that pedestrians have the right of way in pedestrian crossings (without lights).
Drivers are simply not used to that, and you often see cars bombing through crossings when they should have stopped... thankfully, pedestrians are wise enough not to walk out unless they see the cars are stopping, but still....
It's just the problem with car centric planning: It isn't *bad* to use a car when needed, but it's bad to design a city in such a way that it's bloody hard to use anything *but* a car. NotJustBikes has some fantastic videos on this. And it's the older European cities that got this right: London, Amsterdam, Prague, Berlin... They still have car infrastructure, but most people use buses/bikes/trains/scooters in those cities. If London had only cars and buses, you can bet that it would be even more of a gridlocked mess.
Most American towns experienced huge post WWII growth spurts, with the middle class booming and demanding a huge detached house with two car driveway on a sprawling surburban estate. These towns don't usually have massive traffic issues (except maybe downtown), because there just isn't the space for the traffic. But they do have insane infrastructure requirements per person. Just compare the density of e.g. suburban Dallas to suburban London (anything within the M25 but outside of Zone 3 is 'suburban' for London, mostly houses with small shopping and business districts scattered about) and you will see the difference. It's going to bankrupt many US cities eventually, because the growth will stop, and there will be not enough tax income to pay for the huge 6 lane 'stroads' everywhere.
I don't think that will be a problem. With property taxes what they are and rising constantly with land values and the number of people already here it should be no problem to pay for the roads. The problem is that growth keeps occurring even when there is not really space for it. They keep trying to cram more and more houses into the suburbs and it's turning things into a mess. I really wish the population density would drop to about what it was in the 1980s. I love the suburban single family home environment and loathe high density cities. I recognize the need for them but a city like New York or London is about the last place in the civilized world I'd want to live.
I read somewhere a couple years ago, that the pedestrian crossing button on many streets doesn't do anything at all - it isn't wired in. It's simply there to give the pedestrian some "sense of control" so they will wait after they push the button (thinking the system has accepted their request) and not cross early.
What's the point?
You'd think that, however for whatever reason living in a dense city tends to be far more expensive, it never made any sense to me but you can typically get a detached house in the suburbs for the price of a smaller condominium in a high rise in the city. To each their own but I like the suburbs, they tend to be isolated from the hustle, bustle, noise and crime of the cities, and it's not a big deal to take a car to a park & ride or city center. The USA is huge and spread out so you pretty much need a car anyway, it would take hours to get from one city to another by transit, the way it's set up the bus only really works to go between the city and the suburbs or from one part of the city to another. There are parks in many of our suburbs, there's one just around the corner from my house. I can also walk from here to the downtown area of the small city I live on the edge. In practice I usually drive though because if I go somewhere I'm often picking up a bunch of stuff I don't want to carry or I'm in a hurry. I can walk in 45 minutes or I can hop in my car and get there in 5. I will say I can't stand those cookie cutter developments where all the houses are identical. My suburb is from the era where there were dozens of plans to choose from and most of the houses are different. There is one other on my street that is identical but a mirror image of mine but the rest are different. There is no HOA so the houses are all different colors with all different landscaping, I like it.
A real issue in the US (some states, at least) is that it is only relatively recently that pedestrians have the right of way in pedestrian crossings (without lights).
Drivers are simply not used to that, and you often see cars bombing through crossings when they should have stopped... thankfully, pedestrians are wise enough not to walk out unless they see the cars are stopping, but still....
A real issue in the US (some states, at least) is that it is only relatively recently that pedestrians have the right of way in pedestrian crossings (without lights).
Drivers are simply not used to that, and you often see cars bombing through crossings when they should have stopped... thankfully, pedestrians are wise enough not to walk out unless they see the cars are stopping, but still....
Do you happen to know which states? To my knowledge pedestrians have always had the right of way, although that doesn't mean some idiot drivers are going to be paying attention and actually yield to them.
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But that's the problem: Cars are necessary for many, but we don't have to make them necessary for everyday life. I don't think you'll ever get Americans to willingly give up their cars, but if they could walk to the shops, or get to work on a train, then there would be massive secondary benefits.
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A 45 minute walk isn't the worst case, there are many suburban developments (identikit style or not) that have no or virtually no pedestrian destinations for hours of walking.
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