THE CASE FOR JAYWALKING

CHRISTOPHER, DEWOLFE, MAISON NEUVE - Traffic engineers want streets to
act as traffic funnels; to them, pedestrians are mere nuisances.
Regulating pedestrian crossings is a way to keep cars flowing, but the
failure of lawmakers to control pedestrian behavior shows that this
approach simply does not work. Instead of trying to force pedestrians to
conform to streets designed primarily for cars, why not adapt them to
the behavior of pedestrians?

The first step is to accept walking as a legitimate form of
transportation, one that is equal - or even superior - to vehicle
transport. "What we need to do is to shift our mentality and conceive of
pedestrians as part of traffic," says Dylan Reid, member of the Toronto
Pedestrian Committee, a pedestrian watchdog group created by the City of
Toronto. "Being a pedestrian is the most efficient form of transport.
The more people you have walking, the safer [the streets are] and the
less pollution there is." On streets that already bustle with
pedestrians, Reid suggests that narrowing lanes and widening sidewalks
is a good way to encourage walking and slow down traffic. "The speed of
traffic is not related to efficiency," he explains. Consistently slow
traffic makes for streets that are less dangerous, less noisy and a lot
more pleasant - while still moving cars along at a steady pace.

Amy Pfeiffer, a program director at the New York advocacy group
Transportation Alternatives, chimes in with even more ways to make
streets pedestrian-friendly. Corner bulb-outs give pedestrians greater
visibility at intersections; mid-block crossings, especially signalized
ones, allow for more opportunities to safely cross the street and
advance signal timing gives people crossing the street a head start over
vehicles. Similarly, pedestrian-exclusive signals are ideal for busy
corners, letting people cross the intersection in every direction at
once. "It's made a big difference in rationalizing what people do,"
explains Pfeiffer. "It's really hard to control pedestrian behavior."
Pedestrians aren't sheep. They will go where they want, when they want,
as long as it's safe - and in many cases, that involves taking a
calculated risk by crossing the street mid-block or against the light.
"If it's safe to cross, they will," says Pfeiffer. "It's also about
safety in numbers: you'll get a huge platoon of people crossing [against
the light] at the same time and they just assume that a car won't run
down twenty people.". . .

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