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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
For a city that is famous for walkers and bikers, why doesn't Seattle ever have "carfree" days like Bristol England is doing every Sunday this summer.
Also, have you seen the new BAT realignment for Aurora. No cycletrack at all.
Really, I remember walking the sidewalks of Seattle around Greenlake, and because the blocks are so short, and people drive nutso down side streets, it was very unnerving to have to be looking out for cars all the time.
At least here in Kent, the blocks are very very long. You can walk or bike for a long time without reaching an intersection. And because of low density, in off peak times like midday between rush hours, its quite pleasant...
car approaches intersection, the light is green, ped steps out making car screech to halt instead of waiting for light to turn red so ped can cross while perpendicular street has green.
ped sees one car coming. waits until it's in the intersection then steps out forcing screeching halt. behind this car there are no cars for a minute or two, ped only needed to wait one quarter of a second to let car go by then can cross (a) more safely, and (b) without forcing car to stop (c) wasting momentum and (d) causing more emmissions plus (e) this is rude of the pedestrian.
in general we all have to be reasonable and all modes should get some respect. the great cities of the world with great transit and great cafes and great walking environments do not achieve this by letting any ped stop any car at any time, can you imagine seventh avenue in nyc working this way when 70 cars in a pod are going through about ten green lights in a row? each one could be stopped by a ped, is that what you want? right now the peds have to wait their turn, wait for the lights to change and then safely cross, it works, check it out, why reinvent the great city wheel when we have so many clear models of what works.
that said, the seattle norm against jaywalking is silly....peds should lean into the intersection and cross just behind the car whizzing by the way they do in most cities, this lets EVERYONE get somewhere faster and safer. forcing the car to stop often takes longer because the car can zip by more quickly than it takes to stop -- duh.
Intersections are THE MOST DANGEROUS spots to cross a street. I will forever jaywalk.
After moving here and becoming used to walking/crossing here, I am always amused when I come back the PNW. Drivers here will freeze up when I do the whole "stand in the middle of one lane, while they continue to drive past in the other" thing.
http://99percentinvisible.org/post/47063…
I'm sure we can come up with more.
Walkers, bikers, drivers, everyone should obey the simple rules for their own safety. You don't stand a chance when you get aggressive with a 2000 lb + automobile.
Live long. Be happy. Obey the traffic laws.
but you know who doesn't stop? drunks. that's what happened on 75th when 4 people got run over, and 2 killed. all the other drivers stopped, they trusted those drivers, and then a drunk plowed into them.
don't be a jaywalking idiot, cross at the light, and even then maintain eye contact with the drivers. don't trust them.
this goes double for bicyclists. don't ever trust them until they're stopped.
When there's no or few cars -- I book!
If there's too many turning lanes and lights...I go to the middle of the street and cut across.
I used to ride my bike by the book.
Now I ride it like a 9 year old...jump curbs...race across the middle of the street...those kids know what they're doing.
Good policy does not seek to punish citizens. We can not all be equal before the law if some are deemed to be doing the wrong thing even if it isn't illegal.
The same is true for pitbulls, too.
Did you know that most pedestrians struck by vehicles while crossing the street are crossing legally? It's statistically safer to jaywalk.
Following the rules is not what keeps you safe. Being aware and thoughtful does.
Short blocks make walkable neighborhoods. Long blocks make for car-happy race districts. Short blocks work by increasing the opportunities for interaction, which draw uses and crowds; long blocks drive those uses and people away.
There are no walkable blocks in Kent and never will be.
Jaywalkers are the sign of a vibrant pedestrian culture. They are not the cause of it. You don't have jaywalkers unless and until you have a density of pedestrians that makes it possible; one person darting across a street is at risk; a hundred people put the CARS at risk.
Melbourne is indeed one of the most street-active cities in the world. We would do well to emulate it. I've said so here numerous times. Part of what they have accomplished is not to CREATE such energies but to UNLEASH them from the shackles of law and custom. Walking past the Italian cake shops in St. Kilda, or the creperies in the laneways, the Italian joints along Lygon Street in Carlton, or the coffeeshops and teahouses that dot the city, you can't help but notice not just the excitement of the city but the historical nature of that excitement -- places more or less unchanged since the 1950s -- or the 1880s.
We don't have that here, aside from a tiny bit of Pioneer Square. We don't have Italians or Greeks or Jews in numbers. We have in fact spent the last couple of decades obliterating our physical, commercial, and personal history and culture as fast as possible, which is unfortunate. We do, however, have immigrant groups. They need to be invited into the city instead of relegated to the fringes.
I've never actually heard of anyone getting a ticket for jaywalking besides those tourists that one time. It's always seemed like an urban legend to me.
1. A vehicle with right-of-way should not have to accelerate/decelerate or otherwise maneuver to avoid a jaywalking pedestrian.
2. If you're not in accordance with #1, you're doing it wrong.
3. See #1 and #2.
Based on your comment (source?) it's statistically safer to jaywalk only if 1) the percentage of legally crossing pedestrians involved in accidents is lower than the percentage of jaywalkers involved in accidents and 2) current jaywalkers are not predisposed to avoid accidents somehow ... I would not encourage jaywalking for children, people with impaired judgement, the infirm, etc., because it seems reasonable that they'd either make poor decisions or be unable to react quickly to minimize the impact of a bad decision/unexpected situation, but I would encourage that they use legal crossings.
I absolutely agree that awareness and thoughtfulness are your first line of defense, but we also have to rely on others' awareness and thoughtfulness to cover our inevitable lapses and the unforeseen.
Having rules (laws or custom) in place to help limit the unforeseen and increase thoughtfulness is the way to go ... which means traffic lights and crosswalks in some places, zones closed to automobiles in others, and the intentional increase in friction between the two in others -- if nobody is complacent, the overall system is probably safer, but probably also less efficient, less pleasant.
More generally ... I'm a runner/walker and use bus/car/train only as a last resort. But I've been fighting knee problems for a few months, and my very limited mobility is making me more sensitive to people like my mother, who has bone spurs in her feet and bursitis in her hip and osteoarthritis in her knees, and my grandmother, who is in her nineties ... "the city is for walkers", perhaps, but it cannot be only for walkers in the way that Charles polemicizes, else we are also saying that the city is also for the fit and the young.
Gratuitously making driving "more difficult, more unpleasant, more frustrating" is not an ethical approach without a more concrete benefit or purpose.
http://www.amazon.com/Life-Between-Build…
What a paradise Seattle would be without cars. Cars fucking ruin everything.
This is the stupidest thing I've read in a while. Charles you understand that motor vehicles are more than people just too lazy to walk? They're carrying the clothes that you buy, the food you consume and the employees that sell them to you. As much as you want to reject this notion that you need cars around you even if you don't use them you're dependent on them...
So hey, fuck it. Let's make that bus full of people stop because someone decides to spontaneously cross a busy street.
First of all, I jaywalk on occasion. I shoudn't do it but I do. I don't encourage it. That said @23 has a point. If one does it, it should be done with the least disruption (his rule #1) if any at all. I'm against citing pedestrians for this but a warning is fine. For the record, I've never owned an automobile.
By & large, streets are for cars, trucks, buses and bikes. @16 has a point as well. I genuinely wonder why some pedestrians jaywalk wrecklessly. Seriously, I've seen some some pedestrians almost dare you to hit them on a main thoroughfare. Aurora comes to mind. It's foolish and dangerous to attempt it on very busy streets.
@23 Melbourne, Victoria (Australia) is one of my favorite cities on Earth. Awesome understates it! A great walkable and beautiful city.
Right, and there's no war on cars here.
And, like @9, I've only ever been hit by cars in crosswalks where I had the legal right-of-way. Mostly just taps, but one time bad enough to send me flying and break some bones. If you jaywalk intelligently, you're less likely to be hit by a car simply because you're not relying on the drivers to obey the rules, you're working around them.
I believe it's because the laws are so poorly enforced and haphazardly followed it is difficult to trust drivers to do what they're supposed to, drunk or sober. Every day I cross at several marked crosswalks (with big bright yellow signs and/or zebra stripes on the road) and have to wait while multiple cars blow past me, sometimes until there is no traffic at all, in order to cross. One cannot simply step into a marked crosswalk (let alone an unmarked one) and expect drivers to yield, that would be suicide.
I need to cross the street.
I walk to the curb, maybe at a crosswalk, and scan for cars.
There's one a half block away with nobody behind them, so I wait for them to pass.
They see me and start slowing down, then stop and waive me by, when they had the right of way.
By the time it's obvious that they're waiting for me to cross many seconds have passed, slowing both of us down and doing me no bit of good.
JUST GO, DAMMIT!
One of them, to this day, swears there was no car in sight when he stepped into the street. I know this person well enough to know he is humble enough to admit it it were otherwise. The other person is from NYC and swears that she is a skilled jaywalker; to this day I still don't understand her explanation for how she was hit.
The last time I had a fender bender it was due to having to suddenly brake for a jaywalker, causing the person behind me (who, admittedly, was tailgating in my opinion) to bump my car's rear.
I don't know of any studies that make determinations on the safety of jaywalking. But in my anecdotal experience, (a) it is not the safest way to cross the street and (b) even the *best* jaywalkers are not as good as infallible as they think themselves to be.
My personal favorite is Bicycle Sunday http://www.seattle.gov/parks/bicyclesund…
My personal favorite is Bicycle Sunday http://www.seattle.gov/parks/bicyclesund…
As a driver, you know what I detest? Idiot pedestrians (like you) who are standing at the curb on the corner; make eye contact with me; and then don't cross when I obey the law and yield the right of way. Fuckin' idiot.
To the extent there are problems in Seattle, and there aren't many, it's with the dumbshits who either don't look or don't care. I saw a girl play chicken with a bus in the U District. Jaywalked against a red light, and then flipped off the bus driver. I was actually disappointed that he didn't run the bitch over.
It's not the car's right of way; it's yours. The second that car starts to slow down, do all of us a favor and just fucking cross.
Just this morning a city employee began slowing down at my crosswalk, but blew past me and stopped in the middle of the intersection for someone waiting kitty-corner from where I stood. I don't think he saw me at all, just the other pedestrian. If I had tried to cross when I saw him slowing he would have hit me, but until he stopped there was no way for me to be sure that he wasn't yielding to me.
Definitely don't cross if you're not sure the driver sees you. A lot of dipshit drivers do bizarre crap like slow down in the middle of an intersection and then start going again. I saw that just yesterday when some dumbass tow truck driver came to a near stop in the middle of the intersection (there was nothing in front of him for at least two blocks) and then suddenly proceeded through *after* his light had already turned red. Who can even guess what's going through their minds?
If it seems like the driver sees you, then start crossing cautiously.
I will do my very best not to give into my temptation ro be sarcastic and insulting.
Here's how you do it. You're on the curb. You see the car slowing down, so you take a step or two off the curb and keep looking at the driver. If he seems to see you, and his car keeps slowing down further, you keep going. Otherwise, you stay where you are.
I'm not just a driver, but a pedestrian who walks a mile or two every day, and has done so everywhere he's lived. That's how you do it. You never just seize the right of way, because if the guy behind the wheel is inattentive, or a jerk, or a psycho, you will lose that fight. But if he sees you, slows down, and keeps slowing down, then for chrissakes cross the goddamned street.
In some neighborhoods like Capitol Hill, the U District, Ballard, and downtown, the bigger threat to pedestrians is bicyclists. They are much harder to see, especially at dusk or night, and can't hear them. They'll often be going the wrong way on the street. Too many of them think they are at the top of the food chain, and consequently don't give a rat's ass about anyone else's right of way. Just like with cars, that's not a fight you'll win.
Also, I see the slow-then-speed-up routine whether I'm standing on the curb or in the street. This is not exclusively a matter of not stepping off the curb far enough.
(Also, you failed.)
And, yeah, I really do walk 10 miles a day.
Your question in #52 seemed really obvious to me. Still does. Oh well.
It is so much easier for a pedestrian to start and stop than a vehicle. Go ahead pedestrian, cross.
When I find myself standing on a corner but not intending to cross, I turn my back on the street. This helps idiot drivers from stopping for no good reason.
Pedestrians who like dodging traffic instead of crossing at crosswalks: look like you know what you're doing and I'll let you do your thing. Look like you're a hesitant, indecisive, unpredictable tourist, I'd rather stop. Feel free to kill yourself on someone else's car.
And I'm sorry, bro, but that's how we do things around here. We're not all of the sudden going to start acting like drivers from wherever the fuck you're from because your crazy walking style is so much better than ours. If you're so into jaywalking you refuse to wait for the sign, feel free to move back to wherever the hell you came from.