BIKE: 80% of pedestrians don't understand walk/don't walk

[Roger Baker]

Thats very on-topic for this list, IMO. I think that there are  
inherently more and less dangerous intersections everywhere in  
Austin.  At some intersections because of the lack of islands and the  
character of traffic flow, you should not encourage ped crossing at all.

What is safer for bikes is probably going to be safer for peds.
I like speed bumps and traffic calming design in general. Its the  
wave of the future. I think we need to focus Austin city council's  
attention on designing safer Austin streets for bikes, peds and slow  
low mass motorized vehicles. Guys like Peter Calthorpe have studied  
and refined the principles.

The core difficulty is not engineering, but politics.

We need to know that powerful forces connected to the road lobby that  
are pushing in the opposite direction. The new CAMPO long range plan,  
likely to be adopted in June, talks a lot about bikes and such good  
stuff, but here its mostly only talk of what might be funded someday.

But the TIP and approval process that get the cash and borrowing  
approval are all geared to get the roads under contract immediately,  
roads designed to handle traffic that implies that Austin streets  
will to become racetracks for impatient SUVs headed toward the 'burbs  
for decades to come.

This is the pure distilled essence of bad transportation policy, in  
my not so humble opinion.

One of the main factors motivating the public to re-evaluate their  
thinking about transportation is the increasing price of fuel. This  
is now at the top of the list above congestion some places, San  
Antonio transpo consultant Bill Barker told me just last night at a  
road hearing at the Wildflower center.

So lets ride the wave of increasing public concern and focus this  
political energy to reinforce the publicly approved goals of Envision  
Central Texas on compact city mixed use development together with  
streets designed to be multi-modally safe.  -- Roger


On May 12, 2005, at 8:46 AM, elizabeth gray wrote:

> This is kind of off topic, but I was surprised that a study shows  
> that 80%
> of pedestrians don't understand the walk/don't walk signs.  And the  
> new
> count down makes it worse.
> http://www.pti.org/toforum.asp?pref=http://www.pti.org/elib/publish/ 
> article_
> 3090.asp
>
>
> They didn't mention inclusion of the beep at the beginning of the  
> cycle;
> I've read that really helps kids cross safely--and I love it when  
> I'm on my
> bike, such as the intersection of Guadalupe and 29th.
>
> Elizabeth Gray
> egray88
>
>
>
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